Intel collectors who haven’t gotten their hands on some of the company’s fancier packaging yet may want to hit up their favorite stores sooner rather than later.
As detailed in a pair of new Product Change Notification (PCN) forms uploaded yesterday, Intel has decided that it’ll be discontinuing the premium/larger packaging designs for two of its processors, the 12th Gen Intel Core i9-i2900K and Intel Core i9-10980XE Extreme Edition, by early September. Both of these chips launched in special boxes to celebrate their greater performance, with the Alder Lake chip coming in a case that resembles a gold wafer.
Photos in the PCN can confirm that they will be replaced with new packaging that is considerably slimmer, particularly in the case of the 12th Gen Intel Core i9-i2900K.
Here’s an explainer from Intel as to why it’s dropping its premium packaging for these two CPUs, with clarification that there won’t be any changes to the products themselves:
This packaging change will affect the appearance of the shipping container for distributers and the internal packaging components. This change results in standardized palletization. There is no change to the form, fit or function of the product contained therein, therefore no action is needed by customers.
It’s unclear what the packaging for Intel’s upcoming 13th Gen Core “Raptor Lake” processors might look like, but the company has already experimented with various designs, including hexagonal and dodecahedral packaging.
The first 13th Gen Intel Core processors are expected to surface in October.
Source: Intel PCN Database