Intel Core i9-10850K shows up online – and could cause some Core i9-10900K buyer’s remorse
Assuming the still unconfirmed CPU won’t be an OEM-only chip
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Intel’s Core i9-10850K CPU appears to be real, or at least it has been listed by a PC builder online, with the 10-core chip seemingly pitching in a good deal cheaper than the 10900K.
US outfit Digital Storm is now offering a system (theVelox) that has the Core i9-10850K available as an option, as spotted by @momomo_us on Twitter (viaWccftech).
i5-10400 : -$356i7-10700K : -$73i9-10850K : ???i9-10900K : +$42🤔https://t.co/N4iaZoSZSv pic.twitter.com/tIFllIjFFgJuly 16, 2020
As you can see, the 10850K – which haspreviously been leaked in benchmarks, and is purportedly the same as the 10-core flagship 10900K, just clocked 100MHz slower – is $73 cheaper than the Core-i7 10700K according to Digital Storm’s pricing.
That means the processor could be roughly priced at $450 or around that level, making it about $100 cheaper than the kind of prices that theCore i9-10900Kis currently selling for (or around $50 less than Intel’s recommended price, but that’s for bulk buying).
Although note that we don’t yet know whether this will be sold as a packaged processor to consumers, or just provided to PC manufacturers (so you can only buy it in a premade machine, in other words).
However, as Wccftech theorizes, given that stock of the 10900K is currently very thin on the ground, if Intel is struggling with the yields on this chip, it might make sense that the 10850K is a lesser-binned alternative that Intel can get out there, so folks can actually get hold of a 10-coreComet Lake processor.
If it will be on general sale, the Core i9-10850K could cause a spike of buyer’s remorse among those who forked out for the 10900K for their PC, given that it would seem to offer much the same performance, costing a fair bit less.
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Spec speculation
As mentioned, seemingly the only difference between these two chips – assuming the 10850K spec is on the money, and note that we still can’t take this for granted – is that the alleged new 10-core model runs 100MHz slower.
So you’re getting a base clock of 3.6GHz instead of 3.7GHz, and Turbo to 5.2GHz rather than 5.3GHz, so you’re basically missing out on Thermal Velocity Boost when it comes to the latter (which may only kick in for a relatively short time anyway, and needs some impressive cooling chops for sure).
Going by apreviously spilled Geekbench result, there won’t be much performance difference between the two chips at all as we’ve already mentioned, certainly not when it comes to single-core speeds.
Note that one thing we don’t know yet is the TDP of the alleged 10850K, and it could possibly be a touch less than the existing 10-core flagship.
Let’s not get too carried away yet, however, as we still need to see Intel confirm this new CPU, and indeed whether it will be available to purchase off the shelves, or just in prebuilt PCs.
Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
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