Unlocked Intel Kaby Lake Core i3-7350K To Soon Court Budget Overclockers
It looks as though one of the ways Intel plans to generate some buzz for its Kaby Lake architecture on the desktop by focusing on overclocking performance. The Santa Clara chip maker is readying several unlocked processors based on Kaby Lake, and the overclockable parts aren't just limited to the high end SKUs, either—budget buyers are welcome to come along for the ride, too.
We've already seen leaks of unlocked Core i7 and Core i5 processors wading in Kaby Lake. However, the latest leak suggests that Intel will target cost conscious system builders with at least one unlocked Core i3 series processor, that being the Core i3-7350K.
A leaked price list shows the retail box version going for $177. If that stands, street pricing could end up being anywhere from $150 to $180, depending on sale pricing and promotions.
The Core i3-7350K will be a dual-core processor with Hyper Threading support. It will run fast out of the gate with a base clockspeed of 4GHz and a boost frequency of 4.2GHz, so it will be interesting to see how much overclocking headroom actually exists. We have to imagine there will be at least a few hundred MHz attainable on air cooling, especially if ends up with a TDP rating of 61W as expected. It also has 4MB of L3 cache.
Kaby Lake is Intel's 7th generation Core processor architecture. It's built on a 14nm FinFET manufacturing process and is the first architecture to disrupt Intel's traditional tick-tock release cadence. The reason for its release is because getting down to 10nm has proven a bit more difficult than Intel expected, prompting the company to delay Cannonlake until late next year. Kaby Lake fills the gap as a second consecutive tock following Skylake.
Having a second consecutive tock isn't all that exciting to enthusiasts, hence a possible reason why Intel is going after the overclocking crowd. The Core i3-7350K is a sub-$200 part that could open up overclocking to a wider audience because of its price and default clockspeeds.
We've already seen leaks of unlocked Core i7 and Core i5 processors wading in Kaby Lake. However, the latest leak suggests that Intel will target cost conscious system builders with at least one unlocked Core i3 series processor, that being the Core i3-7350K.
A leaked price list shows the retail box version going for $177. If that stands, street pricing could end up being anywhere from $150 to $180, depending on sale pricing and promotions.
The Core i3-7350K will be a dual-core processor with Hyper Threading support. It will run fast out of the gate with a base clockspeed of 4GHz and a boost frequency of 4.2GHz, so it will be interesting to see how much overclocking headroom actually exists. We have to imagine there will be at least a few hundred MHz attainable on air cooling, especially if ends up with a TDP rating of 61W as expected. It also has 4MB of L3 cache.
Kaby Lake is Intel's 7th generation Core processor architecture. It's built on a 14nm FinFET manufacturing process and is the first architecture to disrupt Intel's traditional tick-tock release cadence. The reason for its release is because getting down to 10nm has proven a bit more difficult than Intel expected, prompting the company to delay Cannonlake until late next year. Kaby Lake fills the gap as a second consecutive tock following Skylake.
Having a second consecutive tock isn't all that exciting to enthusiasts, hence a possible reason why Intel is going after the overclocking crowd. The Core i3-7350K is a sub-$200 part that could open up overclocking to a wider audience because of its price and default clockspeeds.
