Intel's iGPU-Disabled Core i5-9400F Lands on Amazon

The Intel Core i5-9400F is among one of the several new 9th-generation Coffee Lake processors that were announced by Intel yesterday. The new hexa-core chip has gone up on Amazon for $208.38.


The Intel Core i5-9400F is built around the Coffee Lake microarchitecture and manufactured with the 14nm process. The processor comes with six cores, but lacks HyperThreading. It clocks in with a 2.9 GHz base clock and a 4.1 GHz boost clock. The Intel Core i5-9400 also carries 9MB of L3 cache and a TDP (thermal design power) rating of 64W.

As denoted by the "F" suffix in its name, the Intel Core i5-9400F belongs to a new breed of processors that come with a disabled iGPU (Integrated Graphics Processing Unit). In the case of this model, that would be the Intel UHD Graphics 630 unit. Therefore, you'll need to pair the processor with a discrete graphics card.

The Intel Core i5-9400F fits nicely into any Intel 300-series motherboard as long as it's updated to the latest BIOS revision. Major motherboard manufacturers, such as MSI and Gigabyte have already started rolling out BIOS updates for their 300-series lineup.

Intel originally established a Recommended Customer Price (RCP) of $182.00 for the Intel Core i5-9400F. However, you can order the processor for $208.38 (~£163.52) at Amazon.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • TCA_ChinChin
    Removed iGPU, gets sold for more than iGPU included i5 by resellers. :(
    Reply
  • spdragoo
    Wow. So much wrong with this CPU (not the story, just the situation):
    -- they just announced them literally this week, & it's already showing at a 15% markup over the MSRP -- & this isn't even from a 3rd-party, this is direct from Intel itself;
    -- Amazon even shows it "temporarily out of stock" (which at least makes sense since it's not officially available yet...but "just announced & not available for sale" is technically not the same as "it exists but it's currently out of stock");
    -- & not so much a disappointment from Intel, but from Amazon, is that they're pushing their "professional installation" service. You can pony up an extra $83 USD for the privilege of...one of Amazon's "trained" "Amazon Home Services" "techs" to come out & pop that CPU into the ZIF socket & attach the CPU cooler for you. And yes, I deliberately added those extra air quotes.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    It's priced about the same as an i5-8500, which has the same single core boost, only the 9400F has a slightly lower base clock and no integrated graphics to fall back on in the event of a graphics card failure. And even the i5-8500 itself is currently marked up $18 over MSRP. At its MSRP it could be a very decent option, but Intel's processors haven't been selling near their MSRPs for months.
    Reply
  • alharrison12
    The iGPU version is available for $204.41:
    http://www.nextwarehouse.com/item/?3318126_g10e
    Reply
  • MADD617
    I don't understand why Intel would put a iGPU in it and disable it? Wouldn't they save money by not including it in the first place, or am I missing something?
    Reply