The latest rumors about Intel's upcoming 9th Generation branded Coffee Lake Refresh processors have leaked out by PCBuildersClub. The rumor gives us the introduction date of the new CPUs and also the SKUs which would be announced by Intel for their mainstream desktop platform.

Intel Coffee Lake Refresh "9th Generation" CPUs Rumored To Launch on 1st August, Soldered CPUs Could Be Making Their Way To Consumers PCs

The Intel Coffee Lake Refresh processors will be used to tackle AMD's 2nd Generation Ryzen CPUs. While the current Coffee Lake lineup does a good job, still being competitive against the AMD CPU family, the new 9th Generation branded processors will deliver even faster clocks and more cores, taking the lead one step further.

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According to the rumor, Intel is going to announce their Coffee Lake Refresh family for LGA 1151 platform on 1st August. The rumor states that this date can be an announcement only so we can look forward to a paper launch with actual availability sometime later. The other possibility is that only a few chips would launch on 1st August, followed by the full lineup in the coming months.

Currently, Intel has a very confusing 8th generation lineup which includes Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Whiskey Lake and even 10nm Cannonlake based processors. With the actual 9th generation core, codenamed ‘Ice Lake’ still far away from launch on desktop PCs, it looks like the 9th generation branding will be coming to desktops early but in the form of Coffee Lake Refresh.

What’s more interesting about this listing is that the 9th generation chips are listed underneath the 8th generation codename, basically showing what we have known for a while now that the new chips will be using the same Coffee Lake-S architecture which we have received on the mainstream desktop platform before. We know of three high-end CPUs in this lineup from our previous report, which will include:

Intel Core i9-9900K (est: 8 core / 16 thread)

Intel Core i7-9700K (est: 6 core / 12 thread)

Intel Core i5-9600K (est: 6 core / 6 thread)

This lineup is also expected to feature the much awaited 8 core option from Intel which will put them next to AMD’s Ryzen processors in the mainstream desktop segment.

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Intel 9th Generation Core Family CPU Official Specifications:

Processor Name Process Cores / Threads Base Clock Boost Clock Cache TDP Price Core i9-9900KS 14nm++ 8 / 16 3.6 GHz 5.0 GHz (8 Cores) 16 MB 127W $513 US Core i9-9900K 14nm++ 8 / 16 3.6 GHz 5.0 GHz 16 MB 95W $488 US Core i9-9900KF 14nm++ 8 / 16 3.6 GHz 5.0 GHz 16 MB 95W $488 US Core i7-9700K 14nm++ 8 / 8 3.6 GHz 4.9 GHz 12 MB 95W $374 US Core i7-9700KF 14nm++ 8 / 8 3.6 GHz 4.9 GHz 12 MB 95W $374 US Core i5-9600K 14nm++ 6 / 6 3.7 GHz 4.6 GHz 9 MB 95W $262 US Core i5-9600KF 14nm++ 6 / 6 3.7 GHz 4.6 GHz 9 MB 95W $262 US Core i5-9600 14nm++ 6 / 6 3.1 GHz 4.5 GHz 9 MB 65W TBD Core i5-9500 14nm++ 6 / 6 3.0 GHz 4.3 GHz 9 MB 65W TBD Core i5-9400 14nm++ 6 / 6 2.9 GHz 4.1 GHz 9 MB 65W $182 Core i5-9400T 14nm++ 6 / 6 1.8 GHz 3.4 GHz 9 MB 35W TBD Core i3-9350KF 14nm++ 4/4 4.0 GHz 4.6 GHz 8 MB 91W TBD Core i3-9100 14nm++ 4 / 4 TBD 4.2 GHz 6 MB 65W TBD Core i3-9000 14nm++ 4 / 4 3.7 GHz N/A 6 MB 65W TBD Core i3-9000T 14nm++ 4 / 4 3.2 GHz N/A 6 MB 35W TBD

With the Core i9-9900K making its way to the market with 8 cores and 16 threads, we can see a lot of mainstream desktop users being interested in that part. As for the other part, there are rumors of a soldered 6 core CPU which can reach overclocking speeds of up to 5.5 GHz. Currently, the Intel Core i7-8086K can touch up to 5.3 GHz. This chip was shown in CPU-z as the 8086K but didn't show up in Windows 10 as the OS was unable to recognize it.

Intel Desktop Platform Chipset Comparison

Chipset Name Coffee Lake S (KBL-R) PCH / Z370 Platform Coffee Lake S (CNL-H) PCH / 300 Series (Z390/H370, B360, Q370, H310) Comet Lake-S (CML-S) PCH / 400 Series (Z490) Process Node 22nm 14nm 14nm Processor 8C, 6C, 4C (6 Consumer SKUs at Launch)

Enhanced IA and Memory Overclocking

Gen 9 Intel Graphics GT2 (Up To 24 EUs)

Consumer Only 8C, 6C, 4C, 2C (Full corporate/consumer SKU stack at launch)

Enhanced IA and Memory Overclocking

Gen 9 Intel Graphics GT2 (Up To 24 EUs)

Corporate/vPro & Consumer 10C, 8C, 6C, 4C, 2C (Full corporate/consumer SKU stack at launch)

Enhanced IA and Memory Overclocking

Gen 9 Intel Graphics GT2 (Up To 24 EUs)

Corporate/vPro & Consumer Memory Up To DDR4-2666 (Native) Up To DDR4-2666 (Native) Up To DDR4-2933(Native) Media, Display & Audio DP 1.2 & HDMI 1.4

HDCP 2.2 (HDMI 2.0a w/LSPCON)

HEVC & VP9 10-bit Enc/Dec, HDR, Rec.2020, DX12

Integrated Dual-Core Audio DSP DP 1.2 & HDMI 1.4

HDCP 2.2 (HDMI 2.0a w/LSPCON)

HEVC & VP9 10-bit Enc/Dec, HDR, Rec.2020, DX12

Integrated Dual-Core Audio DSP

SoundWire Digital Audio Interface DP 1.2 & HDMI 1.4

HDCP 2.2 (HDMI 2.0a w/LSPCON)

HEVC & VP9 10-bit Enc/Dec, HDR, Rec.2020, DX12

Integrated Dual-Core Audio DSP

SoundWire Digital Audio Interface I/O & Connectivity Integrated USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)

Thunderbolt 3.0 (Alpine Ridge) Integrated USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)

Integrated Intel Wireless-AC (Wi-Fi / BT CNVi)

Integrated SDXC 3.0 Controller

Thunderbolt 3.0 (Titan Ridge) w/ DP 1.4 Integrated USB 3.2 Gen 2

Integrated Intel Wireless-AC (Wi-Fi / BT CNVi)

Integrated SDXC 3.0 Controller

Thunderbolt 3.0 (Titan Ridge) w/ DP 1.4 Storage Next Gen Intel Optane memory

PCIe 3.0, SATA 3.0 Next Gen Intel Optane memory

PCIe 3.0, SATA 3.0 Next-Gen Intel Optane memory

PCIe 3.0, SATA 3.0 Security Intel SGX 1.0 Intel SGX 1.0 Intel SGX 1.0 Power Management C8 Support C10 & S0ix Support for Modern Standby C10 & S0ix Support for Modern Standby Launch 2017 2018 2019

It could be possible that the upcoming Intel Core i7-9700K, a 6 core, 12 thread processor, can be featuring a soldered integrated heat spreader to enable higher clock rates and lower CPU temps. It will also be the first Intel soldered mainstream chip in many years if that was to be the case but since this is a rumor, we have to wait for actual details and 1st August is only a couple of weeks away to find out if this is the truth or not.

At the same time, board makers have started adding BIOS support for next-generation CPUs on the current Z370 motherboards so maybe this rumor has some weight to it.