In brief: The end of an era is approaching for the CPU market. Intel is reportedly planning to discontinue its entire line of 8th-gen Coffee Lake CPUs this year, which means an end to the distribution of dozens of popular processors.
The discontinuation notices went out yesterday, but the actual end-of-life date for all affected products won't come until mid-December. Beyond that point, distributors will no longer be able to place orders for new 8th-gen parts. The range of discontinued products includes everything from the Intel Celeron G4900 to the enthusiast-grade i7 8700K.
While there could be any number of reasons that Intel has chosen now to begin discontinuing these processors, their age is likely the most prominent reason. 9th-gen Intel CPUs have been around for quite some time now, and the company has already begun to ship out select 10th-gen products, such as the i9-10900K, to early adopters and reviewers.
If you don't have the inclination to snag some of these newer chips, don't fret about this news too much. As we said, retailers have until December to order 8th-gen CPUs, and it will likely be quite some time before those stocks are fully depleted. Further, as Tech Radar points out, we might see some 9th-gen chips get price reductions in the near future, as Intel streamlines its manufacturing processes and drops aging products from its catalog.
Tom's Hardware has helpfully compiled a full list of soon-to-be-discontinued products, which you can see below:
- Intel® Celeron® G4900 Processor
- Intel® Celeron® Processor G4900T
- Boxed Intel® Celeron® Processor G4900
- Boxed Intel® Celeron® Processor G4920
- Boxed Intel® Core™ i3-8100 Processor
- Boxed Intel® Core™ i3-8300 Processor
- Boxed Intel® Core™ i3-8350K Processor
- Boxed Intel® Core™ i5-8400 Processor
- Boxed Intel® Core™ i5-8500 Processor
- Boxed Intel® Core™ i5-8600 Processor
- Boxed Intel® Core™ i5-8600K Processor
- Boxed Intel® Core™ i7-8086K Processor
- Boxed Intel® Core™ i7-8700 Processor
- Boxed Intel® Core™ i7-8700K Processor
- Boxed Intel® Pentium® Gold G5400 Processor
- Intel® Pentium® Gold G5400 Processor
- Intel® Pentium® Gold G5400T Processor
- Intel® Pentium® Gold G5500 Processor
- Intel® Pentium® Gold G5500T Processor
- Intel® Pentium® Gold G5600 Processor
- Intel® Pentium® Gold G5600F Processor
- Intel® Pentium® Gold G5600T Processor
- Boxed Intel® Pentium® Gold G5500 Processor
- Boxed Intel® Pentium® Gold G5600 Processor
- Boxed Intel® Pentium® Gold G5600F Processor
- Intel® Celeron® Processor G4920
- Intel® Core™ i3-8100 Processor
- Intel® Core™ i3-8100B Processor
- Intel® Core™ i3-8100T Processor
- Intel® Core™ i3-8300 Processor
- Intel® Core™ i3-8300T Processor
- Intel® Core™ i3-8350K Processor
- Intel® Core™ i5-8400 Processor
- Intel® Core™ i5-8400T Processor
- Intel® Core™ i5-8500 Processor
- Intel® Core™ i5-8500B Processor
- Intel® Core™ i5-8500T Processor
- Intel® Core™ i5-8600 Processor
- Intel® Core™ i5-8600K Processor
- Intel® Core™ i5-8600T Processor
- Intel® Core™ i7-8700 Processor
- Intel® Core™ i7-8700T Processor
- Intel® Core™ i7-8700B Processor
- Intel® Core™ i7-8700K Processor
As the outlet points out, some duplicates are to be expected, since Intel differentiates between "boxed and tray chips" (chips designed for solo builders and OEMs, respectively).
If you're in the market for a new CPU following this news, now might be the time to take a gander at our reviews for the i9-10900K and the i7-10700K. If the Red Team is more your speed, we were impressed with how well AMD's Ryzen 7 3700X stacks up against some of Intel's latest silicon across both gaming and productivity use cases.