Intel Core i9-10900X & i9-10940X Processor Review

Settings

Both of these CPUs feature some kind of auto-overclocking, allowing the CPU to boost the clock speed when it’s needed. At least, providing you have sufficient cooling headroom, which is no easy task on such powerful CPUs. They do run hot, but a big cooler can quickly keep that in order. We got the i9-10900X to 4.9 GHz easily enough, which did give us a nice performance boost, but nothing major.

However, the i9-10940X was stable at 5 GHz using 1.275v which was a fantastic performance boost over all cores. However, it took a whopping 1.4v to get it up to 5.1 GHz. That’s a lot of power and would require a hell of a cooler to maintain so don’t overdo things. We wound it back to 5 GHz just to be safe.

Of course, these CPUs may be more efficient on a per-core basis, but at these speeds and these core counts, power usage is pretty high and so are temperatures. As I said, a big cooler goes a long way.

Intel Core i9-10900X Stock

Intel Core i9-10900X @ 4.9 GHz

Intel Core i9-10940X Stock

Intel Core i9-10940X @ 5.0 GHz

Intel Core i9-10940X @ 5.1 GHz

3DMark Firestrike

WPrime

Cinebench R15

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Power Consumption

Stock

Overclocked

Temperatures

Stock

Overclocked