Intel Core i9-14900KS rumors reach critical mass, with new photos leaked – and BIOS screenshots that’ll raise eyebrows

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Intel’s Core i9-14900KS is the supposedly imminent flagship refresh for the firm’s 14th-gen processors, and here’s another leak for the CPU that comes on top of many recent pieces of spillage.

As highlighted by I_Leak_VN on X (formerly Twitter) – hat tip to Tom’s Hardware – there are multiple leaks from an Asus forum poster called ‘Pakhtunov’ who has pictures of packaging and the actual chip (not for the first time – see above). Alongside that there are screenshots of the 14900K in a motherboard BIOS complete with spec details (check below – and add seasoning as ever with leaks like this).

The tech specs again show that the flagship refresh can reach a turbo speed of 6.2GHz as previously rumored many times, as well as the voltage needed to achieve that: 1.5V (we’ll come back to what that means shortly).

The packaging looks the same as the 14900K including the silver wafer-shaped case that hosts the CPU.

The Core i9-14900KS is expected to arrive later this month – perhaps as soon as next week – although we’ve heard some whispers that there could be a delay in its arrival. The rumor mill seems pretty much agreed that the processor is coming, though, it’s just a question of when – and the volume of leaks backs up that theory.

Analysis: The need for – and the cost of – speed

As you may have noticed, a recent leak indicated that the Core i9-14900KS would chug down something in the order of 410W of power. Seeing the 1.5V (1.498V to be precise) that the processor is running at here to provide the 6.2GHz boost (for the performance cores) underlines this, and is again a heavy hint that the 14900KS will be a power-hungry beast of a chip.

Not that this is any great surprise, as Intel has already pushed the power envelope pretty hard with Raptor Lake Refresh to eke out clock speed gains above Raptor Lake. So to achieve this kind of speed out of the box was always going to come with a cost on the power front.

That boost of 6.2GHz won’t be for all eight performance cores, of course, although interestingly, the leak shows three cores reaching that speed – when typically this would be two cores. (With the 14900K, you get the maximum 6GHz boost on two cores). So, it’s not clear what’s going on here, but we wouldn’t expect any more than dual-cores for the top speed with the finished product of the 14900KS.

When boosting across all eight cores, the 14900KS is shown here as capable of 5.9GHz (with 1.413V supplied), which is a heady height for an all-core boost (compared to 5.5GHz for the 14900K).

Whatever the case with the final speeds witnessed, Core i9-14900KS buyers will need to equip the processor with one of the best CPU coolers out there.

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