As some may know I recently upgraded my overclocked 6600k based system to the new intel 10900k.  Here is a brief summary of the results in v4 and v5. 

My old specs: i5-6600k 4c/4t OC @ 4.7, 32GB DDR4-3200 C16, GTX 1080ti.  

New Specs: i9-10900k OC 10c/20t* @ 5.2, 32GB DDR4-4200 C18, GTX 1080ti

With the 6600k I saw no performance improvement moving from v4.5 to v5.  Both sims were a stuttery mess with autogen draw distance any higher than low.  I will focus on autogen, as that is the setting that quickly causes a cpu performance bottleneck with a good GPU.  All of the tests are in VR single pass mode using either the pmdg 744 or ngxu and the full suite of orbx regions and landclass for the test areas (socal, norcal, open lC NA, vector in 4.5).  Even with the 10900k I still could not use road traffic with orbx and get acceptable performance with pmdg aircraft so it remained off.

With the 6600k I was unable to set autogen draw distance any higher than low, and scenery complexity any higher than normal without bringing the fps below 25 and getting major stuttering in any urban area, kord, ksea, klax etc.  Autogen density was left at high, any more and it would start to hurt performance.  This was true for both v4 and v5.  CPU usage was always at 75-100%.  No affinity mask was used, as this would incur major terrain blurring.  

Now the cool thing about the 10900k is that you can set per core hyperthreading.  I found that the best results with no blurring came from setting core 0 hyperthreading off in bios* and leaving the other 9 cores HT on.  No affinity mask in p3d.  With this setting both v4.5 and v5 are able to fully utilize all 19 threads when in motion.  I found that v4.5 especially only maxed out core 0 when on the ground, and fps seemed tied to that single core which i assume was the rendering core.  Once airborne the other 18 threads kicked in and performance remained the same even with autogen, a big difference from the 6600k.  With the 10900k in v4.5 I was able to increase scenery complexity to dense, autogen density to very dense, and autogen draw to high.  This resulted in average fps from 35-45 in urban areas, but the best part was that the stuttering was gone.   In v5 the results were even better, I was able to max out autogen completely when testing with the pmdg 747 around klax and kmia.  It seems with dx12 in v5 performance is not as single thread limited as with v4.5 as it was a remarkable difference from the 6600k.  As with v4.5, all 19 threads were loaded evenly by p3d with cpu usage around 75%-100% while in the air.  its nice to see p3d really taking advantage of multiple cores and threads.  

CPU Overclocking:

As for overclocking, Im using a 360 aio with the fans and pump speed maxed out.  I hit a peak of 92 degrees in p3d, and around that when stress testing with prime no avx.  The cpu can easily pull 250w+ in p3d and prime95.  With gigabytes direct 12 phase VRM and the aorus ultra board which actually has decent vrm heatsinks I observed a peak VRM temp of 100c when running prime 95 overnight.  That should give you an idea of the power and cooling requirements of this cpu.  Dont skimp on your motherboard or your psu.  I added two extra fans on the top of the case which blow onto the ram and vrm heatsink to help out a bit.  Most people seem to be hitting 5.2 with around 1.35v max.  Unfortunately I lost the silicon lottery, my chip just isnt 24/7 prime stable with anything under 1.43v.  The max I was able to push the uncore ratio was 47 without needing more voltage.  1.43v is definitely on the high side, but I have seen how robust the skylake architecture is in terms of voltage tolerance and plan to run it there until it degrades, I ran my 6600k ran for over 4 years at 1.46v at 85c and its still 100% stable. 

Ram Overclocking:

I ran two separate ram overclock tests with my Z490 Aorus Ultra to see how good these new boards are for ram overclocking.  Gigabyte supposedly supports 5000+ speeds on this board which uses what they call shielded memory routing.  Its a great ram overclocker, especially considering its a daisy chain board.  I test two configurations of 32gb, since IMO this is the minimum amount of ram I would put in a high end flight sim build.  I tested two samsung B-die configurations, 2x16GB dual rank dimms and 4x8GB single rank dimms.  Traditionally on a daisy chain board, you would expect the 2x16gb kits to do better but on this board I found that both kits maxed out at 4200 mhz for 24/7 stability.  Neither one would make it into windows at 4400, but they did post which is impressive.  I have a feeling I might have been more limited by the memory controller than the actual board, but who knows 4200 mhz out of 4 dimms is impressive.  I elected to run the 4 dimms for my system since they should theoretically perform slightly better than 2 dimms.  After maxing out the speeds I tightened the timings to 18-18-18-39.  Any tighter was unstable, I wont get into the secondary timings here. 

If you are looking for good cheap b die you absolutely cant go wrong with two of these kits: https://www.newegg.com/patriot-16gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820225144

Power:

Flight sim is one of the applications that will really bring a system to its knees, especially with VR.  It is the only thing that I run that will max out both my 10900k and my 1080ti at the same time.  Measuring power consumption at my UPS I saw a peak of just over 700w.  Keep in mind the UPS also has a monitor and router plugged in.  Actual system power consumption probably maxed out around 650 watts.  To power this load I chose a seasonic 750 watt focus titanium unit.  It took three weeks to get here, but was still decently priced on newegg even with the psu shortage, and I really like seasonic units.  

 

All in all, the 10900k doesnt make a whole lot of sense for most people, except for flight simmers like me who want to squeeze the absolute max out of p3d and are upgrading from a much older cpu.  I wouldn't recommend this upgrade to anyone on the 9th gen series of chips.    

 

Edited June 6, 20206 yr by Pilot53

Mike,

First congrats on the new system!

Would you be so kind and explain why "I wouldn't recommend this upgrade to anyone on the 9th gen series of chips." please?

I was entertaining the idea switching from I9 9900K to the 10900K.

Thank you!

Glad to know. I'm super excited to get my 10900K in to complete my new build. It's the last piece that I need.

I plan to run at stock for a few days to get a feel at how a stock upgrade feels. Going from an i7-3770k to an i9-10900k is a big jump for me. After that, I'll start to experiment with overclocking. I will probably aim for at least 5.0GHz or 5.2GHz if I can run it at a stable voltage. 1.35v or under.

Going to be pulling out my GTX 1080 from my current machine and put that in my new build until the new 3080ti comes out.

6 minutes ago, captain420 said:

 Going from an i7-3770k to an i9-10900k is a big jump for me.

It will be night and day from the 3770k.  Were you able to get a backorder in for the 10900k?  Ive noticed most retailers arent even taking backorders lately on these chips.  

1 hour ago, killthespam said:

Mike,

First congrats on the new system!

Would you be so kind and explain why "I wouldn't recommend this upgrade to anyone on the 9th gen series of chips." please?

I was entertaining the idea switching from I9 9900K to the 10900K.

Thank you!

Well you would need a new mobo, and the 9900k is no slouch and overclocks quite well.  Just to get two more cores and four more threads I dont think it would be worth the expense and the trouble, chances are the gains would be minimal.  If you are coming from a four core cpu like I was, then by all means it makes sense to upgrade, even from a 6 core I could justify it in my mind.  

Edited June 6, 20206 yr by Pilot53

5 minutes ago, Pilot53 said:

It will be night and day from the 3770k.  Were you able to get a backorder in for the 10900k?  Ive noticed most retailers arent even taking backorders lately on these chips.  

Yes I was able to get on a waiting list. Hopefully the 1st wave of stock will come in next week, and I should get it no later by the end of the month. Keeping my fingers crossed.

19 minutes ago, captain420 said:

Yes I was able to get on a waiting list. Hopefully the 1st wave of stock will come in next week, and I should get it no later by the end of the month. Keeping my fingers crossed.

ahh thats good, good luck on your build.

Thank you Mike!

All the best.

Thanks for your detailed post, I really appreciate you taking the time.

I’m contemplating an upgrade from my i7 7700k to make sure I’m getting full benefit of my 2080ti.  The i9 10900k seems like the obvious answer, though the power draw and heat generation do give me cause to pause.  

I’ve read really good gaming reviews of the i5 10600k, though those obviously need to be taken with a grain of salt for flightsimmers.  It will be interesting to see how good of a chip the i5 is for flight simming.

Maybe by the time I can actually buy an i9 10900k somewhere we’ll also have some experiences with the i5 for comparison.

Thanks again.

You mentioned that this isn't worth it for people who have 9th gen processors, I'm on an 8700k. I have that overclocked to 5.0. I'm not really on the fence about upgrading. Just curious what your thoughts are.

2 hours ago, ahsmatt7 said:

You mentioned that this isn't worth it for people who have 9th gen processors, I'm on an 8700k. I have that overclocked to 5.0. I'm not really on the fence about upgrading. Just curious what your thoughts are.

I'm not sure honestly, the extra cores will help with texture loading but your clockspeed is high already.  I would like too see a test of the effect of more cores with high autogen settings while in the air vs on the ground.  From my testing on the ground you are limited by the core 0 clockspeed and more cores don't help until you get in the air, with 4.5 at least.  I believe the extra cores would help with stutters and fps while in the air.

2 hours ago, regis9 said:

Thanks for your detailed post, I really appreciate you taking the time.

I’m contemplating an upgrade from my i7 7700k to make sure I’m getting full benefit of my 2080ti.  The i9 10900k seems like the obvious answer, though the power draw and heat generation do give me cause to pause.  

I’ve read really good gaming reviews of the i5 10600k, though those obviously need to be taken with a grain of salt for flightsimmers.  It will be interesting to see how good of a chip the i5 is for flight simming.

Maybe by the time I can actually buy an i9 10900k somewhere we’ll also have some experiences with the i5 for comparison.

Thanks again.

If I was going to buy a new Mobo and make the jump to 10th Feb from a 7700k I would not bother with the 10600k.  You should be able to overclock it more than the 7700k, but for the expense and trouble of buying a new Mobo and reinstalling windows I would go with the 10900k which would be a more substantial upgrade.

Thanks for the insights.  I kind of figured that would be the case but always good to look at options.  And yeah if I’m going through the effort and cost to upgrade I may as well go big or go home.  I’ll buy my first AIO cooler to go with this upgrade.

As an aside, I came across this interesting article today which speaks to some pretty big variances in power draw/heat across various 10900k chips

https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-core-i9-10900k-binning-comet-lake/

Edited June 6, 20206 yr by regis9

37 minutes ago, regis9 said:

Thanks for the insights.  I kind of figured that would be the case but always good to look at options.  And yeah if I’m going through the effort and cost to upgrade I may as well go big or go home.  I’ll buy my first AIO cooler to go with this upgrade.

As an aside, I came across this interesting article today which speaks to some pretty big variances in power draw/heat across various 10900k chips

https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-core-i9-10900k-binning-comet-lake/

Yeah I saw that too, very interesting.  My chip is definately one of the worse chips on that spectrum.   

I am running a   i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz 6 core, and am thinking of buying a new computer with 2080Ti an i7-10700K. No one talks about this processor. I am concerned about the power draw of i9 -10900, and cooling needs and as referenced above, and for the money maybe getting one that might not be capable of being overclocked because of temperature variation among units. Also whether given all of these issues, would  the performance gain of the i9 -10900K over something like the  i7-10700K would be overall worthwhile? I presume the  i7-10700K would be less power hungry and less  prone to high temperatures etc, but do not know.

Also crazy question maybe but with sustained 700 watts noted by Pilot53 how does one know one will not blow a circuit breaker in a standard household electrical outlet? I have no way of knowing what other outlets may be connected on the same circuit to the one I would have to use, and hence would be contributing to the draw in my room.