Intel Core i9-9900K Arrives For Benchmarking

The Intel Core i9-9900K processor has arrived for benchmarking and our review will be posted on October 19th. We aren’t allowed to post any benchmark numbers until then, so we’ll just share you the ‘reviewer kit’ that Intel sent reviewers and influencers. Intel has really stepped up their game with reviewer kits due to what AMD has been doing, so lets take a look at what they did for their first mainstream 8-core, 16-thread CPU.

Our 9900K test sample arrived in a stylish cardboard box and not the fancy new plastic retail enclosure that we’ve been talking about for weeks. This is a little disappointing, but maybe Intel will send us one for the shelf down the road or we’ll just go out and buy another one to get the cool new packaging.

With the lid off the box we see the same branding over the processor and under that piece of cardboard we find the 9900K CPU! Intel sent over an ‘Intel Confidential’ CPU, which basically this means it is an early run ‘Engineering Sample’ CPU much like the ones you can buy from eBay. Right now there are over 100 ‘Intel Confidential’ processors for sale on eBay, but we couldn’t a 9900K up for sale just yet!

We almost missed the personalized message under the lid that makes this press box personalized and sweet!

Here is a quick look at the front and back of the 9900K.

We’ll have our full review on the Intel Core i9-9900K on October 19th. You can pre-order the 9900K, but most places appear to have sold out of pre-orders and it is currently unavailable for purcahse on Amazon. It looks like Intel claiming to have the World’s best gaming processor is all it takes to sell out!