Intel’s incoming Core i9-13900KS, which will be a new version of its flagship Raptor Lake CPU – One Capable of boosting to 6GHz right out of the boxno need for overclocking – can be 20% more expensive than the current 13900 thousand.
shred Cards video (Opens in a new tab) This was highlighted by a tweet from hardware leaker @momomo_us who captured the 13900KS – and other incoming Raptor Lake processors – being listed at the retailer. PC Canada (Opens in a new tab) (Keep your skeptical head firmly, naturally.)
The 13900K is priced at $927 CAD, and compared to $13900K at the same retailer, that’s a 22% increase.
a bunch of others Lake Raptor Processors They are listed and priced here, previously leaked models (By Microsoft actually). They include the Core i3-13100 at the other end of the spectrum from the 13900KS, which is a quad-core processor priced at CAD $207 (or $170 for the 13100F which is the variant that drops the integrated GPU to keep the cost even further down).
Analysis: Beware of placeholder pricing risks
Intel is set to unveil this new Raptor Lake Treatments At CES 2023, which isn’t far away now. The Core i9-13900KS and other 13th Gen models appearing at this Canadian retailer is a tantalizing suggestion that they could hit shelves after the initial reveal of the CPUs. Normally, we’ll see new models unveiled a while before they actually go on sale — but this is a hint that the wait for Raptor Lake’s additional silicon won’t be long.
In terms of actual pricing, these are likely placeholders as is often the case when pre-release chips appear early at retailers, so don’t put too much inventory into the price tags shown.
However, this can be a reasonable approximation of what kind of premium can be expected for the 13900KS compared to the 13900K. In the end, you’re always going to look at a significant dent in your portfolio, especially when a chip like the ‘KS’ version of Intel’s flagship comes out, so an extra 20% may not be an unrealistic proposition. Given that 13,900K still retail at the $700 level in the US, though Black Friday Discounts have bumped it up a bit with some retailers – which could leave the 13900KS at a very impressive level.
Assuming that’s the sort of overhead in the cards, would it be worth paying for the extra 200MHz of boost compared to the 13900K? Well, that’s certainly debatable, and it remains to be seen how the 13900KS will fare in terms of the raw grunt it can muster and how that will be affected by temperatures and throttling (though the coolant used will kick in here as well, obviously).
However, enthusiasts who want the best of the best—the niche market the KS model is aimed at—will likely stretch to any extra expense without much difficulty. Let’s face it, these are the people who buy New Lovelace GPUs from Nvidia Which is way, way more expensive than the 13900KS.