PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing.

Powerful 9th Generation Intel Core CPUs Are Coming to Laptops

Intel announced its latest line of H-series Core processors, which will appear in new gaming laptops and power notebooks. To cater to PC builders, Intel is also releasing more 9th Generation chips for desktops.

 & Michael Kan Principal Reporter

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

Our Expert
LOOK INSIDE PC LABS HOW WE TEST
65 EXPERTS
43 YEARS
41,500+ REVIEWS

Intel is releasing more 9th Generation processors for PCs, including gaming notebooks and high-end laptops. And its latest line of H-series Intel Core chips, announced Tuesday, offer up to a 33 percent overall performance increase over processors from three years ago, according to the chipmaker.

Intel 9 Gen Slide 1

Expect the processors to also offer better load times and refresh rates for games, and faster processing for 4K video editing. The new silicon's other selling point is the inclusion of Wi-Fi 6, which can offer maximum download speeds of around 10Gbps with compliant router and client hardware, and support for Thunderbolt 3.

Intel 9 Gen Slide 2

To cater to PC builders, Intel is also bulking up its lineup for the company's consumer 9th Generation desktop processors today. The lineup ranges from new Core i9 processors all the way down to low-end Pentium Gold and Celeron chips.

In a conference call with journalists, Intel played up the performance gains the desktop-based chips will offer versus systems from five years ago. You can find more details about the chips' specs and pricing here.

Intel 9 Gen Slide 6

"There has been no better time for end users to come in and buy," Fredrik Hamberger, Intel's general manager for the premium and gaming notebook segments, said. "It is sort of the perfect time for end users to refresh."


The Mobile Chips: 9th Gen on Power Machines

You'll probably want to wait for full reviews before making any actual purchases. But with the H-series chips, Intel is targeting gamers, content creators, and people who just want the best possible laptop performance.

The processors will come in Core i5, i7, and i9 variants, and the first laptops equipped with the new chips are being announced in parallel with today's reveal from OEMs such as Asus, Razer, and Lenovo.

Intel 9 Gen Slide 3

Intel didn't compare the chips' performance to the previous 8th Generation Core processors. So it's hard to say how they really stack up generation-to-generation until we get some laptops based on the new 9th Generation CPUs into PC Labs. But the 9th Generation chips will be built with a refreshed version of Intel's "Coffee Lake" architecture. (Last year, Intel said its newer 10nm architecture won't arrive until 2019's holiday season. However, the technology has suffered from repeated launch delays.)

Headlining the new H-series processor pack is an Intel Core i9-9900HK chip, boasting eight cores, 16 threads, and a wildly high maximum 5GHz clock speed when Turbo Boost is activated. Intel is marketing the chip to game streamers, who need to both run the latest PC titles and, at the same time, record and render footage of them playing those games over the internet.

Intel 9 Gen Slide 5

The new Core i7 chips, on the other hand, run on six cores and 12 threads, at maximum clock speeds of 4.5GHz to 4.6GHz, while the Core i5 chips employ four cores and eight threads, with top clock speeds at 4.1GHz to 4.3GHz.

All of the 9th Generation mobile chips support up to 128GB of DDR4 RAM. They can also work with Intel's Optane H10 memory module to offer faster loading times versus a conventional Optane Memory module and a hard drive.

According to Intel, the same chips will pave the way for notebooks with thin designs. But if you plan on running the latest PC games over the hardware off a power plug, you might get only an hour or two of battery life, depending on the design. All of the H-series chips announced today are 45-watt chips.

About Our Expert

Michael Kan

Michael Kan

Principal Reporter

My Experience

I've been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I'm currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country's technology sector.

Since 2020, I've covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I've combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink's cellular service.

I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.

I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I'm now following how the AI-driven memory shortage is impacting the entire consumer electronics market. I'm always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.

The Best Tech I've Had:

  • My first video game console: a Nintendo Famicom
  • I loved my Sega Saturn despite PlayStation's popularity.
  • The iPod Video I received as a gift in college
  • Xbox 360 FTW
  • The Galaxy Nexus was the first smartphone I was proud to own.
  • The PC desktop I built in 2013, which still works to this day.

Read full bio