THE FASTEST CPU OF 2022

INTEL 13TH GEN CORE 19-13900K

The 13th Gen Core aka Raptor Lake is Intel's answer to AMD's latest Ryzen 7000 series of processors. It is a refinement of their 10nm process node, also known as Intel 7. Raptor Lake has more of everything compared to Alder Lake - including faster P-cores, more E-cores, more L2 and L3 cache, and faster DDR5 support. However, the underlying architecture and technology remains the same.

Compared to the Core i9-12900K however, the Core i9-13900K sees a massive clock speed improvement over its predecessor, featuring a 5.8 GHz peak boost on cores 1 and 2, while cores 3 to 8 see a peak turbo boost clock of 5.5 GHz. Likewise, the E cores saw a stellar improvement, going from 3.7 GHz on the Core i912900K to 4.3 GHz on the Core i9-13900K - despite core counts doubling from 8 to 16 simultaneously.

With a TDP of 125W, going up to 253W, the Core i9-13900K consumes a lot of power and will require good AIO cooling – ideally one with a 360mm radiator. There’s also a new chipset, the Intel Z790, but thankfully, Raptor Lake processors are backward compatible with last year’s Z690.

Technically, the Z790 chipset is a relatively minor upgrade over the Z690 – with just expanded connectivity (it has 8 more PCIe 4.0 lanes, for example) and works out of the box with Raptor Lake (Z690 boards will require a BIOS update). Alder Lake processors will also work with Z790 motherboards.