If you had your eyes on those new Intel HEDT processors, which were posted just today with some... Interesting... price-points, you'll be a little miffed to know that Intel has gone on and done it again. The few cents per unit that soldering the CPU would add to the manufacturing costs of Intel's HEDT processors (starting at $999, tray-friendly prices) could definitely bring the blue giant to the red. As such, the company has decided to do away with solder even on its HEDT line of high-performance, eye-wateringly-expensive CPUs in favor of their dreaded TIM.

The news have been confirmed by der8auer, a renowned overclocker. And as you have probably seen in our own VSG's review (and if you haven't shame on you and click that link right away), delidding Intel's CPU's and ridding them of their TIM can improve temperatures by up to a staggering 21 ºC (case in point, an i7-7700K). And that's a quad-core CPU; imagine an Intel Core i9-7980XE 18-core processor sitting under that TIM, and overclocking it to boot. Those are more than four times the cores under an equally bad thermal interface; add to that the likely presence of a thermally-insulating air-gap, and you can imagine where this is going. If you are planning on going for Intel's HEDT platform, you better take those delidding tools off your shelf.

Update: Check this video here for some more information. Turns out both Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X will make use of the referred TIM, but Skylake-X dies, which make use of a stacked PCB, won't be deliddable with current tools. A new tool is going to be developed by der8auer alongside ASUS for these chips.

Creating rich, immersive experiences and bringing them to life takes a lot of compute power. Creators, gamers and enthusiasts have an insatiable demand for more power, more performance and more capability that lets them focus on what they want to do, not on whether their computer is up to the task. Intel is committed to continue giving them that extreme platform. Introducing the new Intel Core X-series processor family: Intel's most scalable, accessible and powerful desktop platform ever. Ranging from 4 to 18 cores, it offers unprecedented scalability. With price points to match, there is an Intel Core X-series processor that is sure to meet the needs for the widest range of enthusiast customers ever.

We're also introducing the entirely new Intel Core i9 processor brand, representing the highest performance for advanced gaming, VR and content creation. At the top of the lineup is the new Intel Core i9 Extreme Edition processor - the first consumer desktop CPU with 18 cores and 36 threads of power. Select SKUs of the Intel Core X-series processor family brings extreme performance to enthusiasts with Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 creating new levels of single-threaded and dual-threaded performance.

ADATA showed off its Gammix D10 line of upper-mainstream DDR4 Memory modules. Available in module heatspreader colors of gray and red, the lineup consists of modules with DDR4-2400, DDR4-2800, and DDR4-3000 speeds, with module voltage ranging between 1.2V-1.35V, and density ranging from 4 GB, to 8 GB, 16 GB, and if we're reading the specs sheet correctly, even 32 GB! The modules feature Intel XMP which enables the advertised speeds.

Videocardz is advancing an exclusive in that Intel seems to be about to introduce even more cores in a single package than previously thought. Intel's X299 platform, which we've just started officially started seeing some motherboards for (just scroll down on our news feed), looks to be the awakening of a slumbering giant. But you don't have to believe me on this: before we ever knew of AMD's Ryzen line of processors (much less about their Threadripper line), leaks on Intel's Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors only showed core counts up to 10-cores - in line with previous Intel HEDT platforms (see below image.) Cue more recent leaks, and it would seem that Intel is increasing the core-counts on its upcoming platform on a daily basis - especially if the most recent leak referencing 14, 16 and 18-core parts pans out. (I am reminded of a "moar cores" meme that used to float around the web. Maybe one of you in the comments can find it for me?)

A new, leaked slide on Intel's X-series processors shows 18, 16, 14, and 12-core configurations as being available on the upcoming X299 platform, leveraging Intel's turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 (which is apparently only available on Intel's Core i9-7820X, 7900X, 7920X (which we know to be a 12-core part), 7940X (probably the 14-core), 7960X (16-core) and the punchline 7980XE 18-core processor, which should see a price as eye-watering as that name tumbles around on the tip of the tongue. There is also mention of a "Rebalanced Intel Smart Cache hierarchy". But you don't want me to be rambling on about this. You want to comment about this story. Feel free to partake in a joyous conversation over these news (I'll also leave you with a bonus picture of some purported, upcoming Intel X-series packaging efforts. They're certainly colorful.)

Over the weekend, Intel cut the retail price of its overclocker-friendly dual-core chip, the Core i3-7350K. The chip is now priced at USD $149, down from its launch price of $184. Based on the 14 nm "Kaby Lake" silicon, the i3-7350K is designed to target the performance-segment gaming PC crowd by offering two cores clocked extremely high out of the box, which in Intel's calculation could prove sufficient to power gaming at 1080p or even 1440p. Then there's always the joy of overclocking, thanks to its unlocked base-clock multiplier.

The Core i3-7350K features out of the box clock speeds of 4.20 GHz. Turbo Boost isn't available to the Core i3 brand. The dual-core chip features HyperThreading, enabling 4 logical CPUs for the OS to deal with. It also gets 4 MB of shared L3 cache. Its $184 launch price may have been rendered untenable by competing AMD Ryzen 5-1500X and Ryzen 5-1400 quad-core parts priced at $189 and $169, respectively, which not just give you two more cores, but also double or quadruple the L3 cache, and unlocked multipliers. Unlike the two Ryzen 5 quad-core parts, the Core i3-7350K retail package lacks a stock cooler, escalating its cost by at least another $20 for a decent cooler, if you don't have one. These factors may have driven the price-cut.

Intel is giving final touches to its next-generation "Gemini Lake" SoC, which will be sold under the Celeron and Pentium brands, and will succeed the current-generation "Apollo Lake" SoC. Built on a refined 14 nm process, the chip features a TDP of just 6W for the mobile variant, and 10W for the SFF desktop, but boasts of improved performance-per-Watt than its predecessor, translating into direct performance gains.

To begin with, "Gemini Lake" will embed a dual-core or quad-core CPU based on Intel's "Goldmont Plus" micro-architecture. A Goldmont Plus core isn't physically different from the current-gen "Goldmont," but apparently doubles the L2 cache to 4 MB from the existing 2 MB, and takes advantage of process-level improvements to lower power-draw, which Intel is using to bump up the CPU clock speeds.

On the back of impressive performance, yield, and cost metric for AMD's market-warping Ryzen and server-shaking EPYC processors, securities firm Rosenblatt Securities' Hans Mosesmann has affirmed a "Buy" rating for AMD's stock, while saddling Intel with a seldom-seen "Sell". All in all, there have been a number of changes in Intel's market ratings; there seems to be a downgrade trend towards either "Hold" or "Sell" scenarios compared to the usual "Buy" ratings given by hedge funds and financial analysts - ratings which are undoubtedly affected (at least in part) by AMD's Ryzen and EPYC execution.

Disclaimer: It's currently unclear whether or not the majority of these are actual X299 motherboards. Remember MSI's GODLIKE tease, which was expected to be a X299 motherboard due to the number of PCIe slots on offer, but ended up being a Z270-based one? Well, we remember, hence why we start with this disclaimer to pour some cold water on expectations. However, there is one model that can be said to be a X299 offering pretty confidently: MSI's tease of a new Gaming Pro motherboard, which shows the four RAM slots as close to the I/O bracket: a design usually reserved for quad-channel supporting platforms. Port design in the PCIe and M.2 fronts seems similar to the GODLIKE Z270, but it would seem that MSI has designed another kind of an M.2 Shield interface, which now encircles a PCIe port while cooling two simultaneous M.2 SSDs.

The next motherboard, which we can't confirm is really a X299 based-one, is teased by ASUS, under its Republic of gamers branding, which shows the integration a an LCD screen in the motherboard footprint. The LCD seems basic enough, and could be useful so as to visually check operating frequencies and temperatures, though ASUS naturally had to add their ROG bling to it. Seems like simple LED support was too 2016 for them.

Jon Peddie Research has released another of their interesting GPU market analysis, which the analyst firm pegs as currently gearing up to a strong Q3. However, this gearing-up comes on the back of a "moderate" quarter, which in reality means there was a seasonal decrease of -17.5% in overall GPU shipments compared to last quarter. This -17.5% decrease takes from a -25% decrease in AMD products, Nvidia decreased -26%, and -14% in Intel's products. This translates into a YoY decrease of -4.5% in overall GPU shipments, with a whole -13.5% in desktop platforms and the saving grace in the 2% rise in mobile GPU shipments. Overall discrete GPU market share is increasing compared to their iGPU counterparts, for the third consecutive quarter.

Intel showed the highest gain in the quarter, in a market that seems to have to have returned to normal seasonal cycles. This quarter was appropriately down (normally it is flat to down), and the Gaming PC segment, where higher-end GPUs are used, was once again the bright spot in the overall PC market for the quarter. JPR sets the tablet craze as ending, bringing much needed stability to the PC market, as users realize a tablet is useful for a lot of things, but can never replace a PC for performance, screen size, or upgradability.

In a bid to increase options for budget-minded gamers, Acer has introduced the Nitro 5 gaming laptop, whose wealth of configurations start at a respectable $800. Choosing any kind of gaming-focused laptop over building your own desktop will always look like bad business, but how much one values mobility mays edge the decision towards one side or the other.

Specs-wise, it's a mix of respectable with the bare minimum: it features a 15.6-inch FHD IPS display, up to 32 GB of DDR4 2400 MHz memory, and is available in configurations featuring Intel's Core i5 or Core i7 processors paired with an NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti graphics card, or your choice of an AMD 7th-gen A-series FX, A12 or A10 APUs, paired a Radeon RX550 GPU. Some models will include PCIe SSDs (up to 512GB) with up to 2TB of optional HDD storage. Ports include 1x Gigabit Ethernet, 1x USB 3.1 Type-C, 1x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0 ports, and 1x HDMI output. The Nitro 5 also supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi with a 2x2 MIMO antenna. The Nitro 5 will be available in North America starting July 1. Acer did not release detailed pricing, so there's no idea of what the $800 configuration will net you spec-wise (though an AMD and RX 550 are pretty much guaranteed). The Nitro 5 will also be available in the EMEA in August, starting at a much less interesting €1,139.

Thunderbolt is one of the most flexible data delivery mechanisms ever developed: it boasts of both enormous versatility and performance. These connectors have seen increasingly higher adoption rates due to these characteristics, but are still to trickle down towards mid-range and entry-level offerings, which would be certainly some of the products to benefit the most, allowing them to substitute numerous, costly ports for a single jack-of-all-trades connection.

Intel is looking to solve this problem by removing royalties from Thunderbolt, further increasing adoption by integrating controllers within its own processors. The first Thunderbolt 3 "Alpine Ridge" chips, introduced in the third quarter of 2015, were manufacturer's only solution to implement Thunderbolt in their products; an extra chip which added costs and complexity to designs, which ended up limiting adoption to only higher-margin products. With Thunderbolt 3 an integrated part of the processors, those issues largely evaporate, with system builders being freed of having to design accommodations for an extra chip. Intel did not specify which processors would include the controllers or when they will ship, but the company says that it is going to make the Thunderbolt 3 specification available on a non-exclusive, royalty-free basis. Intel could have played towards eliminating the royalties on Thunderbolt 3 but only supporting it on its own processors, but the company has chosen not to do that: the door will be open for AMD and other companies to bake in support for the interface on their own solutions, spurring innovation and, more importantly, driving down costs of adoption.

SiSoft Sandra is one of the best (and more common) sources for details on upcoming, as-of-yet-unreleased hardware details and characteristics. Now, details on one of Intel's upcoming Skylake-X parts have surfaced, which gives us some details on what are likely final specifications, considering how close we are to X299's accelerated release.

The processor in the spotlight is one of Intel's 10-core processors, the Core i9 7900X (which is erroneously reported by the software as the Core i7 7900X), Intel's 10-core CPU. While initial reports pegged this CPU at as running at clock speeds of 3.30 GHz base and with 4.30 GHz Turbo Boost, it would seem Intel's release silicon will leverage much higher stock speeds, with the reported values on this SiSoft report being a staggering 4.0 GHz base, and 4.5 GHz Turbo Boost. These are extremely high clock speeds for a ten-core part, but all the other details about the Core i9 7900X check out: there are 14,080 KB (13.75 MB) of shared L3 cache, 1 MB L2 cache per core (for a total of 10 MB), as well as a 175 W TDP. This difference in clock speeds (especially when you compare it to Ryzen's much lower clock speeds) are probably an indicator of not only architectural differences between both designs, but a statement on Intel's fabrication process capabilities. And as an added bonus, check the motherboard that was used: a juicy, as-of-yet-unknown, X299 Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 7. Two details of this magnitude in a single screenshot? It's clearly a case of having your cake and eating it too.

ASUSTOR Inc., a leading innovator and provider of network storage solutions, has announced that it has added two new models to its 70 series NAS devices with the AS7004T-i5 and AS7010T-i5. These two new models utilize powerful Intel Core i5 quad-core processors and feature 8GB of built-in memory with mixed capacity expansion support up to a maximum of 16GB for enhanced flexibility.

When compared to ASUSTOR's previous generation of Core i3 models, the AS7004-i5 and AS7010-i5 provide significantly enhanced performance, especially with regards to multimedia playback, transcoding and the processing of large volumes of files. The AS7004-i5 and AS7010-i5 are both equipped with 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports which can provide balance and stability under high loading and heavy network traffic. This provides increased efficiency for multi-tasking and multi-user access. Additionally, the AS7010-i5 also comes equipped with a 10GbE network card expansion slot, allowing users to flexibly upgrade their equipment to operate under high speed network access environments.

Early on in Intel's 3D XPoint teasers and announcements, the company planned to have this memory integrated not only as a system cache solution or SSD replacement, but also as a potential substitute for DRAM memory. The objective: to revolutionize the amount of DRAM memory a given system can carry, at a much lower price per GB, with a somewhat acceptable performance penalty. Intel describes the current DRAM implementation as too small, too expensive, and too unstable (read: data loss on power loss) to continue being on top of the memory food chain. This is where the 3D Xpoint DIMM implementation can bear fruits, by offering significantly higher amounts of storage at much lower pricing, while keeping attractive bandwidth and latency performance. DRAM will still be used for system-critical operations and booting, albeit in lower capacities, and will be used side by side with these 3D XPoint DIMM slots, which will take in the bulk of the work.

This kind of usage for Intel's 3D XPoint also delivers an interesting side-effect: since this memory is persistent (which means that data isn't lost when the power is turned off,) interruption or loss of power won't erase the work in memory. At the same time, this means that this kind of DRAM-substitute memory requires some security precautions DRAM doesn't, since anyone with direct physical access to the stick could just remove one and take it with all the data inside. Even though a 2018 time to market seems a little to optimistic, considering all the changes this implementation would require from adopters, the technology is definitely promising enough to tempt users to make the jump.

G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world's leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, is thrilled to announce its largest annual LN2 extreme overclocking events at Computex - the 6th Annual OC World Record Stage 2017 and 4th Annual OC World Cup 2017. In addition, an Extreme OC Workshop event co-hosted with HWBOT.org at the G.SKILL booth this year. These 3 events will be held throughout Computex week at the G.SKILL Computex booth in the Nangang Exhibition Hall, 1F, Booth J0806.

The G.SKILL OC World Record Stage event has reached its 6th year in the running and has become one of the biggest annual overclocking events in the community. This year, 18 world-class professional overclockers will be attending and aim to break as many benchmark records as possible, showing off the astounding performance of the latest hardware from Intel, leading motherboard vendors, and G.SKILL.

In a bid to increase attractiveness of its offerings even further, Gigabyte has recently announced via a forum post that it's offering up to 60€ in Steam vouchers to consumers who purchase a select Aorus motherboard. This promotion is available for both Intel and AMD Aorus-branded motherboards, and will be open until June 30th 2017 or while stock lasts. Intel customers seem to be getting the bulk of the promotion though, with AMD users only getting 20€ in Steam Wallet vouchers.

Something that we don't see everyday is that this promotion is particularly focused on the EU. Gigabyte states it's only open to residents of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Portugal (yay!), Serbia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuanian, Estonia, Iceland, Ireland, Croatia and Slovenia. Check the list of featured motherboards and respective voucher value eligibility after the break.

You must've read recent reports on the web about an AMD-Intel licensing deal. We purposefully didn't cover that information, spread on May 15th, based on an expiring graphics IP licensing deal between NVIDIA and Intel. The initial report said that since that deal was expiring, Intel was now turning to its x86 arch-enemy, AMD. It would seem those reports weren't based on facts, having since been denied by Intel, who told Barron's Tiernan Ray that "the recent rumors that Intel has licensed AMD's graphics technology are untrue."

Investors and speculators are an attentive bunch, and jumped at the original rumor, expecting another million-dollar licensing deal. As a result of the Intel-AMD licensing deal rumor, AMD's stock soared by 12% even before AMD's Financial Analyst day. Naturally, after Intel rectified the story, AMD's stock proceeded to correct the speculative bubble, dropping back to previous levels. AMD could have denied the deal as much as Intel could (it takes two to tango), but chose not to. The company played smartly, keeping its cards close to its chest with a "no comment" posture regarding the rumor. This let AMD AMD play on it, seeing their stock increase (even if it was a short-lived scenario, now rectified in its stock value.)

Intel today unveiled significant performance advances in its upcoming Intel Xeon Processor Scalable family. At the SAP Sapphire NOW conference, Intel showed up to 1.59x higher Intel Xeon processor performance running in-memory SAP HANA workloads over the generation it replaces, demonstrating what the new products will deliver to help meet the increasingly complex demands of big-data, in-memory workloads in the modern data center.

Diane Bryant, group president of the Data Center Group at Intel, outlined how the Intel Xeon Processor Scalable family - available in mid-2017 - will provide enhanced performance to in-memory applications like SAP HANA. This will provide customers faster time-to-insight and allow organizations to rapidly respond to change.

It seems that Intel's accelerated released schedule for its upcoming HEDT platform is starting to slowly bear fruits, with many details leaking through the cracks almost non-stop during the last few days (and before you ask, yes, I did have more links to show you.)

These should be two of the top performing processors in Intel's line-up, and the i9 7900X (10-core) and 7920X (12-core) have been tested on integer and floating point calculations. The 10-core i9-7900X (3.1 GHz base frequency, no Turbo listed)) scores 107 points in single-core benchmarks, and 1467 points in the multi-core test. The 12-core, 2.9 GHz base frequency 7920X, however, scores a head-scratchingly-higher 130 points in the same single-threaded benchmark, despite carrying the same architecture at... hmm... lower clocks. Maybe this processor's Turbo is working as expected, up to 3.25 GHz (average), and that's the factor for the higher single-core performance?

Today is an eventful day in the tech world, with two high-impact leaks already offering themselves up to our scrutiny. We had previously covered AMD's upcoming HEDT platform, based on the company's new X399 chipset, as having a quite distinctive lineup of processors, with not only 16 and 12-core offerings hot on foundries presses', but also some 14-core, 28-thread chips as well. Now, a leak has apparently revealed the entire Ryzen HEDT platform, whose processor marketing name, Ryzen 9, sounds really close to Intel's Core i9.

AMD's offerings look to offer an edge at least on core-count, with the Red team's top offerings, the Ryzen 9 1998X and Ryzen 9 1998, bringing in a game-changer 16 cores and 32 threads to the table. Perhaps even more importantly, we have to mention that the 1998X (these names, if true, are quite a mouthful, though) achieves a 3.5 GHz base, 3.9 GHz boost clock, which owes nothing to AMD's Ryzen 7 1800X consumer flagship CPUs. Rumors of AMD's frequency demise on higher core-count Ryzen CPUs have been greatly exaggerated, it would seem. And did I mention that these chips are coming with a TDP of 155 W - 5 W lower than Intel's purported 12-core, i9-7920X offering? Consider that for a moment.

The folks at MSI seem to be particularly fond of puzzles at this point in time, for no discernible reason. I say so because they've been giving us snippets of an upcoming high-end motherboard, which we have previously covered. At the time, we posited it would fall somewhere along the X299-end of the spectrum, considering the huge amount of PCIe x16 ports on-board.

It would seem those suspicions were founded, since MSI's other GODLIKE branded motherboards (which means they have all the bells & whistles available on time of their release) were X99-based, so it would follow that the new GODLIKE would usher in their footsteps as well. From the new piece of the puzzle, we can glean that this motherboard will offer, in addition to its 4x PCIe x16 ports and 3x M.2 slots over the X299's 44 PCIe lanes, 3x Ethernet connectors, 6x USB 3.1, and 2x Wi-Fi antennas. Expect this motherboard to be one of the most feature-packed offerings for Intel's expected ninth coming (of their Core i9-branded HEDT processors, that is.)

Intel is reportedly giving final touches to a new line of high-end desktop processors under the Core i9 brand extension. Until now, the company used the Core i7 brand extension broadly, to cover both the top-end parts of the mainstream-desktop (LGA115x) segment, and the high-end desktop (HEDT) segment, consisting of the LGA1366 and LGA2011-series sockets. With the advent of the new LGA2066 socket, Intel will be launching two distinct kinds of products - the Core i7 "Kaby Lake-X" quad-core series; and the Core i9 "Skylake-X" 6-core, 8-core, 10-core, and 12-core processors.

The Core i7 "Kaby Lake-X" will include the much talked about Core i7-7740K and i7-7640K quad-core processors (there's no Core i5 Kaby Lake-X). These chips will feature up to 1 MB of dedicated L2 cache per core, which is four times that of the existing i7-7700K chip. The i7-7740K features 8 MB of shared L2 cache; while the i7-7640K features just 6 MB. Interestingly, the i7-7640K also happens to lack HyperThreading, while the i7-7740K features it. The i7-7740K will ship with higher clock speeds than the i7-7700K, with 4.30 GHz core, and 4.50 GHz Turbo Boost. The i7-7640K features 4.00 GHz core, with 4.20 GHz Turbo Boost. The Core i9 series is a whole different beast.

Recent reports mentioned Intel's moves to bring forward the launch of their Basin Falls HEDT platform, which succeeds their X99 platform. Intel is doing this in hopes to hold the blue flag against AMD's upcoming X399 Ryzen-based HEDT platform (there's seemingly a war in numbers here), pitting 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12-core CPUs against AMD's expected 12-core and 16-core processors.

As such, it's only natural motherboard makers would also have to expedite their work on X299-based motherboards, and it would seem that MSI has done just that, simultaneously advancing their marketing campaign. A teaser image from the company showcases an as-of-yet unreleased motherboard (not just any motherboard, but the "Best. Motherboard. Ever") which boasts of a trio of M.2 slots (with MSI's M.2 Shield thermal solution), and four PCIe x16 slots. Are you still counting the number of PCI lanes needed to drive all these slots? Well, it just so happens Intel's Basin Falls is expected to deliver up to 44 PCIe 3.0 lanes, so those should be enough to at least make this ridiculous amount of slots worthwhile... For some use cases. There's also an additional power-supply connector on top of the first PCIe slot, which should increase power delivery for these. It's almost open season on these HEDT platforms, kind sirs.

Update: Apparently, there was a miscommunication between Gigabyte and user Treebsquire's Aero 15 seller, Scan. The nature of this miscommunication - and how this would lead to a report on battery issues - is still up in the air, but it would seem that Gigabyte isn't recalling their Aero 15 laptops after all, so rest easy if you have one of these.

Gigabyte has recently launched the Aero 15, a gaming laptop which really does bring some value to the wording "Aero" through some interesting aesthetics and an amazing thickness (1.9 cm) for the hardware under the hood: packed inside the AERO 15 is the latest 7th gen Intel Core i7-7700HQ, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1060 GDDR5 6GB graphics, DDR4 ram, as well as a PCIe M.2 SSD (through different configurations.)

It's apparently a good product, having received some respectable reviews, and its 94Wh battery was being touted as a distinguishing feature, as being up to 2x larger than average battery sizes for laptops, which was able to power the laptop through 10 hours of Mobilemark's 2014 Productivity Mode. However, it would seem that this battery is capable of bringing problems to the user, and potentially put their safety at risk. Just one week after release, Gigabyte is recalling their Aero 15 laptops. A user on Reddit brought the issue to the community, saying that a Gigabyte rep he contacted informed him the Aero 15's have a battery fault.

Intel's immediate answer to AMD's Ryzen challenge, the Core i7-7740K processor and "Basin Falls" platform, could launch on the 12th of June, 2017. Intel is the main sponsor of the PC Gaming Show hosted by PC Gamer magazine, in the backdrop of E3-2017, and we expect it to launch its first product, the Core i7-7740K on the occasion. Intel could announce retail availability of the chips immediately after. The Core i7-7740K launch will be accompanied by a more cost-effective Core i5-7640K, and the X299 Express chipset. Motherboard vendors could announce their first waves of socket LGA2066 motherboards based on this chipset.

Built on the 14 nm "Kaby Lake-X" silicon, the Core i7-7740K is a quad-core processor featuring higher clock speeds than the current i7-7700K. It features a dual-channel integrated memory controller, and lacks integrated graphics. It could feature a 28-lane PCI-Express gen 3.0 root-complex. The only ace up its sleeve is the X299 platform itself, which could be ready for bigger six-, eight-, and ten-core processors with more PCIe lane budgets.