Intel cutting corners, drops premium packaging on flagship Core CPUs

Intel is dropping the premium packaging of two of its high-end flagship Core i9 processors, the Core i9-12900K and Core i9-10980XE.

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The news is coming directly from Intel, with the company posting a Product Change Notification (PCN) for the Core i9-12900K and Core i9-10980XE processors. Starting from September 4, these two processors will not come in their fancy packaging, but rather a regular, same-sized box.

It's no surprise for the Cascade Lake-based Core i9-10980XE processor, but the Core i9-12900K is still being sold right now... while the "Raptor Lake" and the Core i9-13900K aren't too far away now. Hopefully, Intel keeps the fancy packaging for the higher-end Raptor Lake-based Core i9-13900K, and doesn't start cutting corners from here on out.

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If you didn't already know, the Core i9-10980XE processor arrived in a rectangular box with a huge plastic wafer inside, which contains the CPU itself. It looks awesome, and again with an even slicker design on the retail packaging for the Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake" CPU.