Today, Intel released their new flagship processor for the LGA 1151 platform. The Core i9-9900K finally comes with eight core and 16 threads, reaching parity with AMD's Ryzen offerings. Maximum Boost Clock has been increased as well, now to a staggering 5 GHz.

8 cores and 16 threads; 5 GHz boost; Trades blows with more expensive Core i9-7900X; Unlocked multiplier; Soldered IHS; Works on existing LGA1151 platform; even with Z370 motherboards; Integrated graphics; Supports up to 128 GB memory

High price; Held back by power limits; Only small gaming performance improvements; No heatsink included; Weak integrated graphics

There's no denying it, the Core i9 9900K is a little gem. It ticks all the right boxes in performance both on the threaded application and gaming end. It has hyper-threading with sixteen threads and then the very high turbo bins to go along with that.

Since the inception of the Core Series of processors, the i7 was the flagship of Intel's line of desktop processors. Since the first generation, the top tier i7 was always a quad core chip with hyper-threading.

As Intel's first-ever mainstream Core i9 chip, this processor comes equipped with eight-cores, 16-threads and the ability to boost up to a maximum 5.0GHz clock speed. All told, this new octa-core processor not only closes the gap with AMD's best processor, but runs past it.

Dominating hyper-threading performance; Runs significantly cooler; Tight energy consumption

Expensive; Little to no improvement for gaming

Cant wait to get my one, upgrading from a I7 7700k very underwhelming and crap overclocker... hoping this one will be better!!!

The Core i9-9900K is Intel's first 8-core, 16-thread mainstream processor. So compared to the i7-8700K you are getting two more cores. Can you believe that only two generations ago we were still on quad-core mainstream chips

– 8core; 16threads; – Best performing mainstream processor we've reviewed; – Great gaming performance; – Solder thermal interface material (STIM; – Can easily reach 5.0 GHz or above when overclocking

– Price compared to competition

On Gigabyte Z390 Master this CPU can go up to 87 degree on 4.8GHz while stabilising video in Adobe Premiere, cooled by Corsair H115i Pro. On 5GHz it was ok for most of the time, even games were ok, but for video editing on 5GHz it was throttling. I switched from 8700K which is much better value.

Sold my seperate streaming pc to buy this and turn my 7700k gaming pc into both. Can stream gameplay 60fps 1080p no issues even on demanding fps like apex legends – whilst playing at a constant 120–144fps (Paired with 1080ti)

My other computer is a 15 inch 2015 Macbook Pro with a 2 gb radeon pro graphix card and 16 gb of Ram, and this new processor and its built in GPU is faster at everything even before I installed the 8gb NVidia graphics card. That says it all to me.

I bought this to make a new Computer to destroy the many players of many games. I would say this is a good product but I guess the production value does not include a CPU fan for the price you pay, so I bought a $500 processor without a CPU Fan so now I have to buy another part before I can finish...