After being listed and going on sale just a few days ago, Intel's Core i7-11700K Rocket Lake CPU has landed in the hands of its first customers. The buyers, who are mostly from Germany, have posted their unboxing pictures and first performance benchmarks of the retail chip.
Intel Core i7-11700K Rocket Lake Desktop CPU Delivered To First Customers - Unboxing & Performance Benchmarks Leaked Ahead of Launch
The Intel Core i7-11700K Rocket Lake Desktop CPU isn't supposed to be available for pre-order till the 16th of March with a hard launch scheduled for the 30th of March. However, one of the biggest retailers in Germany, MindFactory, listed the chips up for pre-order a few days back and customers have managed to grab the chip a full month before launch.
This is also the first time that we will be looking at the retail chip in action however as detailed before, a new microcode update is planned for Rocket Lake CPUs which will be arriving in mid of March to improve gaming and multi-core CPU performance so don't expect these results to be a final representation of the chip at all.
Intel Core i7-11700K 8 Core & 16 Thread Rocket Lake Desktop CPU Specs
The Core i7-11700K features the same core configuration as the Core i9-11900K of 8 cores and 16 threads but comes with reduced clock speeds. The chip is said to feature a boost clock of 5.0 GHz on a single & 4.6 GHz across all of its 8 cores. The CPU will even carry the same amount of cache so nothing has changed but the main difference should come from the clocks and power limits. This lower-binned chip will sit at around 225-250W (PL2) limit while the PL1 limit will be standard at 125W. The PL1 rating has a TAU duration of 56 seconds while the PL2 rating has a TAU duration of 2.44ms.
It will be interesting to see how Rocket Lake CPUs overclock since the minute difference between the Core i9 and Core i7 chips can be overcome by a small overclock. As for pricing, the Core i7 will also be cheaper than the Core i9 variant but we don't know yet how Intel will price its 8 core Rocket Lake-S Desktop CPUs yet. There are reports that Intel could aggressively price the chips at around $400 US for the Core i9 and $300 US for the Core i7 which could prove to be a great decision if they really want to go against AMD's Zen 3 based parts in the sub-$500 US segment.
Intel 11th Gen Rocket Lake Desktop CPU Lineup Specs (Preliminary):
| CPU Name | Cores / Threads | Base Clock | Boost Clock (1-Core) | Boost Clock (All-Core) | Cache | Graphics | TDP (PL1) | TDP (PL2) | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core i9-11900K(F) | 8 / 16 | 3.50 GHz | 5.30 GHz | 4.80 GHz | 16 MB | Intel Xe 32 EU (256 Cores) | 125W | 251W | $539 US (K) $513 US (KF) |
| Core i9-11900(F) | 8 / 16 | 2.50 GHz | 5.20 GHz | 4.70 GHz | 16 MB | Intel Xe 32 EU (256 Cores) | 65W | 224W | $439 US $422 US (F) |
| Core i9-11900T | 8 / 16 | 1.50 GHz | 4.90 GHz | 3.70 GHz | 16 MB | Intel Xe 32 EU (256 Cores) | 35W | 115W | $439 US |
| Core i7-11700K(F) | 8 / 16 | 3.60 GHz | 5.00 GHz | 4.60 GHz | 16 MB | Intel Xe 32 EU (256 Cores) | 125W | 251W | $399 US (K) $374 US (F) |
| Core i7-11700(F) | 8 / 16 | 2.50 GHz | 4.90 GHz | 4.40 GHz | 16 MB | Intel Xe 32 EU (256 Cores) | 65W | 224W | $323 US $298 US (F) |
| Core i7-11700T | 8 / 16 | 1.40 GHz | 4.60 GHz | 3.60 GHz | 16 MB | Intel Xe 32 EU (256 Cores) | 35W | 115W | $323 US |
| Core i5-11600K(F) | 6 /12 | 3.90 GHz | 4.90 GHz | 4.60 GHz | 12 MB | Intel Xe 32 EU (256 Cores) | 125W | 224W? | $262 US (K) $237 US (KF) |
| Core i5-11600 | 6 /12 | 2.80 GHz | 4.80 GHz | 4.30 GHz | 12 MB | Intel Xe 32 EU (256 Cores) | 65W | 154W | $213 US |
| Core i5-11600T | 6 /12 | 1.70 GHz | 4.10 GHz | 3.50 GHz | 12 MB | Intel Xe 32 EU (256 Cores) | 35W | 92W | $213 US |
| Core i5-11500 | 6 /12 | 2.70 GHz | 4.60 GHz | 4.20 GHz | 12 MB | Intel Xe 32 EU (256 Cores) | 65W | 154W | $192 US |
| Core i5-11500T | 6 /12 | 1.50 GHz | 3.90 GHz | 3.40 GHz | 12 MB | Intel Xe 32 EU (256 Cores) | 35W | 92W | $192 US |
| Core i5-11400(F) | 6 /12 | 2.60 GHz | 4.40 GHz | 4.20 GHz | 12 MB | Intel Xe 24 EU (192 Cores) | 65W | 154W | $182 US $157 US (F) |
| Core i5-11400T | 6 /12 | 1.30 GHz | 3.70 GHz | 3.30 GHz | 12 MB | Intel Xe 24 EU (192 Cores) | 35W | 92W | $182 US |
Intel Core i7-11700K 8 Core & 16 Thread Rocket Lake Desktop CPU Unboxing
Users from Computerbase, PCGamesHardware, and HardwareLuxx forums have posted unboxing and package shots of the Intel Core i7-11700K CPU. As expected, the retail packaging is more in line with the leaked packages from Videocardz than the ones that we saw a few days ago. The CPU will come in a standard cardboard package with Intel's latest logo design and will have a cut-out to view the CPU itself.
The CPU as always will be packaged within a plastic container and other contents include a black-colored stock Intel heatsink and a warranty manual. Most users are going to dispose of the stock CPU heatsink and go with a high-end liquid cooling solution if they want to make use of the full potential of the Intel Rocket Lake chip.
Intel Core i7-11700K 8 Core & 16 Thread Rocket Lake Desktop CPU Benchmarks
Alright so let's talk about the performance tests, the tests were done on the MSI MEG Z490I Unify motherboard with 16 GB of G.Skill ARES memory (DDR4-3200), a Xilence LiquRizer 240 AIO cooler, and an AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card (Bar & Rage-mode enabled). There are tons of CPU benchmarks done so we'll try to break them all down for you to tell which ones were done at stock and which ones were done with overclocked speeds.
Intel Core i7-11700K Stock & 4.9 GHz OC Cinebench R20 Benchmarks:
Intel Core i7-11700K Stock & 4.9 GHz OC Cinebench R23 Benchmarks:
Intel Core i7-11700K Stock & 4.9 GHz OC 3DMark TimeSpy Benchmarks:
Intel Core i7-11700K Stock & 4.9 GHz OC CPU-z Benchmarks:
The user also tested the Intel Core i7-11700K Rocket Lake Desktop CPU in CPU-z benchmark with stock, AVX2, and AVX-512 instruction sets. The results can be seen below.
The user from Computerbase ran the Core i7-11700K on a slightly better configuration which used the ASRock Z590M-ITX/ax motherboard and 32 GB of DDR4-3600 MHz memory. At stock, the CPU is faster than the results posted above on the Z490 platform. The max temperatures reached around 60C on the chip which is pretty decent considering a 240mm AIO cooler was used.
Expect to see more information on the processors in the coming weeks along with pricing updates on when and where you can buy these chips for your 400 and 500-series motherboards.
