Intel i9 9980XE Extreme Edition 18 Core CPU Review

Final Thoughts

How Much Does it Cost?

I have seen the prices of this CPU vary wildly from multiple retailers. However, the average seems to be around £2100, such as this one on Amazon at £2082.49. That’s a freaking crapload of money, and I refuse to sugar coat that fact. It’ll bust your wallet and the wallets of those around you. Respectively, it’s still around the same price as the i9-7980XE which it replaces. It’s the law of diminishing returns I guess, to go a bit faster costs more money, and a bit faster again costs even more, and so on.

Overview

The new Extreme Edition from Intel certainly lives up to its name. The i9-7980XE is one of the fastest CPUs on the market today in a wide range of benchmarks. However, it’s quite a tricky product to pin down exactly who it is for. For example, if all you’re doing is transcoding video and rendering scenes, then a Threadripper does offer great performance and value for money at half the price, and equal or higher benchmark scores in those regards.

But I’m a Gamer!

While there are no complaints from me about the i9-7980XE’s gaming performance. It is certainly not a CPU I would buy purely for gaming. For that, Intel has their fantastic i9-9900K, which is still expensive, but it’s a fraction of the cost of this 18-core monster. Although when it comes to multi-core brutality the XE wins hands down. When it comes to ThreadRipper for gaming, well, AMD just falls flat in that regard in my opinion and their regular Ryzens are what I would go for.

But I Want It All!

OK, so you’re an enthusiast overclocking expert with liquid cooled components. You’re also the kinda person who actually wants to set record scores in 3DMark? Then this is a superb CPU for you. You’re the “extreme” part of the market that Intel is looking to entertain here. However, if you’re also wanting to game at extreme resolutions, capture that content, rendering it in 4K for streaming, or edit that video for production. Then you want great gaming performance, loads of fast cores, and well, that’s what you get. In an all-around test, the i9 comes out ahead of the Threadripper option with a big grin on its face.

Pushing the Limits

If you’re not using an air cooler on this CPU, I likely wouldn’t bother with AIO at all. Not unless you get some truly remarkable 360mm powerhouse. Air coolers tend to drop back from high to low temps very quickly, AIO liquid coolers tend to increase their liquid temperature, and with an i9, that can happy quickly. Air for most users is fine, but for getting the big overclocks and sustained loads for hours on end? Custom loop cooling with a large fluid capacity is a must. Furthermore, at 500W power draw on the CPU alone, do not skimp on the PSU either. If you put a lot more money into the PC for this, and you tend to tick every box for an “extreme” user, it’s the CPU for you. If you’re a gamer, the “humble” i9-9900K will “have to do”.