The Intel Core i9-10900K processor is the flagship of the brand’s Comet Lake-S processors; This processor has a TDP of 125W according to Intel, but it has been found that it reaches up to 235W of consumption when it works at maximum, so the cooling of this 10900K will need a very high-end heatsink. In this article we explain the reason for this high consumption and temperature and we recommend the best heatsinks to always keep it at a good temperature.
There is no doubt that the Intel Core i9-10900K is one of the most powerful processors on the market, incorporating 10 cores and 20 processing threads with a base speed of 3.7 GHz and reaching 5.3 GHz speed with Thermal Velocity Boost. However, it has a disadvantage and that is that its temperature rises well above that of other processors on the market, making it necessary to use a very good heatsink to keep it at a good temperature.
Core i9-10900K temperature, TDP and heatsink
Intel sells this processor as having 125 watts of TDP, but it features a configurable 95W cTDP that essentially lowers its base speed to 3.3 GHz. The PL1 (power level 1) is just one side of the coin, and it’s the that Intel shows while hiding the other side.
On the other side of the coin, the 10900K has a PL2 (power level 2) of 250 watts, which is basically the maximum power consumption of the processor when its Turbo speed is activated. It has already been verified that with this processor at maximum its TDP rises to 235 watts (reaching 93 degrees Celsius), and even with that consumption the processor works within Intel’s specifications, and although there are doubts about whether the chip It is capable of consuming so much electrical power, it has already been proven that, indeed, it is.
When you have a processor consuming more than 200 watts of power, the amount of heat generated can be out of all the charts. In this test they used a 240 mm AIO liquid cooling and the processor reached 93ºC in temperature, a figure that is outside the safe margins and therefore no one wants to reach it on their PC.
What heatsink do you need for a Core i9-10900K?
Based on the data that we have shown you, it is clear that to cool a Core i9-10900K we will need a very high performance heatsink, capable of dissipating as much heat as possible to keep it within a safe temperature range while squeezing its performance as much as possible, since as you know this processor reaches its maximum potential with Intel Thermal Velocity Boost.
That said, below we are going to recommend the best heatsinks to keep a 10900K at a good temperature, but keep in mind that in all cases we treat very high-end products and, therefore, they are quite expensive.
Noctua NH-D15 chromax-black
Noctua’s best heatsink is ideal for a Core i9-10900K, and in fact on the manufacturer’s website they specify that it can keep this processor at a good temperature even if we overclock it.
NZXT Kraken Z73
This is one of the best AIO heatsinks on the market, but it is also – by far – the most expensive of all. The NZXT Kraken Z73 has a huge 360 mm long radiator and an LCD screen in the CPU block that shows us the temperature in real time, so it will give us a plus in terms of monitoring. The manufacturer does not specify what maximum TDP this heatsink is capable of dissipating, but surely it will be able to with the more than 200 watts that the 10900K is capable of generating.
Corsair Hydro H150i Pro
Like the previous model, this AIO heatsink features a massive 360mm radiator and three Corsair ML120 fans that ensure fast and efficient cooling with low noise. Like the previous ones, it is capable of adequately cooling a Core i9-10900K even overclocking the processor, provided it is accompanied by a box with adequate active cooling.
