Alongside the announcement of their new x86 anniversary-themed hex-core processor, the Core i7-8086K, Intel also announced that they would be giving a significant portion of their inventory away as part of a massive, globe-crossing giveaway. In total, Intel is producing just 50,000 units of the specially binned Coffee Lake CPU. And of those, 8,086 – or about 16% – are slated to be given away starting tonight.

Intel 8th Generation 'Coffee Lake' Core i7 Desktop Processors
  i7-8086K i7-8700K i7-8700 i7-8700T
Cores 6C / 12T
Base Frequency 4.0 GHz 3.7 GHz 3.2 GHz 2.4 GHz
Turbo Boost 2.0
(Single Core)
5.0 GHz 4.7 GHz 4.6 GHz 4.0 GHz
L3 Cache 12 MB
DRAM Support DDR4-2666
Integrated Graphics GT2: 24 EUs
IGP Turbo 1.20 GHz
PCIe Lanes (CPU) 16
TDP 95 W 95 W 65 W 35 W
Price (tray) $425? $359 $303 $303

At 8pm Eastern (midnight UTC), Intel will be running a series of national 24 hour sweepstakes for the processors. Besides being notable for the sheer number of processors being given away – I simply cannot recall the last time any single event gave away 4-digits' worth of CPUs – an interesting quirk of Intel’s giveaway is that they are allocating a fixed number of CPUs in each sweepstakes nation. For the US this means 2,086 processors, another 2,000 for China, etc. Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, and other countries are also part of the giveaways. So while the giveaway crosses parts of the globe, the odds in any given nation are still decent, especially for places like Canada and Taiwan.

Intel Core i7-8086K Giveaway Regions
Country/Region Number of Winners and Prizes Awarded
United States 2,086
Mainland China 2,000
Germany 1,000
Canada 500
France 500
The United Kingdom 500
South Korea 500
Taiwan 500
Japan 500

Note that this is a 24 hour giveaway; Intel is moving fast here and will be drawing winners next Monday. So for a shot at winning a CPU that, while lacking an official price, Intel is valuing at $425, there’s a relatively short window to enter. Otherwise this leaves 41,914 processors to be split between retail and OEMs, and while the $400+ price tag makes it decidedly un-cheap, I don’t imagine that Intel is going to have much trouble selling all of them.

Source: Intel

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  • CajunArson - Thursday, June 7, 2018 - link

    Intel is evil so I say that EVERYBODY should boycott this contest in the name of FREEDOM!

    Boycott! Boycott! Boycott! Sign up while you are all chanting! Boycott! Boycott!
  • KennyS - Thursday, June 7, 2018 - link

    Except you, right? lol
  • peevee - Thursday, June 7, 2018 - link

    40 year anniversary?
  • FunBunny2 - Thursday, June 7, 2018 - link

    well, it kinda depends on how you measure. the 8086/8088 I saw back then carried a copyright date of 1978. you might still be able to find one.
  • Martijn ter Haar - Thursday, June 7, 2018 - link

    Why this seemingly arbitrary and very limited list of countries?
  • qlum - Thursday, June 7, 2018 - link

    Indeed, there would be nothing that makes shipping it in the entire eu harder for example
  • Death666Angel - Thursday, June 7, 2018 - link

    The "not whole EU" thing is weird. And Germany seems to be a massive Intel market? Who knew. I'll be signing up for sure. :D
  • Mumrik - Friday, June 8, 2018 - link

    They do have a fab there.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, June 7, 2018 - link

    It's essentially 9 different giveaways, one per region, all going on at the same time. I'd assume this allows Intel to customize the rules to each region to ensure compliance with local laws.
  • Makaveli - Thursday, June 7, 2018 - link

    Canada should have just as many units allocated as the USA, China or Germany come on intel

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