It's not that simple. Unlocking "everything" would also unlock the price, so you'd have to pay for an i7-11700K even if all you want and need was an i7-11700.
Its not like they need an Intel employee doing the rounds in hotels full of CPUs, to unlock the door with a special key.
We're talking as we always have, about artificial limits. The fact of the matter is that Intel spent time to impose those limits, so its really the other way around.
All the K-CPUs serve is the purpose of product segmentation. Does it unlock the price? Only if Intel says so. But then again, everything unlocks the price in a non-competitive marketplace until competitors kill it with a reduction. Intel is still radically overpricing every little fart, which right now is nonsensical E-cores for desktop and the first real IPC bump in half a decade... along with a new problem hunting for solutions we never needed and a new OS version you don't want anytime soon. Yay for progress?
Right now, it is true the non-K's are already so hungry and hot that the added use of a K model is null and void unless you slap chilled water on it, but that's beside the point. What's really happening here is that Intel's product segmentation has been reduced to a simple TDP limit. And selling non-K with a 125-241W sticker on it, really isn't good for marketing. And we don't accept them lying either, even if they still kinda do. Effectively, K models now serve the purpose of misleading you to think you can buy something faster than you did last year.
Let's call spades, spades.
Imagine not only having locked CPUs in 2021 but having your brainwashed corporate whiteknights defending & justifying them for free.
Then trying to question other people's knowledge.
![Laugh :laugh: :laugh:](https://tpucdn.com/forums/data/assets/smilies/laugh-v1.gif)
You guys have become memes at this point. I'm just gonna stay out of Intel topics from now on cuz I feel my IQ dropping a few points already.
Defending/justifying is just you jumping to conclusions. What's being said is that K models are Intel's product segmentation and that in practice right now, that segmentation is rendered obsolete for the most part. And here's the kicker: those Intel 'knights' you seem to identify are actually saying what they say because the entire Alder Lake line up is a hot mess when you touch PL2 at stock.
Things are what they are. Spades.
The rest is just you assuming stuff to find the argument. There is no justification here, just a way to look at things, something everyone can figure out for themselves. Leave the mob mentality at home.