Intel just released its 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh desktop CPU lineup, one of which is a CPU that we also recently reviewed, the Core i9-14900K. Now, in less than three months since the launch of the lineup, a retailer is offering customers the opportunity to purchase the special edition Core i9-14900KS, a powerhouse CPU with a maximum clock of 6.2GHz and, at this point in time, still unannounced by the chipmaker.
For the uninitiated, Intel CPUs with the “KS” designation are special variants of the chipmaker’s high-end, enthusiast-grade SKUs. These CPUs are made using highly binned models, often feature higher clockspeeds and TDP, and for the past two generations, are capable of running those higher frequencies on not one, but two P-Cores simultaneously. At the cost of increased heat, naturally.
The retailer, based in Israel, appears to be offering customers the 14900KS, not as a consumer-ready component or as part of game-ready systems, but as business-centric machines. Raising the eyebrows even higher is that the retailer is pairing the unannounced CPU with a system running on DDR4-3200 memory, and without a dedicated GPU inside said systems. Further, the retailer conveniently seems to be out of stock.
It also doesn’t help the Israeli retailer’s case that its product page doesn’t even list the core count of the 14900KS but given the trend that Intel goes by, it is unlikely that the core count would be any different than the current 14900K. On a related note, this is more or less the time that Intel would unveil the existence of a “KS” variant of its current powerhouse CPU, and have the first batch of retail units ship out during the first quarter of next year.
(Source: PC-Online, Anandtech, Videocardz)
