Intel
Intel Core i9-14900K
Intel's last mainstream-socket flagship before Arrow Lake: 24 cores, 32 threads and a 6.0 GHz Thermal Velocity Boost peak that still drops into a 2021-era Z690 board. Buying one now means buying a used chip on a retired socket from the generation with a documented degradation history, so provenance and microcode matter more than the price.
Pros
- 6.0 GHz single-core peak, class-leading single-thread performance for its generation
- 24 cores / 32 threads for rendering, compiling and heavy multitasking
- 36 MB L3 and 32 MB L2, the largest cache of any LGA1700 part
- Fully unlocked with per-core ratios, AVX offsets and aggressive memory tuning
- Backwards compatible with every 600 and 700 series board after a BIOS update
Cons
- 253 W maximum turbo power and 100 °C package temperatures in AVX loads; a 360 mm AIO is the realistic minimum
- The headline SKU of the Vmin-shift instability failures - requires 0x12B microcode, and pre-fix chips can be permanently degraded
- Only a few percent faster than the i9-13900K it refreshed, so it was a rebadge more than a generation
- Efficiency is poor next to Ryzen 7000/9000, and games almost never use its full core count
Excellent
Computed from specs & benchmarks via our public methodology.
Full specifications
Everything we track for the Intel Core i9-14900K
General
- Announced
- 2023
- Socket
- LGA1700
- Process
- 10 nm
- Base TDP
- 125 W
- Max turbo power
- 253 W
- Unlocked multiplier
- Yes
- Cooler included
- No
Cores & Clocks
- Cores
- 24
- Performance cores
- 8
- Efficiency cores
- 16
- Threads
- 32
- Base clock
- 3.2 GHz
- Boost clock
- 6 GHz
- L2 cache
- 32 MB
- L3 cache
- 36 MB
Integrated GPU
- iGPU
- Intel UHD Graphics 770
- iGPU clock
- 1,650 MHz
Memory
- Memory support
- DDR5-5600 / DDR4-3200
- Max memory
- 192 GB
- Memory channels
- 2
Platform
- PCIe version
- 5
- CPU PCIe lanes
- 20
Benchmarks
- Geekbench 6 (single)
- 3,130
- Geekbench 6 (multi)
- 21,000
- Cinebench R23 (single)
- 2,280
- Cinebench R23 (multi)
- 40,000
- PassMark
- 62,000
Quick answers
Is the Intel Core i9-14900K good in 2026?
The Intel Core i9-14900K earns an Inno Score of 87.3/100 (“Excellent”) based on its specs and benchmark results. Intel's last mainstream-socket flagship before Arrow Lake: 24 cores, 32 threads and a 6.0 GHz Thermal Velocity Boost peak that still drops into a 2021-era Z690 board. Buying one now means buying a used chip on a retired socket from the generation with a documented degradation history, so provenance and microcode matter more than the price.
What are the key specs of the Intel Core i9-14900K?
Cores: 24 · Threads: 32 · Boost clock: 6 GHz · Socket: LGA1700
What are the closest alternatives to the Intel Core i9-14900K?
Its closest rivals on InnoReviews are AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, AMD Ryzen 9 9900X, Intel Core i9-13900K — open the comparison pages for a spec-by-spec breakdown.