Intel Coffee Lake release date, news and features

Fifth time’s the charm. At least that seems to be Intel’s contention with its upcoming fifth round of chips to be based on the 14nm manufacturing node.

After releasing the 7th generation, or Kaby Lake, Core processors unto the world late last year, the Santa Clara chipmaker tweeted that its 8th generation chips would harbor performance 15% better than their predecessors. Since then, the Intel Coffee Lake architecture was officially revealed on September 25 and, with it, an entire lineup of CPUs and motherboards.

Contrary to the company’s initial promises, however, Intel is now saying that its flagship 8th-generation Coffee Lake processor is a whopping 45% faster than its Kaby Lake equivalent, perhaps justifying the move to the Z370 chipset and, likewise, the necessity to buy a new motherboard.

Unsurprisingly, this range includes two processors in each of the the Core i3, i5 and i7 categories.

Cut to the chase

What is it? Intel's 8th-generation desktop CPU architecture
When is it out? The second half of 2017, possibly 2018
What will it cost? From $117 (£85, AU$145) – $359 (£265, AU$450)

Intel Coffee Lake release date

After stating back in February that Coffee Lake would surface in the latter half of the year, Intel seemed to reassure us of this claim at Computex 2017 held in Taipei, Taiwan.

Since then, the Santa Clara chipmaker came out and teased an August 21 livestream reveal of its 8th-generation processors, which turned out to be a refresh of its 7th-generation processors for Ultrabooks and laptops, called Kaby Lake R.

Finally, it was announced in late September that the Intel Coffee Lake processors would touch down on October 5, 2017, starting at $117 (£85, AU$145) at the i3 level, going all the way up to $359 (£265, AU$450) for an i7-8700K.

Intel Coffee Lake price

Arguably the most elusive aspect of Coffee Lake leading up to its canonical announcement was its pricing, as we didn’t have much to base our speculation on aside from current market trends sanctioned by AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake.

Fortunately, we’re in the dark no longer, thanks to Intel’s formal rundown of its latest 8th-generation Coffee Lake chips. Now we know the Santa Clara chipmaker is unleashing a whole assortment of processors, accompanied by a gamut of different price tags.

Starting with the cheapest, the Intel Core i3-8100 will cost $117 (£85, AU$145) while it’s overclockable counterpart, the Intel Core i3-8350K will be priced at $168 (£125, AU$210).

At the mid range, the Core i5-8400 will set you back $182 (£135, AU$230) while the unlocked, overclock-ready i5-8600K will retail for $257 (£190, AU$325).

Lastly, deemed by Intel as its best gaming CPU ever, the Core i7-8700K will run $359 (£265, AU$450). On the other hand, if you’re looking to avoid spending significantly more than a console on a single processor, the vanilla Intel Core i7-8700 will go for $359 (£265, AU$450).

Comparatively, an Intel Kaby Lake processor on its own will, as of this writing, set you back anywhere from $42 (£39, AU$66) to $350 (£415, AU$469) while Ryzen processors range from $168 (£158, AU$245) to $499 (£500, around AU$650).

Intel Coffee Lake specs

As far as specs go, we don’t have to rely on leaks or rumors any longer. That’s because Intel has provided us with fully detailed spec sheets for each of its 8th-generation Coffee Lake processors. Although all of the 8th-generation Coffee Lake chips are manufactured on the 14nm node, Intel has proven that there’s still plenty of life in the process yet.

Again, starting from the ground up, the Intel Core i3 chips this time boast four cores each. What’s more, whereas the Intel Core i3-8100 takes advantage of four cores and four threads running at 3.6GHz, the unlocked Core i3-8350K totes the same number of cores and threads, but instead opts for a base frequency of 4GHz.

As for the Core i5 range, the plain Intel Core i5-8400 is a hexa-core monster, bearing six cores and six threads. Moreover, its base clock is 2.8GHz, and it operates at 4GHz with Turbo Boost. Meanwhile the Core i5-8600K also squeezes six cores and six threads into the 14nm chip while brandishing base/boost speeds of 3.6GHz and 4.3GHz, respectively.

Last, but not least, on the list are the Intel Core i7-8700 and i7-8700K. The former is yet another six-core demon, albeit with double the number of threads as the i5-8600K. Its overclockable analogue, the Intel Core i7-8700K, could pose a threat to AMD, sporting six cores, 12 threads and base/boost clock speeds of 3.7GHz/4.7GHz.

That’s it for now. Though we now know more than ever about Intel’s forthcoming 8th-generation Coffee Lake CPUs, there’s still a ton of news to come. Per our usual advice, we encourage you return to this page periodically for in-depth coverage of the latest Intel Coffee Lake reveals.