You probably can not find many of these on a palette , but hey, let’s get ready to start Rocket Lake.
There’s always a buzz about a new chip launch, and given Intel is playing catchup into AMD’s Zen 3, it’s only reasonable that it pushes the boat out that little bit tougher at this time. Its soon-to-be-released Rocket Lake-S chips get a brand new look throughout the board, using the halo chip, the Core i9 11900K, getting some seriously lavish packaging to call its own.
Assuming that the leaked shots over on VideoCardz are legit, the angular design complete with blue perspex panels isn’t your regular chip packaging. We can’t quite tell from these shots what is happening here, beyond it’s definitely not the awesome geometric shapes which have preceded it.
There is a natural progression here in the Core i9 9900K’s dodecahedron and the sheared corner of this 10900K–it’s clearly from the same mindset–but they have let themselves think beyond the erm… box a bit too. You will notice it lines up with Intel’s advertising redesign that fell towards the end of last year as well. That means we receive the brand new Intel logo (no more swirl here people ), and the font for the Core branding too.
I’m not so keen on the blue shading on the CORE and prefer the clean look of the normal 11th Gen packaging, but to each their own. It may be that the last models don’t look so ropey, but we’ll have to wait and watch. It should not be long , as the new chips are expected to ship in March, even though we are still awaiting the precise dates.
Given that Intel had to kill off the elaborate packaging of the Core i9 10900K lately for shipping reasons, we can’t help but wonder whether there are two distinct camps at work at Intel HQ. One that wants to make an event of this halo processor and another that simply wants to get chips on pallets and not ship rancid air throughout the world. We will have to see how long it’ll be ahead of the latter wins out.
