The Core i9-10900K is the tip of Intel’s spear in its newest 10th Generation Core (“Comet Lake-S”) lineup of desktop CPUs. As a top-of-the-line 10-core processor (the estimated selling price is $488 for the bare chip), the Core i9-10900K posts great scores in gaming with our standard test GPU (even setting a record one title, Counter Strike: Global Offensive). But it doesn’t quite match up with AMD’s competing 12-core Ryzen 3900X in content-creation and highly multi-threaded tasks. The need for a new motherboard to upgrade to Comet Lake-S only adds to the real-world cost of the Core i9-10900K, and its thermal demands left us wanting.
