According to the official roadmap, Intel will release Broadwell-K and Skylake-S mid-2015. Both are built on the 14nm process where the former is for overclockers and the latter for the mainstream users, and that is something a lot of our readers are looking forward to. However, new information points towards some bad news for all of us waiting for these – Broadwell-K is having overheating issues. The CPU was originally set to a 65W TDP, but it has been unable to reach that. Instead, it’s ranging about 88W instead and even up to 95W on some models.
It is said that the problem comes from Broadwell architecture itself, but is not categorized as a design flaw but rather a situation that was possibly expected. Considering the young age of the fabrication process, this isn’t all that unexpected and there’s even still a lot of optimisation that can be done on the current 22nm.
A 90-95W TDP isn’t really an issue in itself and something no overclocker would have any problem with, although there isn’t any doubt that everyone wants it as low as possible. The really bad news is the rumoured complete removal of the Broadwell-K series by Intel executives – at least initially. It might simply not be economically possible to bring it to the market at this point.
So, to summarize the above: Broadwell-K is running too hot for the 65W TDP and will most likely come with a 90W TDP, that is if it doesn’t get canceled altogether, as rumoured. A third third option would be a delay on the release date of the K models. However, that could collide with the 140W TDP Broadwell-E scheduled for Q1 2016. I am sure we’ll find out a lot more very soon because those release dates are moving closer each and every day.
Thanks to MyDrivers for providing us with this information
