Intel’s desktop CPUs have lingered at 14nm since the arrival of desktop Broadwell in 2015 (i7 5775C) followed by desktop variants of Skylake (i7 6700K, 2015), Kaby Lake (i7 7700K, 2017), Coffee Lake (i7 8700K, 2017) and the Coffee Lake refresh (i9 9900K, 2019). To compensate for persistent delays in shrinking to 10nm Intel has changed its approach, choosing higher CPU core counts and faster frequencies through product refreshes to provide the necessary “generational” performance gains consumers have come to expect. By direct consequence motherboard vendors have faced renewed challenges to ensure that motherboards can keep up with an increasing power demand from Intel’s CPUs on its mainstream platform, like the 127W TDP 5GHz 8-Core i9 9900KS. This has led to motherboard vendors refreshing designs to include higher capability power delivery systems, the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming X is one such example.



Link: Kitguru