Intel's flagship Skylake desktop CPUs are here, DDR4 memory and NVMe support

3:12:00 AM dickwyn 0 Comments

After months and weeks of delays, today Intel is finally unleashing their new 6th generation core processors which has the company's new an improved 14nm die. As expected, first out of the line is the two flagship desktop SKUs which Intel plans to offer to their overclocking community. The new Core i7 6700K and the Core i5 6600K will be driving the first wave of Z170 motherboards coming out today.

The i7 6700K will have a quad core CPU with hyperthreading enabled (8 cores) and will feature a base clock of 4.0GHz with a turbo frequency of 4.2GHz. Also included in the package is 8MB of L3 cache and the new Intel HD 530 graphics processor that is clocked in a 1.2GHz. The more mainstream i5 6600K in the other hand comes with a quad core CPU (4 cores) that is clocked in at 3.5GHz with a 3.9GHz turbo frequency. It also comes with 6MB of L3 cache and the same Intel HD 530 graphic found in the i7.

All of these specifications is packed into a processor that features a 91w thermal design and is higher than the 85w TDP that came with the Haswell processors. But bottom line, the new unlocked Skylake SKUs supports the new DirectX 12 API that comes with Windows 10 and also includes support for DDR4 memory, NVMe drives, and the new Z170 motherboards which come with a broad range of I/O options.

As expected, the new Skylake CPUs will be using the new LGA 1151 processor but intel is shaking things up a bit by not including a stock heatsink for the overclocking SKUs. This choice can be clearly seen with the new box for the i7 6700K and the i5 6600K which feature a new hero graphic and the box looks flat like the extreme edition CPUs on the LGA 2011 platform.

The i7-6700K has an MSRP of $350 (~RM 1,356) while the i5-6600K (~RM 941) is at $243. These two unlocked CPUs are now available for purchase but there's no official word as to when they will arrive in Malaysia. As for the rest of the Skylake CPUs, Intel says more will be revealed during IDF 2015 later this month and by then we will also know a little bit more about the other Skylake processors that intel has souped up.