Intel Core i9-10980XE

You need to have a large budget, and a genuine need for 18 cores, but if you have the workflow that will utilise the i9-10980XE to its fullest capabilities and have always dreamt of owning one of Intel's XE processors then the massive price cut means there has never been a better time to get on board the 36 thread train and it wins our Enthusiast Award.

At less than half the price of its predecessor with roughly the same multi-core performance and better single core performance, the Core i9 10980XE is a no brainer if you want to go Intel high-end.

With few improvements over its predecessor and performance, in many cases, behind a less-expensive AMD Ryzen alternative, Intel's Core i9-10980XE is an enthusiast-class CPU that can't quite live up to the "Extreme" in its name.

That said, the ongoing threat from AMD is very different today than it was when the Core i9-9980XE launched. And Team Ryzen is about to drop a jaw-droppingly powerful upgrade in the Threadripper 3000 series. In this round of the HEDT war, however, Intel’s top-end part is actually the more affordable option. Whether or not that cost savings is enough to sway enthusiasts opinions in Intel’s favor remains to be seen, but it sure has been fun to watch these two companies duke it out the last couple of years. We’re eager to see how the high-end, enthusiast computing landscape will be reshaped in the months ahead.

Either way, the Core i9-10980XE sits a few hundred pounds above AMD's mainstream flagship but offers additional features that some will require for their specific needs. For those people, the Core i9-10980XE is a great buy, especially as X299 motherboards can be had for less than £200, and the CPU is a far better all-rounder than AMD's 2nd Gen Threadrippers. The 3rd Gen successors, meanwhile, look set to sit in a completely different price bracket, regardless of their performance. We're keen to see new things from Intel here as much as the next guy, but for now, 18 cores and a whole lot of performance and bandwidth just got a heck of a lot cheaper.

The Core i9 10980XE leaves a rock-solid impression. Most vulnerabilities will have been patched at the hardware level and the performance certainly is there. Intel's biggest trump card is that they slashed the prices in half, but still is struggling...

Slightly faster, but not much elseThe Intel Core i9-10980XE is just a slightly faster, and vastly cheaper, version of the Core i9-9980XE. This makes it a much better chip from a value standpoint, but it doesn't do a lot to shake the prevailing narrative...

Overall performance from the new Intel Core i9-10980XE is comparable to that of the i9-9980XE it replaces when heavy multi-threaded workloads are the focus. Intel does, however, increase the lower-core-count Turbo ratios on the new Cascade Lake-X...

The Intel Core i9-10980XE fits the bill as a processor aimed at enthusiasts, with a blitzing multi-core performance for creative work and gaming. It hits the market sweet spot between affordable consumer processors and the more powerful Threadripper...

Trying to figure out the best CPU for your next PC upgrade or DIY build? With apologies to Robert Frost, it's the classic two roads that parted in the wood—if the wood were a shopping-results page at Newegg or Amazon, and the road kept dividing...