We look at what you can achieve with Intel’s latest processors in the world of gaming and rendering

ZAK STOREY

COMET LAKE hath cometh, and with it Intel has brought a bevy of new features into the headlines of its latest processors. That means a new socket, a new chipset, more cores (more heat), and of course, more performance.

But is it quite enough to compete with the juggernaut that AMD has become? We already know that 3rd-gen Ryzen represents incredible multi-threaded power at a comfortable price. But the one area those zenified processors don’t quite match up is typically in the gaming department. On the whole AMD’s IPC (instructions per clock cycle), although much improved on Ryzen’s debut, still aren’t up to Intel’s level.

The big question, then, is whether Intel’s IPC advantages in its flagship 10-core processor give it the edge over the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X in both gaming and rendering, and if so, by how much? And is that enough to warrant the extra $100 in price? That’s what we’re looking to find out.

But before you dive into your email inbox, ready to lambast us for once again featuring a crazy, over-the-top gaming PC on the front cover, you might want to take a quick glance over at page 60. There you’ll find Christian’s take on a fantastically quiet audio recording workstation, ideal for any and all after inspiration on how to throw themselves into the world of benignly silent computing.

Yep, we’ve heard your concerns, and we feel them too. This edition of Maximum PC we’re running two separate builds, with in-depth coverage across both, and every issue going forward we’re aiming to produce two systems that are the antithesis of one another whenever we can.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s see what we included in this wee beastie of ours, and why.

THE HARDWARE

CPU

INTEL CORE I9-10900K

$530

THE CREM DE LA CREM of Intel’s arsenal, the Intel Core i9-10900K is the kingpin at the top of Team Blue’s latest processor pile. Complete with 10 cores, 20 threads, 20MB of smart cache, and a 5.3GHz max turbo speed across two cores, it’s Intel’s fastest mainstream processor to date.

It’s certainly not flawless, however. With those 10 cores comes an incredible amount of both heat and power draw. 14nm++ isn’t the best manufacturing process to leverage this design on, and because of that, even at stock with a triple rad/360mm AIO, you’re looking at temps well up into the 80 C range. On top of that, power draw can often be above 200W under load. These are all things Intel’s tiptoed around with some fantastic pin-point precision engineering. Whether that’s a thinner, larger silicon die or over-engineered VRMs and MOSFETs on the motherboard, the Core i9-10900K is a guaranteed titan of a flagship, as long as you can keep it cool and fed.

GPU

ZOTAC GAMING GEFORCE RTX 2080 SUPER AMP EXTREME

$780

NEXT UP on the chopping block for our no-holds-barred Comet Lake PC is the graphics card. This time around we’ve gone with Zotac’s incredibly beefy RTX 2080 Super AMP Extreme edition. Currently unavailable due to high demand, it packs in some incredible performance at 1440p and 4K, and this model even clocks higher than its big graphical brother the RTX 2080 Ti. On top of that, you get one heck of a cooler. No seriously, it’s massive: This is by far the biggest graphics card we’ve ever seen, measuring in at 12.8 x 5.4 x 2.3 inches across its massive 2.5-inch PCIe slot bulk.

MEMORY

32GB (4X8GB) CORSAIR DOMINATOR PLATINUM RGB WHITE @ 3600 MHZ

$335

OKAY, WITH this build we’re actually not aiming to hit a specific price point here. In fact what we’re secretly trying to do is use this as an opportunity to pit Intel’s Core i9-10900K 10-core processor against AMD’s Ryzen 9 3900X in a fair fight. That 3900X currently lives inside of our December issue’s liquid-cooled build, complete with 32GB of G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4 @ 3600, and features twin EVGA RTX 2080 Super XC Ultras (a quick SLI disable will solve there being two of those).

Now because of that we needed some high-spec memory to match our Ryzen build. When Corsair offered us its latest unreleased Dominator Platinum RGB White kit at 3600 MHz, we knew we had to pull the trigger. It’s not a cost-effective solution, and Intel’s architecture doesn’t particularly benefit from the higher speeds, but it will ensure it’s a fair contest when it comes to video rendering.