Features and Specifications
There isn’t much to talk about in terms of specifications. As you can see from the chart, the specifications of the 9900K and 9900KF would seem to be perfectly identical across the board. What’s not in the table, is precisely what I mentioned earlier. The 9900KF is identical to the 9900K minus the iGPU. They are produced on the same 14nm process with the same memory and PCIe lane support and so on. Their TDP’s are the same, which we’ll talk about in more detail shortly.
What’s in the Box?
Sadly, you don’t get the 12 sided box the 9900K and 9900KS CPU’s come in. That would explain the slight cost reduction. In the box, you’ll find the CPU, a case badge, instruction booklet and a bunch of oxygen to fill the space around the cardboard holder that displays the CPU in the box window. There are no surprises and everything about this packaging is the same as it has been for years. The 9900KF doesn’t come in the fancy 12-sided box of clear yet colored plastic with fancy box labeling held on by magnets. So, there isn’t much to talk about there.
A high-end enthusiast CPU would likely demand better cooling than Intel would be willing to provide for optimal results, so Intel saves its pennies and doesn’t include a cheap CPU fan and heatsink. It could include a nice one, but many people wouldn’t use it anyway favoring water cooling of some kind be it an AIO or custom loop.