For the past three years, Intel has officially ditched its “exotic” CPU boxes with one of its best CPUs, the 12th Gen Core i9-12900K and HEDT flagship Core i9-10980XE. Instead, Intel replaces each CPU model’s packaging with the same smaller box as its non-flagship Core i9, i7, and i5 counterparts. Intel will begin implementing these changes by September 4th.
The Core i9-12900K box gets the simplest update of the two, and its “exotic” 164 x 130 x 139 mm gold wafer box lacks an Intel cooling solution as other Alder It replaces the same box as the Lake Core i9 model. This new box measures 116 x 44 x 101mm. Please note that this change only applies to the standard Core i9-12900K variant. The special edition Core i9-12900KS retains the chip’s exclusive dark blue-themed exotic package.
The most surprising twist is the box modification of Intel’s nearly discontinued Core i9-10980XE 18 core flagship from nearly four years ago. Intel’s last HEDT platform is still in production and for cost-cutting reasons needs a box art change now. Similar to the Core i9-12900K, the Core i9-10980XE box will shrink from the existing 138 x 138 x 61mm package to a smaller 116 x 44 x 101mm package than the non-flagship. However, the black and gold box art remains the same, in keeping with the “Extreme Edition” lettering in the chip’s model name.
The Core i9-12900K’s box art change shouldn’t come as a surprise. Intel has done this habitually with the past few generations of CPUs and ditched the flagship box art just before releasing Raptor Lake, a new generation of CPUs that could arrive in October. Intel is probably doing this to make the box art of its next-generation CPUs as prominent as possible.
But the Core i9-10980XE’s box art change is pretty baffling given its age. Since Cascade Lake debuted in 2019, Intel has forgotten about his HEDT platform and AMD is dominating the field with his Ryzen Threadripper CPUs. Instead, the company has been relegated to mainstream platforms and instead increased core counts on that front.
However, this Core i9-10980XE box art change could be more than just a cost-cutting move from Intel. There have been rumors that Intel will be returning to his HEDT market relatively soon with a new architecture codenamed Fishhawk Falls (known as Alder Lake-X).
This new architecture mimics Intel’s previous HEDT platform, where the company takes its latest server architecture and transforms it into a high-end consumer desktop platform. In the case of Fishhawk Falls, that architecture will be his HEDT variant of Sapphire Rapids, Intel’s upcoming server architecture built on the same Intel 7 node as Alder Lake.
Anything beyond this information is pure speculation at this time. However, the change to the box art of the Core i9-10980XE is the first sign that Intel will return to the HEDT platform, so it’s possible that this information is genuine. is constantly delayed, so it may take some time.
