At a press event in New York Intel made headlines by officially announcing its new 9 series desktop processors. The reveled CPU's are all designed for content creators and high end gaming computers. Two different i9 CPUs were reveled, the i9-9900K with 8 cores running at a max boost clock of 5.00 GHz, and what Intel is referring to as the fastest mainstream CPU available the i99980XE which has an impressive 16 cores 32 threads with a max boost clock of 4.40 GHz. For the average user the i7-9700K will be the best performance per dollar option as with previous i7-x700K CPUs. The 9700K will have 8-cores and support a max turbo boost of 4.9 GHz and start at around $400. 

     All of the CPUs reveled so far have up to 40 PCIe lanes and support up to dual channel DDR4 2666 memory. All 9 series Intel CPUs will run on a new chip set the Z390 which will offer additional features such as USB 3.1 Gen 2 and integrated WiFi support. There are reports that the new Z390 motherboards will install software and drivers directly to Windows 10 without any notifications to the user and without the need for any network access.

     Intel has taken a controversial move in switching from its classic CPU construction of using thermal paste to bridge the die and the IHS (Integrated Heat Speader) and is now opting to directly solder the two parts together. While this change should only affect overclocking it remains to be seen what benefits or issues might arise from this design change.