It seems that Intel is getting nervous about the AMD Ryzen launch and has started to lower prices on their processors. The equivalent 6900K model however still is 999 USD, twice as much as the Ryzen flagship. Others like the quad-core processors do see a price cut.
Also we think with a tiny bit of tweaking that 6900K might even get beaten or normalized by even a 329 USD Ryzen 7 1700 processor. The new prices have not gone into effect everywhere, here in the EU they are still at the same old level. In the USA etailers like Newegg also is listing older prices.
However it is at Microcenter (USA) where you can see a shift in prices, one very obvious one would be the Intel Core i7-7700K which started selling at 299 US, that’s roughly a $80 lower price over the original MSRP (regular etail recently already was in the 330 USD range though). I do want to emphasize strongly that the prices listed are only in effect at microcenter and will only be available with ‘in store pickups’ and with a limit of 1 per household. Remember though, this is just one (r)etailer showing these prices. We do not know if the rest will follow. It could very well be a little marketing stunt steered by either Microcenter and/or Intel to make the news.
- Intel Core i7-6950X is priced $1599 (USD)
- Intel Core i7-6900K is priced $999 (USD)
- Intel Core i7-6850K is priced $549 (USD)
- Intel Core i7-6800K is priced $359 (USD)
- Intel Core i7-5820K is priced $319 (USD)
- Intel Core i7-7700K is priced $299 (USD)
- Intel Core i7-6700K is priced $259 (USD)
- Intel Core i7-4790K is priced $279 (USD)
- Intel Core i7-7700 is priced $289 (USD)
- Intel Core i7-6700 is priced $259 (USD)
- Intel Core i5-7600K is priced $199 (USD)
- Intel Core i5-6600K is priced $179 (USD)
- Intel Core i5-4690K is priced $189 (USD)
- Intel Core i5-6500 is priced $179 (USD)
- Intel Core i5-4590 is priced $159 (USD)
- Intel Core i3-7350K is priced $159 (USD)
It will remain to be seen if the price drop is a temporary one to counter the Ryzen release ot that is will invoke a cut on a global scale. Maybe Intel will lower it’s chipset prices as well, as the Z170/Z270 chipset is very expensive, and thus makes Intel chipset based motherboards more expensive as well.
