Intel “KF” and “F” series processors listed at retailers

At the start of this month, rumours were running wild that Intel was planning to release new “KF” and “F” series processors into their Coffee Lake CPU lineup, releasing without integrated graphics hardware to help overcome the manufacturer’s 14nm production shortfall. 

Now, Intel’s i5-9400F, i5-9600KF, i7-9700KF and i9-9900KF have been listed at retail, something which was first spotted by Tom’s Hardware, confirming the existence of Intel’s new SKUs. 

Looking at the specs below, these new processors will offer the same specifications as their non-F series counterparts, though the lack of integrated graphics may allow these processors to perform better, both from a cooling and a power standpoint. 

If these processors ship without integrated graphics, it is probable that the CPUs will use the same silicon as its standard non-F variants, with the only difference being that the iGPU is disabled. We don’t see Intel going to the effort of designing and fabricating GPU-less CPUs, especially when they could increase their production yields by shipping silicon with faulty iGPUs as F-series GPU-less products. 

So how could this benefit end-users, well first is the fact that the GPU is no longer using any power, allowing F-series chips to push more power to the CPU cores, perhaps enabling longer runs at peak clock speeds or otherwise push performance slightly further. The inactive/dead IGPU silicon would also act as a conductor of heat away from other parts of the processor, which will help the CPU stay cool under load.