COMPETITION: Intel’s 9th Gen Chip Prices Leak.

Three stores leaked the pricing for the Core i9-9900K, Core i7-9700K, and Core i5-9600K, they are Alza.cz, PC21.FR, and Informaticazone. Even if we quote the most expensive price (after converting Euros to US dollars and subtracting the VAT) the Core i9-9900K is expected to cost just $534. Still expensive, but certainly not bank-breaking.

The Core i7-9700K is expected to cost $416. Remember, it’s a chip that also offers eight cores but is limited to eight threads and runs at 3.6GHz turbo boosting to 4.9GHz. Then we have the Core i5-9600K (six cores, six threads, 3.7GHz boosting to 4.6GHz), which is expected to cost $257.

We probably have AMD to thank for this level of pricing if it turns out to be correct. AMD’s recent resurgence by offering new processors with impressive performance have meant Intel doesn’t have the market pretty much to itself anymore. It’s a clear reminder of why healthy competition is so important for consumers and the market in general.

I built an Ubuntu machine a couple months ago for video encoding, based on a 12-core AMD Threadripper CPU. It’s by far the least-expensive x86 computer I’ve ever owned, and the performance is impressive… most impressive.