Toasty Intel Core i9-10900K hits 93 degrees Celsius...with a 240mm liquid cooler: beats the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X in single core, but at what price?

With its remarkably high 250W TDP, it was a given that the Intel Core i9-10900K would run hot and challenge cooling systems. However, a test by a Weibo user indicates that even high-end liquid-cooling setups are unable to properly cool Intel's monstrous 5.3 GHz flagship Comet Lake S CPU. 

The user ran AIDA64's FPU workload together with FurMark for 100 percent CPU utilization during the benchmark. This might seem extreme, but keep in mind that they're using a 240mm AIO liquid cooling setup. Comparable processors like the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X (which has 6 more physical cores and 12 more threads) don't break a sweat under similar cooling, delivering sub-80 degree temps, even when overclocked. 

Results were much poorer with the Intel Core i9-10900K: thermal throttling meant that even the stock 4.8 GHz all-core turbo resulted in temps as high as 93 degrees. 

Intel is keen to promote its Comet Lake S lineup, and the Intel Core i9-10900K in particular, as the fastest gaming CPUs on the market. However, it appears that users will have to invest substantially towards cooling these processors to get the most out of them. AMD's frugal 7nm chips, on the other hand, deliver over twice the performance per watt, making cooling a breeze, quite literally.