Unboxing the Intel Media Kit

The Intel 14th Gen Core media kit, as we mentioned comes in a fancy box made of high quality paperboard, with glossy, reflective surfaces. This is not a retail package—you won't find it in the market. Intel's retail packaging for the 14th Gen Core, from what we've seen, is largely similar to that of the current 13th Gen Core, but with clear markings that these are from the 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh series.


The box lid is held in place by magnetic seals which open to reveal two smaller paperboard boxes, one with the Core i9-14900K, and the other with the i5-14600K. Under these is a giant hardboard picture of the Raptor Lake Refresh die, which creators can use as background props. As we mentioned in the previous page, we arranged our retail Core i7-14700K sample separately.


Inside these smaller paperboard boxes, the processors are found in their company-regulation jewel-case that protects the sensitive underside of the processor.


Intel 14th Gen Core Raptor Lake Refresh processors come in the existing LGA1700 package, and are fully compatible with Intel 600-series and 700-series chipset motherboards, albeit with UEFI firmware updates needed for some of the older motherboard models in the market. Nearly every motherboard manufacturer is releasing new Intel 700-series chipset motherboard models that come with drop-in support for 14th Gen Core processors, and a handful new features, such as Wi-Fi 7 (5 Gig).

ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero

ASUS kindly provided us an ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero, an enthusiast-segment Socket LGA1700 motherboard that comes with out of the box support for 14th Gen Core desktop processors (besides 13th Gen and 12th Gen); and a plethora of new features, including some designed to take advantage of certain new features being introduced with these processors, which we'll talk about in our main reviews of these processors.


The ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero comes with a refreshed CPU VRM that uses 20+1+2 phase power stages, with a dual 8-pin power input. This VRM is designed to maximize the overclocking headroom of even the top Core i9-14900K part, which ASUS has extensively tested and validated the board with.

The Socket LGA1700 is wired to four DDR5 DIMM slots, supporting a maximum of 192 GB of memory, with generational improvements in memory speeds (which you'll learn more about in our main reviews); one CPU-attached M.2-22110 NVMe slot with PCI-Express 5.0 x4 wiring, four M.2-2280 slots with Gen 4 wiring, two PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slots (x16/NC, or x8/x8, or x8/NC if the Gen 5 M.2 slot is used).