The prices of Intel's 10th Gen Comet Lake Core Desktop CPUs have started to appear on retail channels. The Canadian retailer, DirectDial, has listed down three variants which include a single ten core and two eight-core models which feature similar price points compared to their 9th gen predecessors but offer better specifications.

Intel's 10th Gen Comet Lake-S Desktop CPU Prices Revealed - 10 Cores For Under $500 US, Faster 8 Core CPUs Starting at Around $350 US

The three 10th Gen Desktop CPUs were spotted by Momomo_US, listed at the Canadian based tech retailer. It looks like that while these CPUs have been listed early along with preliminary pre-order prices, they won't be available at the same retailer until mid of June which is around two months wait.

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Coming to the processors themselves, we have the 10 core, Core i9-10900, and the 8 cores, Core i7-10700K & the Core i7-10700. The Intel Core i9-10900 has been listed for a price of $679 CAD which equals around $487 USD, the Core i7-10700K has been listed for $585 CAD or $419 USD and the i7-10700 has been listed for $506 CAD or $363 USD. Now there are two important things to consider here, first of all, these are early pre-order listings which means that final prices can be slightly lower. Secondly, the retailer hasn't listed if VAT is included in the prices or not so that may affect the prices to be shown higher here.







With that said, let's move on to the specifications of these three processors and how they compare against Intel's 9th Gen Coffee Lake-Refresh and AMD's Ryzen 3000 Desktop CPUs.

Intel Core i9-10900 - 10 Cores, Up To 5.2 GHz Single-Core, 4.6 GHz All-Core

The Intel Core i7-10900 would be featuring 10 cores and 20 threads. The chip would house 20 MB of total cache and a TDP of 65W. The chip would feature a base clock of 2.8 GHz, a boost clock of 5.0 GHz (single-core), 5.1 GHz (single-core) with Turbo Boost Max 3.0 and 5.2 GHz (single-core) with Thermal Velocity Boost. The chip will feature a maximum all-core boost of 4.6 GHz (TVB).

The Core i9-9900 in comparison was priced around $450 US so we are looking at a similar price (once again you have to take into account the pre-order prices which are usually higher than the MSRP). What's important is that the Core i9-9900 is an 8 core / 16 thread CPU while the Core i9-10900 is a 10 core / 20 thread CPU. The Core i9-10900 also offers higher boost frequencies even though most will have a hard time sustaining those speeds considering the recent benchmarks which showed that the chip consumes way too much power and also runs very hot.

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Compared to AMD's Ryzen 3000 CPUs, the Ryzen 9 3900X is its main competitor in this price range which offers 12 cores and 24 threads and also a lower price point that's close to $400 US after the recent chip discounts on Zen 2 based products by several retailers. The Ryzen 9 3900X can be bought for just $399.99 US at Microcenter at the moment making it a far better value than Intel's yet to release 10th Gen CPU.

Intel Core i9-10900 Desktop CPU Comparison

CPU Name Intel Core i9-9900 Intel Core i9-9900K AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Intel Core i9-10900 Intel Core i9-10900K Process Node 14nm 14nm 7nm 14nm 14nm Cores/Threads 8/16 8/16 12/24 10/20 10/20 Total Cache 16 MB 16 MB 72 MB 20 MB 20 MB Base Clock 3.10 GHz 3.60 GHz 3.80 GHz 2.80 GHz 3.70 GHz Boost Clock (Single) 5.00 GHz 5.00 GHz 4.60 GHz 5.20 GHz 5.20 GHz Boost Clock (All) 4.60 GHz 4.70 GHz 4.20-4.30 GHz 4.60 GHz 4.90 GHz TDP 65W (PL1) 95W (PL1) 105W 65W (PL1) 125W (PL1) Price $449 US MSRP $499 US MSRP $499 US MSRP

$399 US (MC) ~$480 US ~$500 US

Intel Core i7-10700K - 8 Cores, Up To 5.1 GHz Single-Core, 4.7 GHz All-Core

The Intel Core i7-10700K would be featuring 8 cores and 16 threads. The chip would house 16 MB of total cache and a TDP of 125W. The chip would feature a base clock of 3.8 GHz, a boost clock of 5.0 GHz (single-core) and 5.1 GHz (single-core) with Turbo Boost Max 3.0. The all-core boost is rated at 4.7 GHz.

Now the chip is the successor to the Core i7-9700K which was an 8 core chip with hyper-threading disabled. This chip will retail at around $400 US which is closer to the Core i7-9700K than the Core i9-9900K which had an MSRP of $500 US. The Core i7-10700K actually manages to offer better core clocks in all scenarios than the previous 9th Gen flagship and should manage to offer the same or even exceed the performance of the 9900KS under $400 US.

Since the Core i7-10700K is its fastest 8 core chip, a proper comparison would be against AMD's best 8 core chip, the Ryzen 7 3800X. The Ryzen 7 3800X, although runs at lower clock speed, but can be purchased for just $299.99 US at Microcenter. The Ryzen 7 3700X is an even better value if you consider its $269.99 US price and offering around the same performance as the 3800X. Both chips feature lower power consumption and offer some room for overclocking while delivering fantastic multi-threaded performance.

Intel Core i7-10700 - 8 Cores, Up To 5.1 GHz Single-Core, 4.7 GHz All-Core

The Intel Core i7-10700 would be featuring 8 cores and 16 threads. The chip would house 16 MB of total cache and a TDP of 65W. The chip would feature a base clock of 2.9 GHz, a boost clock of 4.6 GHz (single-core) and 4.7 GHz (single-core) with Turbo Boost Max 3.0. The chip will be featuring an all-core boost clock of 4.8 GHz.

Now once again, the same comparisons that were made with the Core i7-10700K are valid with this chip. Sure it does cost less at around $350 US which is around the same that its non-multi-threaded 9th Gen brother, the Core i7-9700, cost around but the 65W Ryzen 7 3700X is still the better value & even features an unlocked design which the 10th Gen 65W CPUs lack.

Intel Core i7-10700 Desktop CPU Comparison

CPU Name Intel Core i7-9700 Intel Core i7-9700K AMD Ryzen 7 3700X AMD Ryzen 7 3800X Intel Core i7-10700 Intel Core i7-10700K Process Node 14nm 14nm 7nm 7nm 14nm 14nm Cores/Threads 8/8 8/8 8/16 8/16 8/16 8/16 Total Cache 12 MB 12 MB 36 MB 36 MB 20 MB 20 MB Base Clock 3.00 GHz 3.60 GHz 3.60 GHz 3.90 GHz 2.90 GHz 3.80 GHz Boost Clock (Single) 4.70 GHz 4.90 GHz 4.40 GHz 4.50 GHz 4.80 GHz 5.10 GHz Boost Clock (All) 4.40 GHz 4.60 GHz 3.90-4.00 GHz 4.10-4.20 GHz 4.60 GHz 4.70 GHz TDP 65W (PL1) 95W (PL1) 65W 105W 65W (PL1) 125W (PL1) Price $335 US MSRP $385 US MSRP $329 US MSRP

$269 US (MC) $399 US MSRP

$299 US (MC) ~$350 US ~$400 US

So coming to the conclusion, these retail listings might be a bit higher than the official MSRP but they are still very close to the real thing, giving us the impression that AMD Ryzen 3000 would still be the better option in terms of pure performance and value for the entirety of 2020 until its own successor arrives.

The Intel 10th Gen Comet Lake-S Desktop CPUs arrive next month and I also wanted to give you a slight update about the launch date. I reported that the CPUs will hit retail shelves on 27th May but that specific date is for the W480, H470, B460, H410 motherboards. The Z490 and 10th Gen CPUs go on retail slightly earlier on the 13th of May which is around two weeks after their official announcement on 30th April.