For those who haven't noticed, the latest incarnation of Intel's i7 has dropped it's multi-threading ability. Although there's been a bit of rejigging regarding the number of cores, the i7 seems to have taken a bit of a backward step with the latest Coffee Lake 9th generation refresh. The i9 is now the new multi-core, multi-threaded CPU to go for if you really must have Intel. Anything else and Threadrippers are still probably going to give you more bang for your buck (as long as you can afford the extra electricity to run them).

Those in any doubt re the latest i7 vs the i9 should refer to the excellent article in Custom PC a couple of months ago which clearly sets the case for both why the i7 has lost it's way and why the i9 is the one to go for.

Bought mine to put in a ... More

For those who haven't noticed, the latest incarnation of Intel's i7 has dropped it's multi-threading ability. Although there's been a bit of rejigging regarding the number of cores, the i7 seems to have taken a bit of a backward step with the latest Coffee Lake 9th generation refresh. The i9 is now the new multi-core, multi-threaded CPU to go for if you really must have Intel. Anything else and Threadrippers are still probably going to give you more bang for your buck (as long as you can afford the extra electricity to run them).

Those in any doubt re the latest i7 vs the i9 should refer to the excellent article in Custom PC a couple of months ago which clearly sets the case for both why the i7 has lost it's way and why the i9 is the one to go for.

Bought mine to put in a new small server. As you'd almost certainly expect for a chip in this price bracket, so far it hasn't been overclocked in any way and hasn't broken a sweat. At the moment multi-threading isn't really needed for today's games, but if you also like your multimedia or do a lot of rendering then this will certainly benefit from the extra cores and threads compared to the latest i7.

Amongst other things my server is now running a custom ARK server, and so far doesn't show any signs of stalling with multiple users online when it performs a world save mid-game. This probably has something to do with the checkbox in Server Manager being ticked for 'Use all cores', but it shows the power of this chip.

If you can afford one then definitely have it on your short-list to give yourself some future proofing. A lot of practical apps can already make use of the multi-threading, and it's only a matter of time before the next generation of games start to follow suit too. Less