I've been contemplating biting the bullet for a long while going from 13600k to a 14900k but with all of these bad reviews and deterioration I keep turning myself off as I haven't had a single issue with 13600k.

Is it still a bad idea if you consider reliability the most important factor? Im on the latest BIOS patch and I will be reading up on parameters that might need changing in BIOS to ensure more stability.

Just interested to see if many people have run updates and had no issues.

We all know how the 13th and 14th gen high end CPUs have cooling issues, but how bad is it realistically? I've heard from many people that a good 360mm AIO should be enough to cool it, and it has been updates addressing the issues.

And in performance, it's in a pretty good spot. According to TomsHardware, it's the best Intel CPU for gaming, losing only to the X3Ds, but at a much cheaper price. This is also at 1080p, where the CPU is used much more than the GPU. I can pick up the 14900k for around 400 USD right now, as opposed to 7800X3D at around 450-500 and 9800X3D where prices can reach 500+ easily.

In Single Threaded productivity, the 14900k is top 3, losing only to the core Ultras. It even outperforms 9950x, a CPU that costs 580+ USD. 9800X3D is mid level on this list, around 13700k and 14600k, and 7800X3D is outperformed by a 12th gen i5.

In Multi Threaded, 14900k is doing decently well, but gets smoked by the 9950x ($580) and 7950x ($500), both more expensive CPUs, while massively outperforming 7800x3d and 9800x3d.

For gaming/productivity, 14900k feels like the perfect CPU, it's cheaper than all its competitors in gaming AND in productivity. AMD CPUs seem very specialized, with the 7800x3d and 9800x3d being really good for gaming, but terrible for multi thread, and 9950x being really good for productivity, but mediocre for gaming. The closest cpu to 14900k is 9950x, which costs a lot more, and 14900k outperforms it in single thread as well as gaming.

As someone who wants a good CPU for both gaming and productivity, is there any reason I shouldn't get a 14900k? It's the cheapest option, offering a more balanced performance compared to AMDs more expensive options. Yes it's on the now dead LGA 1700 motherboard, but I figure by the time I upgrade again, AM5 will be dead by then too. I guess I could wait for 9950X3D and 9900X3D, but they'll probably cost at least 600+ USD.

I hate that most of the market in my country is full of Intel and Nvidia products, rarely AMD.

And my only options are: I9 14900k which is 419$ Ryzen 7 7800x3d which is 580$ Ryzen 7 9800x3d which is ~700$

Is there any other good cpus that I missed? Or should I wait for the new cpus that are coming out. (Am planing to buy 5070 ti if that helps)

Thanks.

(Sorry for my English)

Was debating waiting until the 15th gen intel comes out to upgrade from my 12900k but the 14900k doesn't seem to be too expensive rn and I can move over my graphics card till the 5k series comes out which frankly I think is more important than the cpu atm anyway.

My question is i heard early on the 14th gen had a bunch of problems? Didn't follow the situation very closely but are they fixed now or should I avoid them altogether?

I had a bad experience with AMD, I can try again, or call it quits and go with Intel. Is Intel planning on 15th Gen anytime so I can wait? I am not an overclocker. I had an AMD system 2990wx. I built and ran it smooth no issues for 6 years easy. I know the issues Intel is having. No real OCing it, Precision Boost was all. Any straight forward advice and opinions please, I will appreciate it. Thank you in advance! I am trying to have some 4k gaming and a steady workstation for typical office use, nothing with professional video editing, creating, and rendering. I need a good everyday use CPU to handle these tasks with a breeze and mumtitask. The 2990wx.could run all kinds of tabs and porgrams at once, but not to great of a gamer. It was good at gaming for me at first, then I tried upgrading GPU with 9070XT, so I needed to upgrade the whole system because the CPU was sluggish. Now, I am back on step 1.

It took just 3 days from the day I submitted my old processor for the whole RMA process to complete!

My old i9 14900k burned out and I begrudgingly bought a new one today. It's in and working fine but as I'm not the most knowledgeable about CPUs... Is there anything I need to do to my motherboard or this newly installed CPU to ensure it doesnt suffer the same fate?

Appreciate any help!

After 10 yrs I finally did my dream build. But after hearing about how my CPU is basically a time bomb, I'm tempted to disassemble everything and return my CPU and motherboard so I can switch to an AMD build. I've had around 2 blue screens a week and now I think i know why.

Am I being dramatic or is this the smart move?

I have had my 12700k on an MSI Tomahawk WiFi DDR4 motherboard for about 2-3 years now. I have a 4090 nvidia FE gpu, 32gb ddr4 ram, and a 38 inch 144hz Alienware monitor.

I’m wondering if I can find a good deal on a used 14900k if I should upgrade or hold off? My computer runs most games fairly well, except Flight Simulator. With FS 2024 coming soon, I’m wondering whether I should build a whole new machine with the upcoming AMD ryzen 9 X3D processors and new DDR5 ram, or maybe hold on to my current hardware for another 2 years and just put the faster CPU in it for now.

I have a seasonic platinum 850 watt psu, so I feel that a 4900k may be a relatively cheap upgrade without needing a new PSU, possibly case, board, etc. Has anyone done an upgrade and seen any significant performance gains from 12th gen to 14th gen? I already have a good arctic aio id even be able to reuse.

Like some of you, after many years, I wanted to ball out on a new build and spare [few] expenses. Intel i9 14900K, Asus 4080, ROG STRIX Z790-E GAMING Motherboard, 64GB DDR5, 4TB M.2 SSD, etc.

Since I built it, something was funky. Overall I could game with great performance but sometimes I'd crash on starting up games, sometimes I'd go 15 hours without an issue before crashing. But I was getting all sorts of memory, VRAM, etc. error codes (mostly in COD Warzone but in Rocket League, Fortnite, Spiderman, and others too!) but it didn't feel like any of those components had issues.

Skip to 4 months, 25+ hours of research later... I FINALLY FOUND THE ISSUE! I wanted to pass this along for any of you with an i9 14900K and an ASUS Motherboard. By default, most motherboards are way overclocking and frying your 13th/14th gen CPU unless you do the following. What this will do is enforce the motherboard to use Intel's recommended wattage for their own CPUs.

TLDR:

1. Find "ASUS Multicore Enhancement" in BIOS

2. MUST SET to "Disabled - Enforce All Limits"

This will fix all your problems!

Context from video here: https://youtu.be/HIubZYwBfPc?si=uBSOwjORjJAZmA61&t=764

I just bought a PC with an i9 14900k and 4080 super. It’s set to arrive next Friday but after a quick google search I am afraid of thermal throttling issues. Is it true that this CPU is next to impossible to keep cool and will it affect my gaming performance? It is cooled with a 360mm AIO liquid cooler. I would I be better off getting a PC with a i7 13700k for the same price?

Recently got a newer build off of Facebook marketplace. It had a 14900k on it. I made sure to stress test it and see if there were any issues. I didn’t run into anything. Motherboard was updated to the most recent BIOS and gaming was fine.

Just today, I had some micro stuttering in my games, I would crash and freeze on some games and overall it was just not running well.

I know that the 14900k had launched with many issues, is there any ways that I could go about and fix this?

I’ve (accidentally) purchased this new 14900k because of a deal I couldn’t let go for €450,- now, I still have my 13700k+FS 140 V3, so thought why not get the Phantom spirit and build a new pc with it.

Never had an i9 in the past, and was really fucking surprised to see idle 50-60c and basically 100c on any stress.

My case is the Corsair 4000x, best I could do is order the H115i Elite Capellix 280mm rad.

Now, all I want is to get the temps down without losing performance, I won’t even mention overclocking with this thing.

Any recommendations are welcome.

system spec:

Asrock Z790 Riptide Wifi (2023) G.skill trident z5 6400 2x 32GB 6400 (able to do 6800 for now) RTX 4090 Asus tuf oc Thermaltake toughpower GF3 1050W

If you’ve been running the i9-14900K for a while, I’d love to hear how it’s holding up.

I’m looking for real-world feedback from people who’ve actually put this CPU to work — gaming, productivity, rendering, whatever. Has it stayed stable? Any issues with thermals, crashes, or reliability?

Would you still trust it as a high-end pick today, or do you think that it does not compete?

There have been plenty of comparisons between current gen Intel and AMD, and it’s pretty clear the jump from 13 to 14 is not worth the price of admission. Would it however, be prudent to wait till Alder lake or grab the 14900K if I’m upgrading from the Ryzen 3600X?

Would your answer change if I said I have an opportunity to get the 14900K for $300?

EDIT: Primarily it’s going to be a gaming pc, but I do need some overhead for programs like Fusion360, SolidWorks, Ansys, and MATLAB. 

Also, this would be for a full upgrade. The plan is to refresh the current build with new storage and maybe an upgrade to the 5800x3D a bunch of people have already mentioned and give it to my wife to replace her current build. I’m not looking to stay on AM4.

I've been seeing a lot of posts about people's experiences with the i9-14900k's and Intel's overall RMA experience since these chips seem to require quite a few of them, so I thought I would post my own experience for any potential buyers.

I got my 14900k back in December as a promotional bundle item (mobo + CPU + RAM) from Microcenter, and it was working pretty well until it started to progressively fail in mid February. During CPU intensive tasks (rendering video, any sort of stress test and eventually even playing some video games) my computer would crash and shut down regularly. When I ran the stress tests in Intel's extreme tuning utility, the CPU was constantly being thermal throttled, despite stock settings and an NH-D15 heatsink.

In any case, it was too late to return it to Microcenter since it had been more than 1 month so I made a ticket with Intel's support team. They were pretty quick in getting back to me initially, and a week or so later I had a call with one of their technicians. We ran through a bunch of troubleshooting steps (prior to the call I had already reseated the CPU twice, reapplied thermal paste etc) and he determined that the CPU itself was faulty, so I was eligible for an RMA.

I was told that I can either wait 3-6 months for a replacement CPU (or longer...) directly from Intel, or I can accept a cash refund which they could send to me in a few days to rebuy the CPU myself. The only issue is that the promotional pricing from the CPU/mobo/RAM bundle that I originally bought was no longer available, and buying a brand new 14900k would cost about $100 more. I talked to their service rep about it on the phone and he said that Intel would try to cover it.

Intel then took about 1 month to come to a conclusion on this, and the rep I was in contact with would simply not respond to me for days unless I prompted him to. I even had to call their service rep line to talk to a DIFFERENT representative who got in contact with him, and only then he provided me an update on my case status. In addition, I had to submit the same information several times to the same rep.

Well, in the end they refused to. I know that technically they are right, Intel only needs to reimburse me for the total cost of the CPU present on the invoice I had from Microcenter. But by putting me in a position where I need to wait 3 or more months for a warranty replacement or accept a refund for less money than it would cost to rebuy the CPU itself, it seemed like I was forced to pay $100 for an "expedited" warranty service.

After this experience, I really regret choosing Intel as my CPU for this build. The new 14900k I have works just fine, and I have a 360mm AIO for it now and have ensured that the power limit is throttled to 253W (Intel's designed max) since this one came with an unlocked power limit for whatever reason. But if I were to ever have to issue another warranty claim for this CPU again, which is definitely possible considering the amount of issues this generation has had, I'm not looking forward to seeing what will happen next time.

Maybe I just got a bad rep as other people seem to have vastly different experiences than mine, but because of this I will not be choosing Intel again for any new build I'll be making.

Hey everyone, just wanted to post here to share my experience with the 14900k after upgrading from the 13600k this week. This is not meant to be a perfect test, this is just my experience. This post might be long so strap in. TLDR, my 14900k more or less matches exactly with TPU's powerlimit testing found here: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-14900k-raptor-lake-tested-at-power-limits-down-to-35-w/10.html

DISCLAIMER

I'm aware that running a 14900k with a B660 and DDR4 is sub-optimal, that's not the point of this post. I've run this motherboard originally with the 12600k for a few months, and then 13600k since its release day, and then 14900k as of three days ago. I just wanted a drop in upgrade to maximize my platform is all. If I was going to go through the hassle of swapping out to a Z6/790, I'd just go all the way and swap to AM5 for the 7800x3d since I mainly game/flightsim. That out of the way...

System Specs and Setup

-14900k

-Thermalright Contact Frame

-MSI B660 MAG Mortar Wifi DDR4

-Corsair Vengeance 3600 CL18

-RTX4080FE

-Arctic Liquid Freezer ii 280mm

-Corsair RMx1000

-Lian Li O11 Air Mini

-Thermal Paste: Arctic MX-6

Case Layout

AIO is in a top mount configuration with 2x Lian Li SL140V2 fans exhausting out the top. One Lian Li SL12V2 exhausting at the rear. 2x SL140V2 intake at front, and 3x SL120V2 intake at bottom.

Stock Settings and Testing

I'm going to be completely honest, I didnt really test the 14900k at stock MOBO settings. I fired up one cinebench R23 run and saw it immediately peg 100*C and HWInfo indicated 420W power draw (must be innaccurate). I immediately stopped the run and rebooted into BIOS to start undervolting/powerlimiting. I tested each undervolt at 125w, 253w, 288w, and then some at 300, 320, and 340.

Undervolting

I started off with an extremely modest UV of -0.050 and set my motherboards powerlimit from unlimited (watercooled setting) to 288 (tower cooler setting) and saw an immediate change in temperatures. No longer was it going straight to 100* on R23 runs. From there I went to -0.075, 0.085, 0.090, 0.095, 0.100, 0.105, and 0.110 before settling on -0.100

Odd behavior

Not sure what happened but I had my best run on R23 with a -0.105 UV at 253W, with a score around 38200. Decided then to push it down to -0.110 but noticed that my clock speeds dropped by around 300-400mhz and my score dropped to ~35500. No big deal I thought, I'll just go back to -0.105 and hang there. Same thing happened when I went back to -0.105, reduced clock speeds and score. Wasnt until I went back to -0.100 that the clock speeds and score went back in line with what I was expecting at 253W. Might try playing around again and see if -0.105 will stick, but for now I'm happy.

Scores, Cores, and Temps

All data below pulled from HWInfo64. Now that I've settled on a -0.100 UV, lets see some R23 scores and temperatures. Running these right now with windows defender live protection off and firefox and XTU open in the background, so scores will be slightly slower:

-95w: 28850, Temp spike to 59C, steady 44c. PCores around 3.9, Ecore 3.2

-125W: 31833, Spike to 61, steady 49. Pcores 4.3, Ecore 3.6

-253W: 37773, Spike to 73, steady 71. Pcore 5.1-5.2, Ecore 4.1-4.2

-288W: 38723, Spike to 80, steady 78. Pcore 5.3-5.4, Ecore 4.3

-300W: 38850, Spike to 83, steady 78-79. Pcore 5.3-5.5, Ecore 4.2-4.3

-320W: 39303, Spike to 87, steady 83. Pcore 5.4-5.6, Ecore steady 4.3

Conclusion

Pretty big fall off in scores after 253W, diminishing returns really at play here. For gaming workloads, I think I'm just going to leave it at 125W and call it a day. If I need to do some crazy multicore stuff I'll set it to 253, doesnt seem like much point going beyond that as the heat and noise isnt worth it IMO. Let me know what you guys think, or share your experiences! Thanks for reading.

Edit: Tested -0.100 in Prime95 blended and small fft torture tests, no crashes in either after about 5 min or so. I'll try testing longer when I dont need my computer, thanks for the tip