Intel's controversial 'auction-only' Core i9-9990XE finally goes on sale, sort of

From PC World: If you covet nigh-impossible things to get, then you’ll be happy that Intel’s ultra-powerful and uber-rare Core i9-9990XE processor has finally reached retail.

Well, sort of anyway. As noted by AnandTech’s Anton Shilov, German retailer CaseKing.De has listed the Core i9-9990XE for 2.999,00 Euros or $3,376.08 American. This LGA2066 CPU packs 14 Hyper-Threaded cores based on the Skylake-X microarchitecture, and it can run all those cores at 5GHz turbo frequency.

Don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of the Core i9-9990XE. The CPU isn’t in Intel’s official ARK database. It only showed up on the radar when it surfaced earlier this year as an “auction only” item. And by auction, that didn’t mean consumers could nab them by bidding on them—it meant the companies that built high-end PCs would have to bid on them to get one.

The auction-only approach was derided by PC enthusiasts who felt left out of the action, and by AMD fans who said it was just a PR stunt to get attention.

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