The Intel Core i9-12900K is the best processor on the market right now. The prebinned Core i9-12900KS — which is a special edition of the Core i9-12900K — isn’t. Despite being built on the same bones, the pricey KS model only brings modest improvements for a massive upcharge, and sometimes it doesn’t bring any improvements at all. Intel has skipped these special edition chips for the last several generations — the last example was the Core i9-9900KS, which offered a similarly modest improvement for around $50 more. But at $200 above the price of the Core i9-12900K, the Core i9-12900KS is as much of a waste of money as it is silicon. Assuming Intel will eventually drop the price, and I have to imagine it will, the Core i9-12900KS performs as well as the best gaming CPU you can buy right now. The problem is that the Core i9-12900KS isn’t a bad processor — it’s just a bad processor right now. The Core i9-12900KS is the same processor as the Core i9-12900K. It’s just a binned chip, meaning...
Amazing single-core and multi-core performance; DDR5 memory support; Industry-leading gaming performance; Still faster than the best AMD has to offer;
Expensive; Very hot and power-hungry;