Intel today has officially launched their new Core i9-10850K CPU. The 10-core, 20-thread design slots in between the top of the line i9-10900K and the i9-10800K, and only features a small (100 MHz) clock reduction compared to the 10900K across all clocks (this means base, set at 3.6 GHz; Turbo Boost Max 2.0, reaching 5.0 GHz; Turbo Boost 2.0 going up to 5.1 GHz. Thermal Velocity Boost tech is also supported, which should allow for up to 5.2 GHz on a single core and a 4.8 GHz clock across all cores. The TDP remains the same as the 10900K at 125 W, with the same Tau and PL1/PL2 values as 10900K (56 sec, 125 W, and 250 W).

The new CPU improves on the value proposition of the 10900K by being available at around 10% less than Intel's top-of-the-line Comet Lake-S CPU, with pricing set at $453 (at 1K tray quantities). As Intel's manufacturing woes and 14 nm production output keep failing to meet demand, it's likely that the company will continue to fine-tune its product stack with as many CPUs as it can, in order to achieve higher ASP on each model than they would if they had to only count on manufacturing yields and/or manually disabling cores in chips that can't quite hit their advertised speeds for each CPU model. The Core i9-10850K retains compatibility with Intel's Z490, H470 and B460-based motherboards.