The Intel Core i9-9900K, the last-gen flagship processor, has now officially been discontinued, along with the entire 9th-gen Coffee Lake Refresh range.
The ‘product discontinuance program’ actually kicked off December 7, although the last order date for 9th-gen CPUs doesn’t come until June 25, 2021, with the final shipments happening a year from now, on December 24, 2021.
In other words, Core i9-9900K chips aren’t going to disappear overnight, and will still be available for a while yet. But if you want one, you might want to move sooner rather than later.
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Of course, this is a (slightly over) two-year-old chip now, and with the new Rocket Lake range and 8-core flagship processor hopefully about to drop early in 2021, perhaps only a few months away, prospective CPU buyers will quite likely be waiting to see what happens on that front – big things are promised, certainly for gamers.
Real deal potential
However, the Core i9-9900K still remains a great 8-core gaming CPU in itself, offering plenty of power, and the attraction here is the possible deals that might be seen. We’ve already witnessed some mammoth price cuts recently – this processor was reduced by almost 60% for Black Friday, in fact – and we may see similarly juicy bargains when retailers are shifting remaining stock.
And, especially if you can find the Core i9-9900K for cheaper than the Intel Core i7-10700K, it'll definitely be worth picking up. After all, the 10th-gen Core i7 has the same amount of cores and threads, and only a marginally better Turbo Boost. The 9900K will be a top-notch gaming processor for years to come, even if it's now becoming discontinued.
Intel’s 8th-gen chips were previously discontinued on June 1, 2020, and last orders for those chips rolls around in just over a week, on December 18. If you search hard, you can still find the 8700K here and there online; it has a very scattered presence, but no major retailers are carrying it any longer, unsurprisingly.
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Via Wccftech
