Intel's Kaby Lake Desktop Processors Ride Into the Sunset

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In addition to Kaby Lake-G's demise, Intel is also retiring the Kaby Lake desktop processors. Intel has issued a PCN (product change notification) document announcing that the chipmaker is officially discontinuing its 7th Generation Kaby Lake (KBL) Core, Celeron and Pentium desktop processors.

(Image credit: Intel)

Kaby Lake processors made their debut in 2017 with the sole objective of competing with the first generation of AMD Ryzen desktop processors, which employed the Zen microarchitecture. While both rivals were supposedly on even ground (14nm process node), AMD had pushed processor core counts up to eight while Intel was still confined to four cores. After a short two-year run, Intel has finally decided that it's time to discontinue the Kaby Lake family to free up 14nm production space to concentrate on newer products.

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Marketing NameProduct Code
Intel Core i5-7600KCM8067702868219
Intel Core i5-7400CM8067702867050
Intel Pentium G4560CM8067702867064
Intel Core i5-7400TCM8067702867915
Intel Core i5-7600CM8067702868011
Intel Core i5-7600TCM8067702868117
Intel Core i7-7700KCM8067702868535
Intel Core i3-7320CM8067703014425
Intel Core i3-7300CM8067703014426
Intel Core i3-7350KCM8067703014431
Intel Core i3-7100CM8067703014612
Intel Pentium G4620CM8067703015524
Intel Pentium G4600CM8067703015525
Intel Celeron G3950CM8067703015716
Intel Celeron G3930CM8067703015717
Intel Core i3-7300TCM8067703015810
Intel Core i3-7100TCM8067703015913
Intel Pentium G4600TCM8067703016014
Intel Pentium G4560TCM8067703016117
Intel Celeron G3930TCM8067703016211

Intel's document list 20 different Kaby Lake chips that range from the entry-level Celeron G3950 dual-core chip to the flagship Core i7-7700K quad-core part. The chipmaker has set April 24, 2020, as the last date for orders and October 9, 2020, as the last shipment date.

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Zhiye Liu
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.

3 Comments Comment from the forums
  • mdd1963
    "..with the sole objective of competing with first generation Ryzen processors"

    Wonder who decided it'd be best to (attempt) put that little semi-spin on it, especially in light of the fact that Kaby Lake CPUs were reviewed, shipping, and delivered months before the first Ryzen was benchmarked in any games. :)
    Reply
  • Olle P
    mdd1963 said:
    Wonder who decided...
    Why is it important who did it?
    It's obvious that Kaby Lake was released well ahead of the regular schedule. Should normally have been released around the same time as the first Ryzen.
    Intel probably had a pretty good hunch that Ryzen would be good, and therefore decided to grab some extra market share of the 4Q16 and 1H17 sales by this earlier release. Otherwise more consumers would wait and compare Ryzen to Kaby Lake before buying, and end up going with Ryzen.
    Reply
  • GetSmart
    Intel's Kaby Lake is probably the last CPU to have its power consumption aligned to its TDP. Nowadays all the new TDPs are mostly marketing numbers.
    Reply