Intel Core i9-10900K

$999

The crem de la crem of Intel’s arsenal, the Intel Core i9-10900K is the kingpin at the top of Team Blue’s latest processor pile. Complete with 10 cores, 20 threads, 20MB of smart cache, and a 5.3GHz max turbo speed across two cores, it’s Intel’s fastest mainstream processor to date.

It’s certainly not flawless, however. With those 10 cores comes an incredible amount of both heat and power draw. 14nm++ isn’t the best manufacturing process to leverage this design on, and because of that, even at stock with a triple rad/360mm AIO, you’re looking at temps well up into the 80 C range. On top of that, power draw can often be above 200W under load. These are all things Intel’s tiptoed around with some fantastic pin-point precision engineering. Whether that’s a thinner, larger silicon die or over-engineered VRMs and MOSFETs on the motherboard, the Core i9-10900K is a guaranteed titan of a flagship, as long as you can keep it cool and fed.