Just don’t look under the stage for the chiller
https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-core-i9-9900ks-ships-oc...
Real world performance needs to be seen, but this feels like a stunt to grab headlines and direct some attention away from AMD hammering them relentlessly.
Whatever Intel's failings may be, their media/marketing department is (and has, at least as long as I've been building computers, been) far superior to AMD's.
[1] https://www.techspot.com/news/77026-windows-update-reduce-sp... [2] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/19/05/20/228218/intel-pe...
Meanwhile I'm retiring an Intel Xeon server that has slowed down so much it's become unusable (for my purposes) because of Spectre mitigations.
In fact the part in question is shown at 8 cores, 5 GHz turbo, with a 95W TDP (at $488), which shows somewhat better power efficiency than the equivalent Ryzen 7 3800X (8/4.5GHz/105W/$399).
Now, that price differential may or may not be worth the moderate performance and power advantages to you, or you might be more enthused by the bigger Ryzen 9 and Threadripper parts instead which compete in different segments. But this certainly isn't an uncompetetive part from Intel.
The 9900k draws 168W at full load and is also specified for 95W TDP. This chip is likely going to use more. A 3900X draws 142W for comparison. (12 cores lower clocks 7nm)
[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/14605/the-and-ryzen-3700x-390...
A 9900K might specify a 95W TDP, but at 5GHz it will actually use almost 170W.
See https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9...
AMD's current TDP figures are based the maximum thermal output in what they consider to be real-world applications with boost clocks enabled: https://www.techspot.com/article/1652-things-amd-needs-to-fi... (Their TDP used to be maximum thermal output full stop and the real-world figure used to be called ACP, but they changed it because comparing their TDP with Intel's made their CPUs look really hot.) They also have an actual guaranteed maximum which is higher than, but tied to, their quoted TDP figure. So whilst it's not actual TDP anymore it's still a lot more meaningful than Intel's numbers.
The 3900X 12C/24T uses less power under full load than the 9900K does: https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph14605/111362.png (142w vs. 168w)
Intel cannot touch AMD's power efficiency right now, at least not on the desktop market and up. AMD hasn't rolled out 7nm to the laptop space yet, so Intel keeps an advantage there.
The 9900K (and now 9900KS) are fast chips, but power-efficient they are very much not at all. Getting those clocks requires ramming power through the chip. Power efficiency is barely even a concern for this particular market area.
So at least they've added the caveat, though "sufficient" could mean liquid cooling only available to 5% of enthusiasts. Intel hasn't disclosed the TDP, so the skeptical reader would think it's not impressive enough to disclose in marketing material.
Technically speaking, water coolers actually use air when cooling the big radiators.
all I'm trying to say is that a $60 mainstream "air cooler" that fits in a typical ATX case should be sufficient to cool this chip. it's a trivial cost for anyone considering what's likely to be a $500 cpu.
I understand people are still salty about the previous 5 GHz fiasco from last year, but this new part is literally just a binned 9900k. people are already running these at 5 GHz 24/7 without resorting to anything exotic.