Intel's unreleased 18-core Xeon CPU hits eBay for $999

Intel's unreleased Broadwell-EP powered Xeon processor has hit eBay, with the Xeon E5-2600 v4 processor being an 18-core part (36 threads thanks to Hyper-Threading) and priced at a pretty damn decent $999.

The new Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 works on existing X99-based motherboards, with a base clock of 2.2GHz, and Turbo frequency of 3GHz. The new Xeon CPU is based on Intel's 14nm process, with a big note that this particular CPU is an engineering sample with the 'A0' stepping which means it's an early sample.

It features 2.5MB of L3 cache per core, with 45MB LLC cache in total. The Xeon E5-2600 v4 comes with a 145W TDP. Now, this super-awesome 18-core Xeon E5-2600 v4 works with the Supermicro X10SR series with the BIOS R 2.0, while the X10DR series works with the BIOS R 2.0 release.

ASUS motherboards will include the X99 series with the BIOS 2101, Sabertooth X99 with BIOS 2101 and the Z10PE series with BIOS 3101. GIGABYTE motherboard support includes their GA-X99 series, as long as they're rocking BIOS F20.