Conclusion and Final Points
The conclusion is going to be extremely brief and one of the easiest I’ve ever written. Obviously, Intel’s getting taken to the cleaners by AMD right now in the DIY market. The only reason to buy an Intel mainstream CPU is for gaming. On that front, the 9900KF offers a slight discount over the 9900K and if you don’t need QuickSync, you benefit from saving money.
My thoughts about these CPU’s haven’t changed with this model. If you want to go all out on a pure gaming build, the 9900KS is what you should be after. It’s better binned and has more overclocking headroom. For a reduced price, the 9900KF or 9900K are the next best thing. Obviously, if you want or need QuickSync, then the KF model is right out. For most of us, it’s probably the best way to go for price/performance for a pure gaming build.
I commend Intel’s ingenuity for making use of a “defective” product and creating something useful out of it, but this isn’t exactly an award winner CPU either.