A new flagship Intel 14th-gen CPU has been spotted for sale, showing there’s room for Intel’s latest Raptor Lake refresh to go even further when it comes to clock speed. The new Intel Core i9-14900KS was shown as part of the spec for a pre-built system available on etailer PCOnline in Israel.
According to the spec of the system, the new Intel Core i9-14900KS clock speed is 6.2GHz. That’s a 200MHz increase over the 6GHz turbo clock frequency of the Intel Core i9-14900K, putting it forward as a contender for the best gaming CPU.
Intel has had a couple of years to refine its 10nm manufacturing process, first seen in 12th-gen CPUs such as the Core i5-12600K, and it looks like the company now has a strong enough yield to output Raptor Lake CPUs that can clock all the way to 6.2GHz.
Interestingly, though, the listing itself is for an otherwise curiously underpowered system, which was spotted on the Anandtech forums. There’s no discrete GPU from Nvidia or AMD, for example, instead relying on the CPU’s integrated UHD 770 GPU. It doesn’t use one of the best Z790 motherboard options either, with the system instead using a much cheaper board based on the budget H610 chipset.
Likewise, you only get 16GB of 3200MHz DDR4 memory, rather than some of the latest DDR5 memory that’s supported by Intel’s 14th-gen platform. Instead, this system is geared towards work that takes advantage of the CPU’s multi-threading power, which looks to be formidable.
There’s also a weird Google Translate quirk if you look at the page in English, where the summary makes it look as though this top-end CPU comes with DOS instead of Windows, but the full page shows that this actually means it comes with no OS installed
If previous KS-series CPUs, such as the Core i9-12900KS, are a benchmark, the Core i9-14900KS will have the same eight P-cores and 16 E-cores as the Core i9-14900K – the only difference between them is likely to be the clock speed. For example, the Core i9-13900KS added 200MHz to both the base clock and turbo clock of the Core i9-13900K.
It’s highly likely that the Core i9-14900KS will have a higher power rating in order to give it headroom to boost to 6.2GHz as well. For example, the Core i9-13900K has a base power of 125W, while the Core i9-13900KS has a base power rating of 150W, though both CPUs have a maximum turbo power rating of 253W.
Intel Core i9-14900KS specs
The expected Intel Core i9-14900KS specs list is:
| Base frequency | 3.4GHz (P-Cores), 2.4GHz (E-Core) |
| Max boost frequency | 6.2GHz (P-Cores), 4.4GHz (E-Cores) |
| Core | Raptor Lake refresh |
| Manufacturing process | Intel 7 (10nm) |
| Number of cores | 8 P-core, 16 E-core |
| Number of threads | 32 |
| IGP | Intel UHD Graphics 770 |
| L3 cache | 36MB |
| L2 cache | 32MB |
| Memory controller | Dual-channel DDR5 5600MT/s and DDR4 3200MT/s |
| Packaging | LGA 1700 |
| Thermal design power (TDP) | 150W (Max turbo power 253W) |
| Hyper-Threading | Yes |
| Features | Thermal Velocity Boost, Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0, Application Performance Optimisation, Thread Director, AES, AVX, AVX2, AVX512, FMA3, MMX(+), SHA, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, SSE4A, SSSE3 |
Intel Core i9-14900KS price
The expected Intel Core i9-14900KS price is $699, based on previous KS-series CPU launches, as no announcement has been made.
Price: Expect to pay $699 (£689).
Intel Core i9-14900KS release date
The expected Intel Core i9-14900KS release date is January, 2024, based on previous KS-series CPU launches, as no announcement has been made.
With the exception of the 20-core Intel Core i7-14700K, the Intel 14th-gen CPU launch has largely been a bit of a non-event. The CPUs, such as the Core i5-14600K, are decent enough, but they’re basically the same as their 13th-gen equivalents, just with a little bit of extra clock speed.
We’ll have to wait until the launch of the Intel 15th-gen lineup, which is largely rumored to be based on the Intel Arrow Lake architecture, before we see a significant difference between Intel CPU generations again.
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