Intel are celebrating the 40th anniversary of their x86 architecture and 8086 processor with the launch of their high-end i7-8086K. Just 50,000 units of this hex core, twelve threaded Coffee Lake processor have been made available globally. Exactly like the i7-8700K, the 8086K features 12MB of smart (L3) cache, 2 channels of DDR4 RAM and has a TDP of 95W. Essentially, the 8086K is Intel’s current Coffee Lake flagship, the i7-8700K, with a single-core turbo frequency factory overclocked by 300 MHz. Thermals permitting, out of the box, the i7-8086K achieves a single core boost speed of 5.0 GHz – which is a new record for Intel. That said, you would be unlucky if you were unable to achieve a 5.0 GHz single core OC with an 8700K. For everything other than single core, the turbo clock speeds on the 8086K exactly match the 8700K which puts the 8086K firmly into gimmick territory. Directly comparing the 8086K and 8700K shows that for a $100 (24%) price premium you get around a 5% performance improvement which drops to around 2% when both chips are overclocked. If the price gap between the 8086K and the 8700K were to fall to less than 20 USD it may be worth considering the 8086K. ^{[Jun '18 CPUPro]}

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