Intel has decided to discontinue its entire 13th Gen Raptor Lake lineup of overclockable "K-series" CPU SKUs. According to an official product change notice, the company will stop accepting orders for chips like the Core i9-13900KS, Core i9-13900K, Core i9-13900KF, Core i7-13700K, Core i7-13700KF, Core i5-13600K, and Core i5-13600KF after May 24th, 2024. Final shipments to vendors are targeted for June 28th. After those dates, availability of the unlocked Raptor Lake processors will rapidly diminish as the remaining inventory gets sold off, possibly at inflated prices due to shortages. This discontinuation comes just over a year after Raptor Lake's launch in late 2022, which delivered additional performance improvements over the previous Alder Lake generation.

Raptor Lake brought higher clocks, more cache, additional efficiency cores, and enough muscle to compete with AMD's Ryzen 7000 CPUs in many workloads. Interestingly, Intel has not yet discontinued Alder Lake, suggesting those 12th-generation chips may still be available for some time. While the death of the overclockable Raptor Lake K-series CPUs is unfortunate for enthusiasts, there is an upside—it paves the way for Intel's current generation Raptor Lake refresh, 14th generation Core processors, to clear inventory before the next-generation processors arrive. The 15th generation "Arrow Lake" Core Ultra 2 series of processors could be teased at the upcoming Computex event in June.

Intel's upcoming 13th generation of Core processors, codenamed "Raptor Lake," is supposed to arrive in the coming days. Apparently, one user pre-ordered the CPU and got it delivered to their home. Pictured below is the box of Intel Core i9-13900KF CPU. This SKU comes without integrated graphics and boasts eight P-cores with 16 E-cores on board. This is supposed to boost performance, along with the higher frequencies Raptor Lake is advertised to bring. The user even showed screenshots of proof that the software recognizes this upcoming model, so the information seems legit. In the screenshots below, we see that the P-cores of this SKU is reaching 5.5 GHz clock speeds. We are yet to see how much this silicon is capable of; however, the frequency alone looks promising.

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced the Strix G35CA, a next-generation desktop gaming PC for Windows 11 powered by the latest 13th Gen Intel Core processors and up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 GPU. The motherboard is built on the all-new Intel Z790 chipset, a robust platform with DDR5, PCI Express (PCIe) 4.0 and WiFi 6E support, ensuring that the G35CA will be a high-performance gaming machine for years to come.

ROG Strix machines are built to power high-performance gaming experiences, and the ROG Strix G35CA is no exception—being powered by up to the 24 core 32 thread Intel Core i9-13900KF processor. Built using Intel's Raptor Lake architecture, the CPU uses a mix of high-powered performance cores and energy-friendly but powerful efficiency cores. This CPU is optimized for Windows 11 and can intelligently allocate tasks between the cores to maintain high performance without sacrificing power efficiency, giving users a seamless gaming experience. With maximum boost clocks of up to 5.8 GHz, this processor is the clear choice for gamers who demand the very best hardware.

There have been some rumours circulating about Intel looking at increasing the pricing for its CPUs and if a screenshot from Amazon UK posted by @momomo_us on Twitter is to be believed, it looks like it'll be a significant increase in price. The Core i9-13900KF is listed with a price of £750.12, or almost US$815, admittedly including 20 percent VAT. That's a significant price increase over the Core i9-12900KF which normally retails for £679, but is currently offered for £608.99 by Amazon UK. It doesn't look better further down the stack either, with the Core i7-13700K coming in at £547.22 compared to a retail price of £409.88 for the Core i7-12700K.

The Core i7-13700KF should land at £516.58, versus £396.40 for the Core i7-12700KF. Finally the Core i5-13600KF ends up at £349.75 versus £272.99 for the Core i5-12600KF. As such, we're looking at a price increase of somewhere between around £80 and £140 depending on the SKU. These are not insignificant price increases if these are the actual retail prices we can expect when Intel launches its 13th gen Core processors in October. Hopefully we'll get some clarity next week, when Intel is said to be announcing the new CPUs. @momomo_us also provided some box art for the new processor boxes, for your viewing pleasure.