Intel Core i9-13900K Review

1. Introducing Intel Core i9-13900K2. Intel's bold claims about 13th Gen3. Performance and Testing: Cinebench R234. Cinebench R23 Single Core, Blender and HandBrake5. Performance: AIDA64 and 3DMark6. Gaming: Far Cry 6 and Hitman 37. Gaming: SOTTR and Borderlands 38. Closing Thoughts9. View All Pages

We have been on something of a journey over the past few months as we waited  for 13th Gen Raptor Lake to arrive. Our initial expectations were somewhat ‘meh', as a light refresh of Alder Lake sounded a bit dull, while AMD was promising a new platform and new architecture with Zen 4.

As the time drew near and Intel stepped up their briefing things got rather more tense. Could Intel possibly boost the clock speed fo Core i9 by 600MHz? Would the temperatures approach those of a nuclear furnace? Or might Intel utterly fail and merely deliver a warmed-over Alder Lake.

The fact is that against all expectations Raptor Lake feels like a brand new CPU that absolutely stomps Alder Lake and ends up in a dead heat with AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X .

Perhaps the biggest disappointment with Core i9-13900K is the way it has been delivered at the bleeding edge with clock speeds, power levels and core temperatures pushed to the limits. Boosting beyond 310W is brutal and sustained temperatures of 100 degrees Celsius feel wrong in an ambient of 21 degrees C. Lord help us if we have another summer with temperatures in the mid-30s next year.

We found the Core i9-13900K made more sense with power capped at 253W or even lower. While you will lose a few percentage points of performance, the end result is a gaming PC that delivers plenty of stomp but with considerably less fuss and drama.

You can buy the Intel Core i9-13900K from Overclockers UK £699.95 HERE

Pros:

• Amazing gaming performance.
• Huge clock speeds from the Raptor P-cores.
• Impressive support for fast DDR5 memory.
• Creators will love the new Core i9.
• Raptor Lake for laptops should be awesome.

Cons:

• Pushing package power to 253W pegs the CPU at 100 degrees C.
• Intel hasn’t yet provided samples of Core i7-13700K so hold your horses!.
• Intel Z790 chipset brings minimal new features to the table.

KitGuru says: Core i9-13900K Raptor Lake is a significant improvement over 12th Gen Alder Lake.

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