Prices Intel Coffee Lake Procs Are Skyrocketing due to 14nm shortages
A while ago you have been able to read here that Global Foundries canceled 7nm to fully focus on 14nm, as that is the most profitable for them. That's was the first serious industry hint. The 14nm process sees massive productions delays and shortages, as a result, Coffee Lake at 14nm procs have risen in price significantly, some even 40% or 60%.
TSMC reported they cannot keep up with 14nm demand. Intel delays 10nm due to issues and later mentioned that instead of baking some series 300 chipsets chips at 14nm, they now order them as 22nm chip. My Dutch colleagues from the HWI noticed this as well and compiled a list of what is going on with prices of coffee lake processors, and the results are pretty shocking really, this is what has been happening in just three weeks time:
Lowest price with stock | |||
---|---|---|---|
1st of September | September 22 | Difference | |
Core i7 8086K | € 419 | € 459 | 10% |
Core i7 8700K | € 349 | € 420 | 20% |
Core i7 8700 | € 319 | € 425 | 33% |
Core i5 8600K | € 249 | € 299 | 20% |
Core i5 8600 | € 225 | € 298 | 32% |
Core i5 8500 | € 205 | € 256 | 25% |
Core i5 8400 | € 199 | € 279 | 40% |
Core i3 8350K | € 174 | € 200 | 15% |
Core i3 8300 | € 139 | € 169 | 22% |
Core i3 8100 | € 109 | € 175 | 61% |
Pentium G5600 | € 89 | € 100 | 12% |
Pentium G5500 | € 81 | € 97 | 20% |
Pentium G5400 | € 60 | N/A | N/A |
Celeron G4920 | € 51 | € 52 | 2% |
Celeron G4900 | € 38 | € 42 | 11% |
For example, if you are eying a Core i5 8400, then you should know it became 40% more expensive ever since the beginning of this month. The Core i3 8100 is now 61% more expensive compared to really September.
When you average the processors out, you will see an overall price increase of 23 percent, that's for the entire range with lots of fluctuations per CPU. It seems the shortages are substantial on the 14nm production lines, which makes me wonder what is to happen with the pending Core 9000 series launch, which also is based on 14nm coffee lake.
Distributors mention that there will be severely limited stock available for Core 9000 (8-core Core i9 9900K), even less than with the Series 9000 launch, and these processors suffered from shortages in availability for months after their release.
Intel is Dropping Processor Prices in Wake of Ryzen Launch - 02/26/2017 02:27 PM
It seems that Intel is getting nervous about the AMD Ryzen launch and has started to lower prices on their processors. The equivalent 6900K model however still is 999 USD, twice as much as the Ryzen f...
AMD cuts APU prices in April - 03/22/2013 08:47 AM
AMD plans to cut some of its APU prices at the end of April to welcome its next-generation Richland APUs, set for launch in early June, according to sources from PC players. Prices of AMD's APUs incl...
Renesas cuts USB 3.0 controller prices in early 2012 - 08/22/2011 10:29 AM
DigiTimes reports Renesas plans to make USB 3.0 controllers cheaper in early 2012. Prices for its 2-port controller chips are expected to be cut to $1.20 from about $2 currently. Renesas Electronics r...
GeForce GTX 200 prices indeed falling - 07/04/2008 08:45 AM
Yesterday we reported that NVIDIA would very likely drop it's prices for the GeForce GTX 260 and 280 to bee able to compete with AMD's offering better. As it seems, that price drop is already in effec...
Senior Member
Posts: 3655
Joined: 2007-05-31
So AMD is having the best time of their life?
Also is it me or the price increase is relative to sale volume? look i3 8100 and i5 8400 for example vs the low volume of the i7 8086K
Depending on where you are... if you are sadly here the GPU are around 150/200 Euro more expensive than NVidia equivalent and if you really really need a Ryzen, it's like the lotery you have more chance to don't have it at all than having one (and no Amazon doesn't provide them here due to tax law, only official provider)... anyway it cost also like Intel CPU.
It last like that since october...

Senior Member
Posts: 3655
Joined: 2007-05-31
This is ridiculous. Bringing non-K chip prices to level of "K" unlocked chips. They do not say that intel's fabs had troubles and reduced production.
So it must be demand thing. Where is this new market which wants more intel's non-K than "K" CPUs? I doubt it is someone focusing on secure computing.
To me, it looks like they are pricing it so close together based on wafer space used for production. And that intel does not give a damn about end user value.
Conspiracy theory:
- Artificially increased prices of PC components
- in 5 years decline in PC market and rise in cloud computing
- all "user" data are on cloud, and no longer yours. And subject of global evaluation.
Also cloud computing work more than fine, if you have unimportant things to do (strategic one should be kept inside the company) then if cost you less to do it in cloudcomputing than on own machine and at the same or faster speed (we have do simulation on period of 4 years and 8 years at work).
About the non-k market demand, it is huge as 90% of the user will not OC their machine at all and so will kept their K at original clock if they get one...
Then the one with the most impresive price augmentation is the most demanded... (yes 90% of the consumer are not like us

Senior Member
Posts: 242
Joined: 2015-05-23
Damn and i wanted to upgrade my set up soon... guess i'll wait for the 9700k or whatever it's called.
Senior Member
Posts: 11808
Joined: 2012-07-20
Well, our shops have all intel's 8000 series available at 5+ stock, means no shortage on EU stores/supply chain.
And there are many 7000 chips too, including 35W T-series.
So, there is huge surplus of 4C/4T i5-7400 (65W) 3.0~3.5GHz to point that that comes with 125 Euro games pack.
And there is 4C/4T i3-8300 (62W) turboing to 3.7GHz with 2MB more cache and which is considerably cheaper.
And in same price as i3-8300 there is 6C/12T Ryzen 2600 (65W) 3.4~3.9GHz.
Apparently, intel can't control AMD's prices to get rid of old 7000 series. But there are plenty of people who would not even look at AMD. And just compare intel with intel.
There is good chance that intel is playing nVidia's supply chain cleanup game.
Senior Member
Posts: 3405
Joined: 2013-03-10
Conspiracy theory:
- Artificially increased prices of PC components
- in 5 years decline in PC market and rise in cloud computing
- all "user" data are on cloud, and no longer yours. And subject of global evaluation.
There isn't enough production capacity in the world. That's of course a conscious decision. Just like OPEC limits oil production to drive the oil price up, the top semiconductor manufacturers limit production to keep the prices where they want them to be. It has been rather easy as the customer base is growing all the time, which means demand (when considering all the sectors) is ever growing. It's truly the most ridiculous sign of the current screwed up situation how GF can simply halt future technology development (7nm) entirely to concentrate on profiting from the current tech (14nm) as much as it can. As far as the manufacturers are concerned, it doesn't matter where the products go, as long as they go, homes, small business, server farms, doesn't matter. No conspiracies are required.