Intel Coffee Lake Inventory Situation Nationwide Not Too Good

By Nathan Kirsch

We’ve been keeping an eye on the new Intel 8th Generation Core ‘Coffee Lake’ processors and it looks like the demand is still high and the supply is short. For example, its flagship Coffee Lake chip, Core i7-8700K, is sold out pretty much across the board with some major retailers never even getting any. Our review on the Intel Core i7-8700K 6-core, 12-thread CPU showed that it was a beast, but we also quickly found out that the supply of them wasn’t enough. We have also observed that when some retailers are getting these limited stock processors in, that they are selling them at higher than we’d like to see prices due to the situation.

8700k unavailable

We took a quick look around the web for the Intel Core i7-8700K and found one that we could purchase today in-store for an inflated price. We then looked for the lower priced Core i5 and Core i3 models and found pretty much the same thing. This is what we found out this morning.

  • Amazon – If you are looking to buy direct from Amazon (not 3rd party) you’ll quickly discover that they are temporarily out of stock on all Coffee Lake CPUs. The good nesws is that they will have more Intel Core i3-8100 Quad-Cores by 10/13/17 and you can order it now for $119.99. The Core i7 8700K ($372.99), Core i7-8700 ($319.89), Core i5-8600K ($279.89) and Core-i5-8400 (189.99) models are all unavailable. Some you can order and they’ll deliver when available, but others just say they are unavailable for order.
  • Newegg – The great news here is that the Intel Core i3-8100 ($119.99) and the Core i3-8350K ($179.99) are both in-stock and available for purchase. The bad news is that Newegg lists the Intel Core i7-8700K ($379.99), Core i7-8700 ($314.99), Core i5-8600K ($259.99) and the Core i5-8400 ($189.99) 6-core as being out of stock. Yesterday we noticed that the 8600K was back ordered with a ‘Usually ships in 15-20 days’ statement, but that is gone today.
  • Microcenter – Microcenter has a good number of Intel Core i5-8400 processors in stock for in-store pickup only for $249.99. Microcenter is charging a good premium for 8th Gen Intel Core series processors right now due to the limited supply. If you want an Intel Core i5-8400 we noticed that Columbus has 3, Orange County/Tustin has 4, Long Island has 2, Brooklyn has 2, Queens has 2, 1 at Yonkers, 4 at Cincinnati, 3 in Philadelphia, 2 in Houston, 4 in Dallas, and 2 in Fairfax VA, none at the other 14 stores. Microcenter has removed outrageous the $499 price tag on the Core i7-8700K from its website, but we found out that the in-store price is $429.99 and that there is one left at their Tustin, CA store. They also have one Intel Core i5 8600K for $349.99 their Mayfield Heights OH store.
  • B&H Photo – No Core i7 Coffee Lake processors in-stock, but you can pre-order the 8700K for $399.89 and the 8700 for $319.89. The Core i5-8600K ($279.89) hasn’t arrived yet, but the good news is that they have the Core i5-8400 ($199.89) available for purchase.
  • Bottom Line Telecommunications – They have 4,772 Intel Core i7-8700K processors on pre-order for $391.95 and have 11,695 being delivered on 10-26-2017.
  • Mouser Electronics – They have two Intel Core i7-8700K CPUs listed for $733.79 and they have a 6-week lead-time once they are sold.
  • Silicon Lottery – They stopped binning 7700K and 7600K Kaby Lake processors last month along with the 7800X Skylake-X processor to make room for Coffee Lake. They don’t do pre-orders and haven’t announced pricing, binning details or anything yet. They hoped to have an ETA by the end of last week, but have yet to update on their site. When we reached out we were told the current ETA is October 27th, but that date was floating as they don’t know if they’ll have enough stock by then to launch. So, if you are looking for a delidded Coffee Lake processor that has been binned for a certain overclock you have a a few more weeks to wait.
  • Dell – We reached out to Dell to see when they would begin selling desktops powered by Intel 8th Generation Coffee Lake processors and we were told that they should be available by the end of October. One of the first systems available will be the Dell XPS Tower Special Edition (SE) with the Intel Core i7-8700 processor.
  • Best Buy – We couldn’t find any Coffee Lake powered systems on their website.

It looks that by November things will have calmed down a bit for Coffee Lake processors, but this month it will be tough to find an Intel Core i7-8700K or Core i7-8700 close to the tray pricing mark.