The Intel Core i9-12900KS has three major flaws.

The Intel Core i9-12900KS

The Core i9-12900KS, Intel's latest and finest, is being hailed as the best gaming CPU on the market, a claim Intel made just six months ago with the Core i9-12900K. It should give the best performance of any consumer CPU you can buy, with a price tag of around $750 to $800.

Based on early benchmarks, it appears to be the best Intel CPU available, but that doesn't imply you should rush out and get it.

In the realm of PC technology, edging out tiny improvements is nothing new, but Intel's latest attempt strikes an unappealing balance between price and performance gains, exacerbating the platform's greatest flaws.

The issue with performance

The Core i9-primary 12900KS's flaw is how little it adds to the vanilla Core i9-12900K. Intel's S-series, or special edition, processors don't normally provide a significant performance boost. They're binned processors that use Intel's top-of-the-line dies to squeeze out every last ounce of performance.

However, the Core i9-12900K already has that capability. Based on early benchmarks, the Core i9-12900KS is only 8% faster (and my own testing of the Core i9-12900K). While gaming, Tom's Hardware discovered a difference of less than 3%, and that was only at 1080p. And, let's face it, most people looking at the Core i9-12900KS aren't playing games in 1080p.

Although the Core i9-12900KS performs somewhat better in productivity programs (by about 5%), most tasks will notice little to no improvement with Intel's latest special edition. With the Core i9-12900K and a little overclocking, you can get that extra boost, but there's a catch: the Core i9-12900KS supports more overclocking features.

The Core i9-12900KS, for an instance, enables Enhanced Thermal Velocity Boost and Adaptive Boost Technology (ABT), two features that the Core i9-12900K lacked. Both aren't new, and they've appeared on earlier Intel processor generations. They are, however, what allows the Core i9-12900KS to run at a higher clock speed.

There's no obvious reason why the Core i9-12900K couldn't support these functions, which provide auto-overclocking depending on processor statistics. Although the Core i9-12900KS provides a slight performance boost, its benefits are at least partially due to these technologies, which should have been included in the base model.

The issue with prices

If the price is right, it doesn't matter if the Core i9-12900KS is only 5% faster, but it isn't. Intel has set a price of $739, but it'll probably sell for closer to $800 (it's really $900 at Micro Center). The Core i9-12900K has a list price of $589, for example, but it sells for closer to $620 at retailers. The Core i9-12900KS is $180 more expensive than the standard Core i9-12900.

Obviously, a 5% performance boost isn't worth $180, but there's a bigger issue here. The Core i9-9900KS was the most recent KS-series processor Intel launched, and it was only $50 more expensive than the standard model. Although the Core i9-12900KS has a larger clock speed boost, benchmarks demonstrate that it doesn't make a significant difference in real-world workloads.

I'm all for halo goods that provide the best of the best in terms of performance, but the difference between the Core i9-12900K and Core i9-12900KS is simply too large to justify. Part of the reason the Core i9-12900K surprised me at first was its low price when compared to AMD processors. Now that Intel has the upper hand, it almost appears as if the corporation is reverting to its previous habits of demanding a high premium just because it can.

The issue with heat

The thermal problem is the ultimate difficulty, and it truly puts the other two into perspective. The Core i9-12900K is already a hot chip with little opportunity for improvement. The Core i9-12900KS, as a binned variant of that chip, takes up even less space while consuming more power and emitting more heat.

I don't believe CPU efficiency is nearly as crucial as marketing slides suggest, but loud fans and hot temperatures are other stories. I routinely hit the Core i9-12900operating K's temperature limit of 100 degrees Celsius when overclocking it. Depending on the workload, even at stock, the processor can easily reach the mid-80s and low 90s.

Thermally, the Core i9-12900KS is identical to the Core i9-12900, with the exception that it is tuned a little higher. According to early testing, both the 100-degree Celsius limit and the 241W maximum power draw are constant elements. Efficiency may not be as crucial as some make it out to be, but once you reach the upper limit of a processor's temperature tolerance, it counts.

Consider that with minimum modification in Intel XTU, I was able to get the Core i9-12900K to 5.4GHz. It was hot and required a lot of electricity, but that's nothing new for a Core i9-12900KS processor. The key difference is that the Core i9-12900K is $180 less expensive, and it doesn't require a 20% increase in power usage to provide marginally better performance.

Is it vanity or a halo product?

The Core i9-12900K was a huge step forward for Intel. The Core i9-12900KS is a self-indulgent machine. Intel hasn't issued pre-binned versions of its flagship CPUs in several generations, and this product category's comeback comes at a substantially higher price than earlier iterations.

Get the Core i9-12900K if you want the greatest processor money can buy. You're only losing a few percentage points of performance at most, which you can easily compensate for with overclocking.