Intel 9th Gen Coffee Lake Refresh Leak Pegs 8-Core, 16-Thread Flagship CPU At Speedy 5GHz

Today, we’re reporting on a new leak that seems to throw a monkey wrench in our previous coverage. It was our understanding that only the Core i5-9600K would lack HyperThreading, but that apparently is not the case. Instead, the processor lineup is expected to launch as follows:

• Core i9-9900K with 8 cores and 16 threads
• Core i7-9700K with 8 cores and 8 threads
• Core i5-9600K with 6 cores and 6 threads`

So, only the top-end Core i9-9900K will allegedly have HyperThreading enabled, giving it a total of 16 threads. The new leak also confirms what we previously heard about clock speeds for the Core i5-9600K. This processor will have a base frequency of 3.7GHz and max single-core boost of 4.6GHz. The Core i7-9700K adjusts those figures to 3.6GHz and 4.9GHz respectively, while the Core i9-9900K has a base frequency of 3.6GHz and a single-core boost of 5GHz. Interestingly, the top-end SKU can hit 5GHz on two cores as well.

All three processors are rated at 95 watts, and will be pitted directly against AMD’s second-generation Ryzen 2000 Series processors.

These three new Coffee Lake Refresh processors are expected to launch alongside a “new” Z390 chipset. However, from all accounts it seems as though Z390 will be little more than a Z370 refresh with native Bluetooth 5.0, USB 3.1 and Wireless-AC. It’s also rumored that current Z370-based motherboards will supports Coffee Lake Refresh processors with a simple BIOS update.