Intel Announces 10th Gen Core S-Series CPUs, Led By The Core i9 10900K

Intel today is announcing their 10th Gen Core "Comet Lake" S-Series processors led by the Core i9 10900 series that the company claim is now the world's fastest gaming processor and offers clock speeds up to 5.3GHz.

With the 10th Gen Intel Core S-Series CPUs, which remain on a 14nm process, the top turbo frequencies on the high-end SKUs can now hit 5.3GHz.

With these new Intel CPUs there are also new overclocking knobs and an improved Intel Extreme Tuning Utility and Intel Performance Maximizer, but those software solutions remain Windows-only so really not relevant for pure Linux users...

While no new microarchitecture, the clock frequency improvements come thanks to a new thin die solder thermal interface material, Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 can now work for the two best cores for better single/dual-core workload turbo performance, and other optimizations.

These new CPUs still are limited to native DDR4-2933 support and PCI Express 3.0 connectivity. Intel's new CPUs also require new motherboards with the Intel 400 Series chipsets. On that front, the 400-series motherboards are seeing 2.5G Ethernet (Foxville) support as well as integrated WiFi 6 AX201 connectivity.

The top-end Core i9 10900K/10900KF SKUs feature a base clock speed up to 3.7GHz, an Intel Turbo Boost speed up to 5.1GHz, an Intel TBM 3.0 frequency up to 5.2GHz, and an Intel Thermal Velocity Boost up to 5.3GHz. The Core i9 10900 series features 10 cores and twenty threads. The 10900K/10900KF models feature a 125 Watt TDP and are fully unlocked processors.

For the 10th Gen Intel Core CPUs with integrated graphics, they remain the same Gen9 UHD Graphics 630 at best. Pricing on the Core i9 10900K is at $488 USD while at the bottom end of the stack are a number of Pentium and Celeron models for less than $100 USD.

Those are the highlights from today's announcements. Stay tuned for performance benchmarks and Linux support overview in the coming weeks.