Intel Coffee Lake Refresh leak reveals new S-series performance processors

Intel Coffee Lake Refresh

We pretty much have the full picture of the upcoming Intel Coffee Lake Refresh, thanks to slides from leaked presentation.

The 9th generation Intel Coffee Lake Refresh processors will purportedly launch in October with three models, including the Core i9-9900K, Core i7-9700K and Core i5-9600K, according to documents submitted anonymously to Videocardz.

What’s more, we have a complete list of specs for each of the processors:

  • Core i5-9600K: 6-cores, 6-threads, clocked at 3.7GHz to 4.6GHz
  • Core i7-9700K: 8-cores, 8-threads, clocked at 3.6GHz to 4.9GHz
  • Core i9-9900K: 8-cores, 16-threads, clocked at 3.6GHz to 5.0GHz

All of Intel’s 9th Generation CPUs will supposedly feature a 95W thermal design power (TDP), or how much power it can draw from the power supply– surprisingly, including the Core i9 octo-core part – with support for up to 40 lanes of PCIe, DDR4-2,666MHz memory and a new Z390 chipset. Coffee Lake Refresh CPUs will still supposedly be compatible with all Intel 300 series chipsets though.

The documents also show Intel’s first mainstream Core i9 octa-core CPU has been given a special S-series designation and the company’s first soldered head spreader (called the Solder Thermal Interface Material) in a very long time. For the last several generations, Intel’s chips have only made use of internal layer of thermal compound to transfer heat from the processor dies to the exterior heat spreader, much to the derision from enthusiast PC builders and overclockers.

Out of all the recent leaks, these look like the closest thing to the actual slides we would see during a briefing. The rumored details are both exciting and disappointing because October is so far away. Be sure to stay locked to TechRadar as we’ll report on any new developments as they come.

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Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee was a former computing reporter at TechRadar. Kevin is now the SEO Updates Editor at IGN based in New York. He handles all of the best of tech buying guides while also dipping his hand in the entertainment and games evergreen content. Kevin has over eight years of experience in the tech and games publications with previous bylines at Polygon, PC World, and more. Outside of work, Kevin is major movie buff of cult and bad films. He also regularly plays flight & space sim and racing games. IRL he's a fan of archery, axe throwing, and board games.