This is not just an overclocked i9-9940X. But obviously it's binned, like
all microchips are, what you guys mean is it's a higher bin than i9-9940X, "cherry-picked" or "golden samples" if you will.
I do think Intel is pushing it too far here, both because 255W TDP is getting into a territory it's hard to cool without massive cooling, and secondly because they can't supply enough of these.
But I do like the idea behind the product, a HEDT CPU which have as many fast cores as possible, rather than just as many cores as possible by sacrificing a bit of core speed. So I think a HEDT CPU with as many
fast cores as possible (and keeping TDP at ~200W) would be a good complement to HEDT CPUs with many more cores.
When it comes to workstation use, the best choice is not as simple as the highest core count etc., it really comes down to the tasks the machine will be running. People commonly think it comes down to multithreading or not, but in reality many heavily multithreaded workloads are sensitive to core speed. There are async multithreaded workloads, where worker threads are basically independent and can scale those workloads almost linearly until you run out of cores or hit a bottleneck. Many typical server loads fall into this category, but also larger batches of rendering or video encoding. For such workloads it's fine to sacrifice core speed, because what matters is total throughput. On the other hand there are many workloads which are synchronized, and while they still benefit from more cores, the synchronization overhead grows quickly, so more core speed is required to achieve good scaling.
While the current HEDT lineup is of course generally good, it's still not
good enough to convince me to pull the trigger for my particular mix of development and CAD/modeling needs. And I have worked on Skylake-X, so I know how much better than its predecessors it is. So for me I would probably have to wait longer, until Ice Lake-X/SP arrives in 2020
, and then go for the CPU with the highest number of
fast cores.
As I've said, there are rumors about this chip being an exclusive. The rumors dating from a couple of weeks ago claimed it will only be available through selected system builders and through auction(!). I really hope these rumors are untrue. Launching products and sending them to reviewers is a bad thing if the customers can't buy the thing, regardless of how good/bad it may be. One example of this would be the i7-8086K, a perfectly fine product, except that it was not really available.
It is certainly pushing a territory where things get really hot, especially if you're going to run this for hours of load at the time. But the biggest problem will probably be airflow in the case, rather than the CPU cooler itself.
But still remember that GPUs manage to do 250-300W with less optimal airflow, but are not completely silent though.
and you can put Zen2 in it in a few months and likely beat the 9900K in everything*
