Intel retires Kaby Lake-X less than a year after its release

When Kaby Lake-X launched alongside Skylake-X, the PC community was understandably baffled. Why would Intel release a quad-core CPUs on X299? The i5 7640X (four cores, four threads) and i7 7740X (four cores, eight threads) were nothing more than their Kaby Lake i5 7600K and i7 7700K with clock speed boosts and compatibility with the company’s X299 socket. 

The longer you look at Kaby Lake-X, the more the processor’s shortcomings stood out, lacking support for the additional PCIe lanes on X299 motherboards or more than two of X299’s four memory channels, forcing purchasers to buy more expensive motherboards for a feature set that mostly unusable. 

If you wanted a quad-core, Kaby Lake on a Z270 motherboard was a much better purchase, and if you wanted more than that, you could go for a 6-core or higher on X299, giving Kaby Lake-X no clear position in the CPU market. It is hard to find a situation where anyone would recommend Kaby Lake-X over Intel’s other CPU offerings.    

Intel has confirmed that Kaby Lake-X will enter EOL (End of Life) status on May 7th, less than a year after the product’s launch. With the release of Coffee Lake, the market position of Kaby Lake-X has been undermined further, making Intel’s 6-core processors a much better purchase for high-performance users.