Intel Coffee Lake Refresh T-Series CPUs Detailed

A little over two weeks ago, Gigabyte accidentally and briefly listed Intel's Coffee Lake Refresh (CFL-R) T-series processors on its website. Nevertheless, the motherboard manufacturer left out the boost clock rates, but respected leaker momomo_us helped us fill in the missing blanks. Biostar also accidentally slipped out some new details on the Pentium Gold and Celeron SKUs, giving us a complete view of the new landscape.

Intel's 9000-series processors with the "T" suffix are identical to their standard counterparts in terms of core count and cache size, and they are still manufactured with Intel's Coffee Lake microarchitecture and 14nm++ node. However, the biggest differentiator between the T-series and standard processors boils down to optimizations for lower power consumption. As a result, T-series chips operate at lower clock speeds and adhere to the 35W TDP (thermal design power) envelope, which makes them ideal for deployment in small form factor (SFF) systems.

As with any unreleased product, it's good practice to take leaked specifications with a bit of salt. Since Intel hasn't officially announced them, there is still room for tweaking the operating clock speeds.

The Core i9-9900T and Core i7-9700T are the top dogs of the 9th-generation T-series lineup. The first is an octa-core, 16-thread chip that rocks a 2.1GHz base clock and the second is an octa-core, eight-thread part with a 2GHz base clock and 4.3GHz boost clock.

The Core i5 lineup features six cores and six threads. The Core i5-9500T is the highest-clocked model featuring a 2.3GHz base clock and 3.9GHz boost clock. The Core i5-9400T has a 2.2GHz base clock and 3.7GHz boost clock. The Core i5-9400T sports a more moderate 1.8GHz base clock and 3.4GHz boost clock.

The Core i3-9300T and Core i3-9100T are quad-core parts without Hyper-threading. The Core i3-9300T runs at a 3.2GHz base clock, and its boost clock is currently unknown. On the other hand, the Core i3-9100T operates with a 3.1GHz base clock and 3.7GHz boost clock.

At the bottom of the stack, the Pentium Gold G5600T and G5420T come in with two hyper-threaded cores. The G5600T has a 3.3GHz base clock while the G5420T's base clock is 100MHz lower. Lastly, the Celeron G4930T is equipped with two cores and a 3GHz base clock.

Intel could be coming of its 14nm slump very soon. A lot of the 9th-generation desktop chips are back in stock. As a matter of fact, the Intel Core i9-9900K currently tops Amazon's CPU best-seller list. It's possible that Intel could release the new T-series processors as soon as next month. UK retailer Kikatek backs up the theory as the company has listed the Core i9-9900T with a May 15 launch date.