News

Intel Cuts Prices For i3 7350K Unlocked Dual Core CPU

Since the start of the year, Intel faced their toughest competition in over a decade. Unlike competition in the new mobile sector, the struggle is for the traditional desktop space. AMD launched their new Ryzen processors to great fanfare. This finally brought strong competitiveness in over a decade. Facing a resurgent competitor, it appears Intel has turned to price cuts to maintain dominance.

Over the weekend, Intel slashed the prices for their i3 7350K processor to $149. The 7350K features 2 cores built on the latest 14nm Kaby Lake architecture.  With an unlocked multiplier for overclocking, the chip appeared to be a pre-emptive strike against Ryzen. With up to 4 threads available and 4MB of L3 cache, the 7350K is a valid entry level gaming CPU. The plan appeared to target the chip at budget gamers on 1080p monitors looking for a cheap CPU upgrade.

Unfortunately for Intel, the initial $184 launch price is no longer sustainable because of Ryzen. For just $189, AMD is offering the Ryzen 5-1500X with 4 cores and 8 threads at 3.5 GHz – 3.9 GHz. The Ryzen 5-1400 quad-core parts are even cheaper at $169 with slightly reduced clocks. There is also the fact that at $184, Intel priced the chip too closely to their full fledged 4 core i5 units as well.

As a result, Intel is now pricing the i3 7350K at $149 which should help give the chip some breathing room. Once you throw in the cost of a cooler though (as the 7350K lacks a stock cooler), the price is about on par with the Ryzen 5 1400. Time will tell Intel’s price cut is enough or is just a beginning of a sliding trend. With AMD’s budget Ryzen 3 set to launch in the near future, it won’t be long till we find out.

Samuel Wan

Samuel joined eTeknix in 2015 after becoming engrossed in technology and PC hardware. With his passion for gaming and hardware, tech writing was the logical step to share the latest news with the world. When he’s not busy dreaming about the latest hardware, he enjoys gaming, music, camping and reading.

Disqus Comments Loading...

Recent Posts

New Report Suggests Helldivers 2 Xbox Release Unlikely

As one of the most popular online games lately, it’s no surprise that Xbox fans…

10 hours ago

November Xbox Game Pass Games Revealed

We've finally reached the month of November, and that means one thing for Xbox users:…

11 hours ago

PS5 Pro Enhanced Games List Revealed

For those who haven't had it on their radar, this week we take a new…

11 hours ago

MSI Overclocker Pushes Kingston Fury Renegade RAM to Record-Breaking 12,196 MT/s

An overclocker from the MSI team has managed to push the Kingston Fury Renegade CUDIMM…

12 hours ago

NVIDIA Pushes SK Hynix to Accelerate HBM4 Production

It seems that NVIDIA wants to launch its next products ahead of time. We are…

12 hours ago

ASUS Unveils New TUF Gaming A2 SSD Enclosure with Enhanced Durability and Speed

The trend of upgrading storage from traditional hard drives to SSDs has become increasingly popular,…

13 hours ago