• News

Intel's Coffee Lake Arrives: Review Roundup

Unquestionably the best gaming CPUs money can buy.

Chris Jarrard

October 5, 2017 9:50 AM

2

The rumors and speculation now mean nothing. Intel’s newest platform, Coffee Lake, has arrived. For PC gamers and system builders, it offers top of the line performance for a competitive price at every level. Featuring the first appearance of 6-core parts in its mainstream product lines, Coffee Lake offers bang for the buck and, for many use cases, represents the largest single-generation bump Intel has delivered since Sandy Bridge.

Review embargos for the CPU and motherboard lineup has lifted this morning. You can catch up on the specifics and benchmarks from a sampling below:

AnandTech
EuroGamer
GamersNexus
TechPowerUp
TomsHardware

For those who would rather not take the time to pour over charts and numbers, know that the Core i7-8700K is the best gaming CPU that money can buy right now and delivers a huge boost in performance for productivity apps and encoding. The Core i5-8400 is the new mid-range gaming king, often outperforming much more expensive Core i7 predecessors with ease. For under $200, this CPU will find its way into thousands of gaming builds in the coming months. The lower-priced Core i3-8100 gives you the same performance as a Skylake or Kaby Lake Core i5 for half the price.

While these new CPUs require the use of the new Z370, B360, and H370 motherboards, the added performance gains for gamers who have been sitting on older Bloomfield, Lynnfield, and Sandy Bridge platforms is compelling. Users with high-refresh rate displays will see big gains in framerates, even versus more recent Devil’s Canyon and Skylake setups. For those who use their machines for streaming, rendering, and encoding, Coffee Lake is a worthwhile investment.

There are rumblings online about limited availability for some of these parts in the near future. If you see some of the higher-end parts for sale at MSRP, consider making the jump quickly, as regular stock may not be widely available through the holiday season, similar to the early launch availability of Intel’s Core i7-6700K in 2015.

Check out the Gamers Nexus look at Coffee Lake performance and temperatures below.

Chris Jarrard

Contributing Tech Editor

Chris Jarrard likes playing games, crankin' tunes, and looking for fights on obscure online message boards. He understands that breakfast food is the only true food. Don't @ him.