Core i9 10900K
INTEL $729
The Comet Lake flagship is still a powerful option
Intel’s top gaming chip lost a lot of what made it special with the release of Zen 3. When the 10900K was first unleashed it came with the reassurance that it was the ‘world’s fastest gaming processor’, but that’s not a claim it can really hold on to anymore, with plenty of games handing wins to AMD’s Ryzen 5900X. It’s still a cracking game chip, don’t get us wrong, but it traded on being the very best, and once that went, it lost its shine.
It’s still overkill for the vast majority of cases, apart from possibly at the very, very high-end, and for serious
workloads – although there AMD chips make more sense. So, you probably don’t need the 10900K, but if you do build a machine around it, you know it won’t be this chip that’s holding you back.
The Core i9 10900K is the first time Intel has managed to squeeze ten processing cores into its mainstream line up, and given it’s capable of hitting 5.3GHz (however briefly), it represents an impressive feat of engineering if nothing else.
VERDICT
Fastest gaming performance Overclocking potential
Top performance needs lots of power