You can now buy the precious Intel i9-9990XE processor

We learned in January that Intel was planning a new high-end Core i9 Extreme Edition processor: the i9-9990XE. Even though it would have fewer cores than the previous one, namely 14 cores and 28 threads compared to the 18 cores and 36 threads of the i9-9980XE, it would offset that in clock speed. The i9-9990XE is clocked between 4.0 and 5.0 GHz, compared with 3.0 to 4.5 GHz. Power consumption also increased to 255W, 95W more than 160W i9-9980XE. The price of the new chip? Undetermined. Instead of selling them to end-users, Intel's plan was to auction them to high-end system builders, so that chips are only sold in complete systems.

But now we have a price. Anandtech reports that one of these high-end system builders, CaseKing.de, has decided to sell the naked chip anyway. The price of this monster? € 2,999 (approximately $ 3,400).

The custom and high-end computer market is a bit strange. These systems, often water cooled and overclocked at the factory, typically present all the attributes of a gaming system, including windowed enclosures and multicolored lights. Rich players and streamers are certainly part of their audience. However, another important market is much less interested in lights and colors: the systems are sold to high frequency traders and other players in the financial world. These groups place a high value on single thread performance and large caches. They will spend significant amounts to be slightly faster than their competitors.

It is mainly to this audience that addresses the i9-9990XE, which explains the pricing not applicable. Another thousand dollars for a processor upgrade is money well spent for many of these buyers.