PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
Intel is set to offer up its Coffee Lake processors to the mainstream PC market. In slides leaked from within Intel’s HQ, plans for the company’s unannounced Coffee Lake-S series have been revealed. Among the slides were plans for a six-core processor to be used in the mainstream desktop CPU market.
The slides were quickly removed by Intel but not before the world feasted their eyes on them and shared them around social media. As far as the actual Coffee Lake-S processor lineup goes, the slides do not appear to list specific models. Instead, there’s a new Core i3-8300 version added to the Coffee Lake series, sporting four cores and eight threads. Again, specifics like speed and power draw are unknown just yet.
CPU processor designs are designated a letter depending on their complexity. For example ‘X’ relates to high-end chips. The Coffee Lake-S series shown in the slides is considered a step down and can be safely assumed that it is for mainstream/ performance PCs.
The Coffee Lake-S platform will also rely on the same motherboard LGA 1151 used by Intel’s seventh-generation Kaby Lake and sixth-generation Skylake desktop processors. The S series of processors will be compatible with the upcoming 300 series chipsets and will include integrated USB 3.1 Gen2 (10Gbps) technology.
Coffee Lake-S will rely on Intel Rapid Storage Technology to handle storage based on PCI Express 3.0 x4 connections. And the series will enable a single processor to handle up to 24 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, up to 10 USB 3.1 ports with six of those based on Gen2 (10Gbps) technology, and up to six SATA 3 ports.
Although not confirmed, the slides indicate that the processors could be upon us sooner than expected with the end of Q3 earmarked as a release date. Intel has yet to respond to the slides being leaked but a comment is expected in the coming days in relation to the Coffee Lake-S desktop processors.
