Intel Core "Special Edition" Owners' Club

[Dr. Dro]

This club thread is intended for discussion of Intel Core "Special Edition" processors such as:

- Core i7-8086K
- Core i9-9900KS
- Core i9-12900KS
- Core i9-13900KS
- Core i9-14900KS
- Core Ultra 9 285KS/295K (rumored)
- Their future successors!

Important update: Microcode revision 0x12B which fully addresses degradation and stability issues for Raptor Lake (13th and 14th Gen processor) has been released by most major motherboard manufacturers, flashing your motherboard is strongly recommended

Brief FAQ:

Q: What are these Special Edition chips anyway?
A: They are pre-selected (binned) versions of the same regular "K" variant processors that were cherry picked at the production line for their superior characteristics, being generally better behaved (undervolting or overclocking better than the regular variant).

Q: Are these chips always better than the regular variant? Why would anyone spend extra on this?
A: No. You are still subject to the "silicon lottery", but an average KS will generally be on the upper range of what a K chip can do.

Q: Do you need special cooling for these?
A: Should not be necessary, but it's a reasonable assumption that if you're buying one, you are sparing no expense and going high-end air or 360/420mm CLC/AIO at a minimum.

Q: Do you need a special motherboard for these?
A: No, a simple BIOS update will do. They'll work on the same motherboards that support the regular K variant CPUs.

Useful tweak tools:

1. TechPowerUp DRAM latency calculator

TechPowerUp

www.techpowerup.com

2. AsRock Timing Configurator 4.0.16

Gofile - Free Unlimited File Sharing and Storage

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3. ASUS ROG MemTweakIt ver. 2.3.18 (20230628)

Asus MemTweakIt 2.3.18.0

MediaFire is a simple to use free service that lets you put all your photos, documents, music, and video in a single place so you can access them anywhere and share them everywhere.

www.mediafire.com

4. Intel XTU (Extreme Tuning Utility)

Intel® Extreme Tuning Utility (Intel® XTU)

The Intel® Extreme Tuning Utility (Intel® XTU) is used to overclock, monitor, and stress a system. This application is supported with unlocked processors (K- and X-series) only. Refer to “This download is valid for the product(s) listed below” section for supported processors list. WARNING...

www.intel.com

Let me know if any links are outdated, broken or expired. Some of these can be hard to come by.

TechPowerUp reviews:

Intel Core i9-9900KS Review - Impressive 5 GHz

The Core i9-9900KS is Intel's new consumer flagship processor. It runs at 5 GHz boost no matter how many cores are active, which translates into 10% application performance gained over the 9900K. Gaming performance is improved too, but pricing is high, especially compared to what AMD is offering.

www.techpowerup.com

Intel Core i9-12900KS Review - The Best Just Got Better

The Intel Core i9-12900KS is the company's new flagship Alder Lake processor. After our review, we can confirm that it is the "world's fastest gaming CPU," but that comes at a price not only in terms of dollars, but increased power draw and heat output, too.

www.techpowerup.com

Intel Core i9-13900KS Review - The Empire Strikes Back

The Intel Core i9-13900KS is the fastest CPU that Intel is offering this generation. Our review confirms that its clock speeds reach 6.0 GHz, but power consumption also sets a new record. How's gaming performance vs 7800X3D and 7950X3D? Our review has the answers.

www.techpowerup.com

Intel Core i9-14900KS Review - The Last of its Kind

The Intel Core i9-14900KS reaches impressive clock frequencies up to 6.2 GHz, which yields remarkable performance in applications and gaming. However, this comes at the cost of serious power consumption, especially if you go beyond stock, where we saw over 500 W during testing.

www.techpowerup.com

Please follow Clubhouse guidelines and keep discussion relatively on-topic. Report to the moderators if anything gets out of hand!

Here's my own! Let the games begin

 

[BoggledBeagle]

Is there any reason why Gigabyte has no official support for the new 14900KS CPU? I checked again, and not only my ordinary board, but also the Xtreme and Master Z790 boards have no support yet.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Is there any reason why Gigabyte has no official support for the new 14900KS CPU? I checked again, and not only my ordirary board, but also the Xtreme and Master Z790 boards have no support yet.

MSI did not update the BIOS for my Z690 ACE but silently added the 14900KS to the CPU compatibility list with the most recent 1.F0 BIOS version from January listed as the minimum supported. There's an update scheduled for the end of March, so Gigabyte may have something similar going on.

It's a reasonable assumption that any BIOS that supports the 13900KS should work with the 14900KS as well, though. The 14th Gen chips do not have an actual hardware revision and hardware changes against the 13th Gen models, and the internal CPUID family, model, identification, stepping and revision IDs are the exact same. The 13 and 14 KS's share their Extreme Power Delivery profile specification of 320 W/400 A as well.

 

[BoggledBeagle]

The CPU is not even on the CPU support list... I think you should not put a CPU that is not on the list in the motherboard at all.

 

[GerKNG]

i only had the 8086k when it launched.
delidded, liquid metal under and on top of the IHS = 5.3 GHz and 5.1GHz Cache with 4x8GB 4000 CL16 had it for over a year in my daily system.

 

[Dr. Dro]

The CPU is not even on the CPU support list... I think you should not put a CPU that is not on the list in the motherboard at all.

Prudent, but in this case I think it's mostly a formality, since there's no difference between it and its predecessor beyond the pre-programmed clock curve. It should be fine, likely why MSI just added it to the list instead of releasing a BIOS update outright.

 

[freeagent]

Owww

 

[Makina]

Interested to see where 13900KS/14900KS & Z690/Z790 pricing will end up after Arrow Lake comes out and what it's price and performance will be. I have a 5800X3D currently on a 360 AIO but i'm looking to do some casual overclocking fun eventually, which Intel offers. 360 AIO should be enough cooling for overclocking both. I know a 13900K/14900K would be more than enough for that kind of purpose but was always intrigued by the KS-models.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Interested to see where 13900KS/14900KS & Z690/Z790 pricing will end up after Arrow Lake comes out and what it's price and performance will be. I have a 5800X3D currently on a 360 AIO but i'm looking to do some casual overclocking fun eventually, which Intel offers. 360 AIO should be enough cooling for overclocking both. I know a 13900K/14900K would be more than enough for that kind of purpose but was always intrigued by the KS-models.

Same, but mostly on the motherboard side. Enthusiasts usually upgrade every cycle and I wouldn't mind getting a second-hand Z790 Apex/Apex Encore or Tachyon at a good price, but I don't think I'll ever be grabbing a 14900KS. It's just not worth it, I like my 13900KS just fine

 

[Macro Device]

Not an owner but I almost obliterated a 13900KS whilst delidding and liquimetalling a while ago. Ended up borderline facing a lawsuit but managed to convince the customer not to.

i only had the 8086k when it launched.
delidded, liquid metal under and on top of the IHS = 5.3 GHz and 5.1GHz Cache with 4x8GB 4000 CL16 had it for over a year in my daily system.

So my 10600KF (no delid, no LM, no nothing, just a casual Gammaxx 400) is just 100 MHz shy of this monster? Whoa.

 

[GerKNG]

Not an owner but I almost obliterated a 13900KS whilst delidding and liquimetalling a while ago. Ended up borderline facing a lawsuit but managed to convince the customer not to.


So my 10600KF (no delid, no LM, no nothing, just a casual Gammaxx 400) is just 100 MHz shy of this monster? Whoa.

this runs P95 small FFT (AVX2)?

 

[wNotyarD]

Same, but mostly on the motherboard side. Enthusiasts usually upgrade every cycle and I wouldn't mind getting a second-hand Z790 Apex/Apex Encore or Tachyon at a good price, but I don't think I'll ever be grabbing a 14900KS. It's just not worth it, I like my 13900KS just fine

I mean, if what you had was a standard 13900K, then I'd see a 14900KS delivering something extra. But over a 13900KS?

 

[Macro Device]

this runs P95 small FFT (AVX2)?

No idea. The hardest stability test was 8 hours of Cinebench R23.

 

[BoggledBeagle]

8 hours of Cinebench R23.

OMG. Why you people torture the chips this way.

You can run it for 5 minutes, if it is stable lower settings somewhat and you are stable with minimal chip stress and degradation.

 

[Dr. Dro]

OMG. Why you people torture the chips this way.

You can run it for 5 minutes, if it is stable lower settings somewhat and you are stable with minimal chip stress and degradation.

I run 12 hours of bootable memtest86, 3 cycles of tm5, 12 hours of prime95 avx2 blend, and a couple of cycles of occt and realbench myself.

Stability is non negotiable. Chip can take this initial break in.

 

[Bobaganoosh]

The first computer I completely built myself had an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 in it. I then had friends with Q6600's that could OC just about as good. ~$750 price difference between the two if I remember correctly. That was the last special edition Intel chip I bought lol. You live and you learn I guess.

 

[gffermari]

I had the QX6700 and won the 8086K on Intel's competition.

After that, only Ryzen.

 

[Macro Device]

Why you people torture the chips this way.

I was sleepy. Woke up to this thing still crunching benchmarks. xD

 

[Makina]

Same, but mostly on the motherboard side. Enthusiasts usually upgrade every cycle and I wouldn't mind getting a second-hand Z790 Apex/Apex Encore or Tachyon at a good price, but I don't think I'll ever be grabbing a 14900KS. It's just not worth it, I like my 13900KS just fine

Yeah also interested in an Apex/Apex Encore or a Tachyon. I had a EVGA X570 Dark on a 5950X before the 5800X3D, great board with loads of OC features and EVGA's bios was genuinely awesome. a Z790 Dark Kingpin would be neat to own too for a possible future Intel build, but with EVGA's future being uncertain, might be best to leave that one out.

 

[Bobaganoosh]

Yeah also interested in an Apex/Apex Encore or a Tachyon. I had a EVGA X570 Dark on a 5950X before the 5800X3D, great board with loads of OC features and EVGA's bios was genuinely awesome. a Z790 Dark Kingpin would be neat to own too for a possible future Intel build, but with EVGA's future being uncertain, might be best to leave that one out.

The z790 Dark boards are pretty sweet, but don't try to daily-run a 14th gen on one. They haven't offered any BIOS updates in the last year, so they never got official 14th gen support. They can boot a 14900k, but not a 14700k, and they don't have the correct microcode or V/F points for 14900k. I have no idea if the 14900KS will be detected, but it would probably try to run with settings for a 13900k (I know it's basically a 13900KSSS anyway). Yes, you can manually tune some of the settings, but if you wanted to do a V/F point OC, they never really fixed that functionality 100% either lol.

 

[Dr. Dro]

The z790 Dark boards are pretty sweet, but don't try to daily-run a 14th gen on one. They haven't offered any BIOS updates in the last year, so they never got official 14th gen support. They can boot a 14900k, but not a 14700k, and they don't have the correct microcode or V/F points for 14900k. I have no idea if the 14900KS will be detected, but it would probably try to run with settings for a 13900k (I know it's basically a 13900KSSS anyway). Yes, you can manually tune some of the settings, but if you wanted to do a V/F point OC, they never really fixed that functionality 100% either lol.

Wonder if the 14700K issue is due to the 3 E-core cluster configuration that didn't exist in 13th gen

 

[ir_cow]

Ive been tempted by the 14900KS. A near guruentee SP of 120 is really the cost here. Mine 13900k is at 102. Can only do 5.6 all core for 1.35v. so I
Either I need to delid or buy a nicer CPU.

 

[Bobaganoosh]

Wonder if the 14700K issue is due to the 3 E-core cluster configuration that didn't exist in 13th gen

Probably. It seems the cpus that have the same configuration as 13th Gen parts boot, but they still don't run correctly. I don't think a lot of people have done thorough testing on it though as an unsupported platform.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Ive been tempted by the 14900KS. A near guruentee SP of 120 is really the cost here. Mine 13900k is at 102. Can only do 5.6 all core for 1.35v. so I
Either I need to delid or buy a nicer CPU.

afaik the SP scale of KS and K chips is different, any truth to that? I seem to recall reading about it somewhere, maybe it was on Igor's site

 

[ir_cow]

afaik the SP scale of KS and K chips is different, any truth to that? I seem to recall reading about it somewhere, maybe it was on Igor's site

No idea, but 13/14 is the same architecture and stepping. Not sure why they would be different