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GPUs and CPUs · Intel Core i9

Intel Core i9 14900K

6owners with an opinion
20%of verdicts positive
1/4positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance; criticized for reliability.

What owners wrote

Doesn’t like it
You’re advocating for a flawed test. Why is it, when ever someone points out that Microsoft shits the bed on something someone will come out with ludicrous ideas about changing the default environment. The default environment is what you get, all this handwringing about whats potentially possible misses the point entirely; for decades we have, as a community, scoffed at linux for requiring you to understand deeply how your OS works in order for it to function. Now we’re in the situation where the out-of-the-box experience for gaming requires less esoteric knowledge on Linux than Windows, yet people defend Windows still. Do you seriously think the exec running emails even knows what Hyper-V is? Do you think any IT department is going to disable memory integrity? Would any Dev disable WSL? Do the vast majority of gamers want to do this? Should they have to? You’re now arguing that overhead is ok because its mitigated by newer hardware, I don’t believe that to be true as I run W11 on A Threadripper 3970x and an i9-14900k and the fuckers feel leagues slower than my M1 Macbook, its a joke! Like 10x the power/thermal envelope- and sure, some of that is down to the M1 being great, but there’s no benchmark putting it above those CPUs. Stop pretending that this is ok, and stop trying to spread uncertainty about a valid test. I’d prefer newer hardware too, but this is the compromise if we want older OS’s to be included.
Doesn’t like it
I don't give any fucks about battery life or even total power consumption cost; I just hate that I have some crap-ass Apple mid-range (for them) laptop with only 36GB RAM and an "M4 Max" CPU, and it runs rings around my 350W Core i9-14900K desktop Linux workstation, and there is essentially no way I can develop software (Rust, web apps, multi-container Docker crap) on Linux with anything close to the performance of my shitty laptop computer, even if I spend $10,000. That's actually wild. I think we're in a kind of unique moment, but one that is good for Apple mainly, because their OS is so developer-hostile that I pay back all the performance gains with interest. T_T
Likes it
Indeed. I have an AMD 9950X and an Asus X870E* motherboard. I can barely get the system to boot with one 32G DIMM let alone 2 or 4, and 48G DIMMS are even worse for some reason. I have tried 3 different "matched" sets. Sometimes I have to reset the system 3 times or more before it will boot; it hangs or crashes on DDR timing BIOS codes. I have given up and just use a single 32G despite how useless 32G is in a high end desktop today. Real joke. Huge waste of money. I will buy prebiilt systems in the future. In the meantime if I need a lot of RAM I use an Intel 14900K desktop or my new HP G1a Zbook. * ASUS X870E ROG CROSSHAIR HERO AMD AM5 ATX Motherboard
Doesn’t like it
These guys have almost no idea what they are talking about, right? JetStream 2.1 is "Java-based"? Phoronix coverage seems more relevant https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen-9950x-9900x Games are not one of my PC use cases so I am pleased to see that the 9950X is the new king of the hill for compiling software. My 14900K is glitching out so I need to replace it and the 9950X is a lot cheaper than a Threadripper or Xeon-W.
Doesn’t like it
There is no reliable way to diagnose this issue with the 14th gen, the chip slowly degrades over time and you start getting more and more (usually gpu driver under windows) crashes. I believe the easy way might be to run decompression stress tests if I remember correctly from Wendell's (Level1Techs) video. I highly recommend going into your motherboard right now and manually setting your configurations to the current intel recommendation to prevent it from degrading to the point where you'd need to RMA it. I have a 14900K and it took about 2.5 months before it started going south and it was getting worse by the DAY for me. Intel has closed my RMA ticket since changing the bios settings to very-low-compared-to-what-the-original-is has made the system stable again, so I guess I have a 14900K that isn't a high end chip anymore. Below are the configs intel provided to me on my RMA ticket that have made my clearly degraded chip stable again: CEP (Current Excursion Protection)> Enable. eTVB (Enhanced Thermal Velocity boost)> Enable. TVB (Thermal Velocity boost)>Enable. TVB Voltage Optimization> Enable. ICCMAX Unilimited bit>Disable. TjMAX Offset> 0. C-States (Including C1E) >Enable. ICCMAX> 249A. ICCMAX_APP>200A. Power limit 1 (PL1)>125W. Power limit 2 (PL2)>188W
Neutral
As a data point, I just built a new dev machine with a 14900K on a new ASUS board. Out of the box with default settings, it was pushing 320W through the CPU in stress tests. I use my machine for FPGA compiles so I need reliability. I learned that ASUS Multicore Enhancement is not the only thing that must be disabled, you must manually enter the power limits. Now my compiles take exactly the same length of time but use at least 100W less power. I am glad to know that with your field data, I've inadvertently sidestepped a potentially catastrophic bug. I don't want to release an FPGA bitstream to users with flipped bits. And the FPGA tools already crash on their own enough.
Likes itHasn’t owned it
They are not a particularly good desktop chips, though. Or rather the market niche for them is rather small (low-power and relatively high performance) and generally filled by laptops anyway. For desktop use cases like gaming or performance intense cases they are not that great (IIRC the 14900k which cost a few hundred $ by the end was considerably faster than the top end M3 chip). Of course high memory bandwidth + unified CPU/GPU memory is an advantage in certain cases but that also makes the system entirely unmodular.