sebastiand88

Nov 22, 2021

Intel Core i7-9700K 9th Gen CPU

Intel's powerful Core i9 family recently displaced Core i7 as the company's mainstream desktop flagship. Mainstream is relative, though. The Intel Core i9-9900K sells for more than $500, requires a high-end cooler, a beefy motherboard, and really needs to be paired with lots of fast memory. It's prohibitively expensive for all but the most affluent enthusiasts.

Core i7-9700K, on the other hand, lands right where we expect to find any other high-end, unlocked, Core i7 CPU. It even boasts a number of improvements compared to the previous generation. Like Intel's Core i9-9900K, the i7-9700K includes eight physical cores. However, it doesn't benefit from Hyper-Threading. That doesn't bother us much. After all, some software performs notably better on physical cores rather than logical ones, and the two-core increase compared to the Intel Core i7-8700K largely offsets the loss of Intel's simultaneous multi-threading technology.

Given the Core i7-9700K's lofty peak frequencies, improved multi-core Turbo Boost ratios, eight-core configuration, and solder-based thermal interface material that improves heat transfer and overclocking, Intel's latest Core i7 is an all-around winner and, at publication time, tops our list of the best gaming CPUs. However, AMD has intervened in the following months, releasing a new lineup of ultra-competitive Ryzen 3000 chips, with the Ryzen 5 3700X taking the helm as the best value-focused chip in this price range.

Pricing is a bit of a problem, though. The Core i7-9700K sells for $385 if you can find one available at Intel's suggested retail price. Meanwhile the competing 

 retails for $329. The Ryzen also comes bundled with a capable cooler, whereas Intel makes you pay for a high-end thermal solution. The Core i7-9700K is faster than Ryzen in games, no doubt. But budget-limited builders might go the Ryzen route in order to afford a faster. And AMD's CPU still holds the advantage in some threaded application workloads.