Intel Coffee Lake Refresh Enthusiast Core i9 CPUs With 8 And 6-Core Variants Break Cover

Computer users looking to build some high-powered gaming rigs will soon have some new Intel processors to choose from which has recently shown up in online listings. These new processors slot into the Coffee Lake Refresh family, and there are four new SKUs to look forward to. The parts include eight-core Core i9-9900KF and a Core i7-9700KF processors along with six-core Core i5-9600KF and Core i5-9400F processors.

Listings for these parts have turned up on Newegg and Synnex (among others), although some of the listing have been removed at the time of writing (likely at the behest of Intel). Note that all four of the new CPUs end with an F designator, something that Intel traditionally uses to specify chips that lack integrated graphics. That nomenclature leads to the thought that these parts are all aimed at enthusiast systems that will be relying on discrete graphics cards. Considering that most enthusiasts wouldn't dare both with Intel's integrated GPUs, this is a way for Intel to market CPUs that otherwise would have been ditched due to defective GPU cores.

The page listings call out support for all the chips with the existing 300-series mainboards. As for specifications, here's what we're dealing with:

• Core i9-9900KF: eight cores, 95W TDP, clock frequencies of 3.6/5.0 GHz, and 16MB L3 cache
• Core i7-9700KF: eight cores, 95W TDP, clock frequencies of 3.6/4.9 GHz, and 12MB of L3 cache
• Core i5-9600KF: six cores, 95W TDP, clock frequencies of 3.7/4.6 GHz, and 9MB L3 cache
• Core i5-9400F: six cores, 65W TDP, clock frequencies of 2.9/4.1GHz, and 9MB L3 cache