WTF ?! German retailer Mindfactory listed the unpublished and unannounced Intel Core i7-11700K for more than a day, until they were sold. Now enthusiasts in German forums are posting photos and screenshots of the latest generation processors.
Intel’s eleventh-generation desktop processors, code-named Rocket Lake, were announced in general terms at CES 2021, but only the flagship i9-11900K was formally named.
The Core i7-11700K is no stranger to us: it was the victim of an illegal benchmarking attempt and its bad pictures were spread across the internet. And now it’s listed for sale. Or it was listed, instead, because Mindfactory ended sales with more than 120 units sold.
The listing was previously € 469 ($ 565), including 19% VAT. It is unclear whether they have finished, what their website seems to suggest, or whether Intel has stopped it. Anyway, it’s too late now.
Enthusiasts turned into beta hardware testers have documented their experiences with the new processors in the popular German forums Hardwareluxx, ComputerBase and Extreme PC Games & Hardware (via VideoCardz). It appears that several dozen received 11700K. Some of them have struggled to get the processors running on their Z490 cards, which are some updates from full support, and there have even been problems with the Z590 cards. (Good luck calling Intel support staff about this!) But after a little perseverance, the processors started up.
What was found was what was expected. The 11700K is an octa-core piece with a base clock of 3.6 GHz and a boost clock of 5 GHz. Some beta testers overclocked to 5 GHz on all cores without much work, and one increased to 5.2 GHz .
At these speeds, he performed very well on some rudimentary benchmark runs – but on the margins we’re talking about now, it’s useless to discuss figures until the reviewers can make an accurate comparison.
Speaking of which, there are rumors that Intel could announce Rocket Lake on March 16. We will put them to the test and put the speculation aside as soon as we get the chips in our labs.