Fantastic - delighted with purchase
by OwenI finally put my i9 9900k to bed after nearly 5 years of us, after 12 years of intel i felt the time was nigh to get back on team red as they seem to be dominating the gaming scene and after buying this can confirm am very happy that I did. for years I would keep youtubing 9900k vs <latest gen> and the price would never be worth the extra frames but after seeing how the cheapest 3d v-cache chip was top of the pile for gaming i decided to take the plunge, delighted that I have too as everything running like a dream, can especially see the large gains with a lot of cpu heavy games where my 9900k was starting to struggle slightly the chip naturally seems to run hot i would warn (no change since my old team red experience), even with a hard tubing custom loop with 2x 360mm rads I'm around 45 degree idling, under full load (gaming) this gets upto around 70 degrees gaming (75 was my peak after a few hours). Extreme loads (unrealistic loads using prime95) pushed this to 80-85 so expect to have an extra heater in your gaming room with this. I would definitely suggest a good AIO to keep it cool or high end noctua if you go fan based due to the heat. AMD have really nailed this CPU for gamers who didnt want to splash out on the 7900X 3D or 7950x 3D versions if they have no workstation needs (I do use keyshot, blender and solidworks however and this is still more than sufficient in those apps). In honesty after this release I genuinely see even less reason why they even bothered to launch the 7900X3D version, it just seems they wanted to embarass intel on all available price points rather than it serving any actual purpose to the consumer. I genuinely have no loyalty to red or blue, intel has been great for me for 12 years but i will always go with the best chip for gaming, AMD seems to have the edge