Sometimes a sale price is so good we’ve just got to mention it. This may not be the best time to upgrade your PC, but if it’s in the cards, Best Buy is selling the Core i9-9900K for $450Remove non-product link. That’s about $80 cheaper than elsewhere right now.
At $450, the 9900K is even cheaper than the former asking price of $485 that we were seeing in February when we last updated our look at the best CPUs for gaming. Now that the limited-run Core i9-9900KS is sold out, the Core i9-9900K is the fastest high-end gaming CPU in the world.
The Core i9-9900K is an eight core, sixteen thread CPU with a base frequency of 3.6GHz that can turbo all the way up to a blistering 5GHz. When you open up this chip’s speed with the MultiCore Enhancement on a compatible motherboard, the 9900K becomes an absolute monster, with all cores potentially running at 5GHz. It’s also easy to overclock the CPU to those lofty heights, though you’ll want to invest in a beefy cooler to keep it happy while it blazes along. Check out our Core i9-9900K review if you want a deeper look at the chip’s capabilities.
If you don’t need the absolute fastest gaming chip in the world, AMD’s rival Ryzen 9 3900X only trails the 9900K’s gaming performance by single-digit percentages, and with 12 cores and 16 threads, it clobbers Intel’s CPU in ultra-demanding productivity tasks. It’s also on sale, down from $500 to $445 at Amazon right now.
You’ll be very happy with either of these chips, whether you’re working or playing. Intel’s doesn’t hit prices this low very often, however. If you’ve been thinking about snagging the world’s fastest gaming processor, today’s the day to do it.
[Today’s deal: Intel Core i9-9900K for $450 at Best Buy.Remove non-product link]