Intel Core i9-13900K CPU Review

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Power Temperature and Frequency

We will now test the power and temperature on each CPU, as well as the frequency on the Intel Core i9-13900K. To run these tests we ran Cinebench R23 for 10 minutes and took readings according to HWiNFO64, the latest version.

Power

Intel Core i9-13900K CPU Power Graph

This graph is quite shocking. The Intel Core i9-13900K skyrockets to a whopping 336.8W CPU package power while running full-load in Cinebench R23. When the CPU is being used to its maximum potential, the power demand is quite high, surpassing the previous highest power CPU, the 12900K. Compared to last generation’s 12th Gen Core processor Core i9-12900K the new Core i9-13900K is consuming 39% more power, 94W more. That’s just on a scale we’ve never seen before, to be honest. Think of it like this, the Core i9-12900K is almost as demanding as a 350W GPU like the GeForce RTX 3090.

Compared to the Ryzen 9 7950X, the Core i9-13900K consumes 43% more power, 101W more. Ask yourself if that power demand is worth the differences in performance you saw compared to the Ryzen 9 7950X in this review. Even the Intel Core i5-13600K is consuming more power than the Ryzen 9 7900X, and coming close to the 7950X on power consumption, and those CPUs are far apart in performance. The only saving grace is that you won’t always be pegging the CPU like this, especially when gaming. However, if you do use the CPU for things like rendering, or video editing, and it’s pegging all the cores, expect over 300W of power to be drawn.

Temperature

Intel Core i9-13900K CPU Temperature Graph

If you know it has high power, you also knew it had to have a high temperature. The Intel Core i9-13900K is the hottest running CPU on our graph running at 100c in Cinebench R23 pegging all cores. At 100c we are at the TJunction. This is the same behavior as the Ryzen 7950X, which also runs at its TjMax of 95c. However, the Intel CPU is definitely hotter, even if it’s running in a similar way. The Ryzen 7000 series CPUs will run at 95c, they are designed to do so to maximize clock speed. The Core i9-13900K is just in an entirely different ballfield, however. At 100c you are teetering on the brink of throttling, and this was with a 360mm AIO as well at full fan speeds. What’s also disturbing is just how hot the Core i5-13600K was as well, reaching 95c. These temps are not encountered while gaming, or at lighter loads, but at full-load, pegging the CPU, expect a hot running CPU that is hotter than the 7950X.

CPU Frequency

The performance-core Max Turbo Frequency and Intel Thermal Velocity Boost Frequency are up to 5.8GHz, the Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 Frequency is up to 5.7GHz and the Performance-core Max Turbo Frequency is up to 5.4GHz on the Intel Core i9-13900K. The Efficient-core Max Turbo Frequency is up to 4.3GHz. What we want to know though is how high it can attain when running all cores at the same time. For this test, we again ran Cinebench R23 to see in HWiNFO64 what all the cores looked like.

Intel Core i9-13900K CPU Frequency Screenshot

You can see why the Intel Core i9-13900K is drawing so much power, it actually does sustain 5.5GHz on the performance-cores and 4.3GHz on the efficient-cores running full-load pegging the CPU at 100c. We also tested a single-core and it did boost up to 5.8GHz.

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REVIEW OVERVIEW

Performance
10
Efficiency (Perf per Watt)
5
Features
10
Value
7

SUMMARY

We put the Intel Core i9-13900K Raptor Lake CPU through its paces and benchmarked synthetic and gaming scenarios at various resolutions. The CPU maintained a high-performance level, rivaling the competition, AMD Ryzen 7000 series. However, it came at a high cost, that cost was power usage and temperature. While it is loaded with features, its overall value is detracted by way of this tremendous power utilization in order to maintain its performance leadership.
Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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We put the Intel Core i9-13900K Raptor Lake CPU through its paces and benchmarked synthetic and gaming scenarios at various resolutions. The CPU maintained a high-performance level, rivaling the competition, AMD Ryzen 7000 series. However, it came at a high cost, that cost was power usage and temperature. While it is loaded with features, its overall value is detracted by way of this tremendous power utilization in order to maintain its performance leadership.Intel Core i9-13900K CPU Review