Written by Metal Messiah

The core i9 10900K is going to be the flagship gaming CPU in the “Comet Lake S” lineup from INTEL. With the launch date coming nearer, it would be hitting shelves soon.

It’s rumored to be a power-hungry Desktop chip. Now some power/thermal tests have been posted by a Weibo user (via 9550pro), which shows what you should expect from this processor in terms of thermal performance.

Based on the tests run by this user, it looks like this chip is quite power hungry and it can easily get hot as well. INTEL has been relying on the same aging 14nm process node for quite some time, with little changes done to the CPU architecture as well. This has now started to show its age.

AMD on the other hand has offered much better efficiency and performance per watt with its 12nm and 7nm Ryzen CPUs. 14nm has been a barrier for Intel in some terms.

Anyways, coming to the benchmark test done it becomes very clear that this CPU can consume a lot of power and can also get hot when running at the peak all-core boost frequency. The test was done using a 240mm AIO radiator, and the Core i9-10900K consumed a package power draw of 235 Watts at full load, in the AIDA64 FPU stress test.

The chip also ran at a peak temperature of 93C, with an average temp of around 87C. This  unlocked CPU does run at higher clock speeds and hence runs hotter and consumes more power at full load. We can expect similar performance/thermal values while running Games as well.

The CPU was running at 4.8 GHz which is the peak all-core boost frequency, without Intel’s Thermal Velocity Boost/TVB.

Make a note of this. Even with a 240mm AIO cooler, this CPU cannot run at the advertised TVB value, since the temp needs to sit below 70C for this feature to function. It looks like anyone using a Core i9-10900K would have to grab a high-end top-tier cooling setup, for example a 360mm AIO, or a closed custom-loop liquid solution to get this CPU running at its highest rated clock speeds. LN2 anyone ?

Forget about “Air Coolers” achieving these same values. We need a high-end cooling solution to maintain safe temps on this beast of a CPU. Make a note that this CPU is using one of the best dies as reported by MSI.

The Core i9-10900K can hit 250W when all the cores are pushed to 5.2 GHz (at 1.3V+ voltage). 5.1 and 5.0 GHz speeds can also be achieved with lower voltages of 1.22-1.25V, with the power consumption being in the range of 220-230W, resulting in slightly lower temperatures too.