The Intel Core i9-9900K was a desktop processor with 8 cores, launched in October 2018, at an MSRP of $488. It is part of the Core i9 lineup, using the Coffee Lake Refresh architecture with Socket 1151. Thanks to Intel Hyper-Threading the core-count is effectively doubled, to 16 threads. Core i9-9900K has 16 MB of L3 cache and operates at 3.6 GHz by default, but can boost up to 5 GHz, depending on the workload. Intel is making the Core i9-9900K on a 14 nm production node, the transistor count is unknown. You may freely adjust the unlocked multiplier on Core i9-9900K, which simplifies overclocking greatly, as you can easily dial in any overclocking frequency.
With a TDP of 95 W, the Core i9-9900K consumes a good deal of power, so decent cooling is needed. Intel's processor supports DDR4 memory with a dual-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 2666 MT/s, but with overclocking (and the right memory modules) you can go even higher. For communication with other components in the system, Core i9-9900K uses a PCI-Express Gen 3 connection. This processor features the UHD Graphics 630 integrated graphics solution.
Hardware virtualization is available on the Core i9-9900K, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Additionally, IOMMU virtualization (PCI passthrough) is supported, so that guest virtual machines may directly use host hardware. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) can run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications. Besides AVX, Intel is including the newer AVX2 standard, too, but not AVX-512.