We are all waiting for Intel to move their desktop CPUs to the 10-nanometer manufacturing process (assuming Intel doesn't skip it at this point), but in the meantime Intel is continuing to fine tune the 14nm node. The next 14nm desktop silicon is called Comet Lake-S. One of its parts, the Core i7-10700K, is now in 3DMark, and if the specs are accurate, it will have no trouble ousting the Core i9-9900K, the best CPU for gaming.

The 3DMark database, discovered by Twitter user APISAK, lists the Core i7-10700K at 8 cores and 16 threads, a base clock of 3.8 GHz and a turbo clock of 5.3 GHz.

It also indicates that the chip is manufactured on a 0nm manufacturing process and has a TDP of 0W. Wouldn't that be great? Sadly, Intel has not discovered the magic formula for creating a CPU that does not consume power, so the Core i7-10700K will consume power and require a cooler! Such erroneous metrics are not uncommon with respect to engineering samples of unpublished silicon. [The Core i9-9900K also has 16MB of L3 cache and a TDP of 95W. Earlier leaks indicated that the Core i7-10700K would have a higher 125W TDP along with 16MB of L3 cache. It was also previously reported to have a maximum single-core turbo clock of 5.1 GHz.

Is the 5.3 GHz clock shown in 3DMark accurate? If this chip is real, it is definitely an engineering sample and may have different specifications than what will be in the final silicon. Given that Intel is behind AMD in the number of cores, it would not be surprising to see a move to increase the clock speed to compensate.

An interesting aside is the motherboard shown in the 3DMark screen grab. This is ECS's Z490H6-A2 with Intel's upcoming Z490 chipset. Back in the day, ECS was a major player in the budget sector, although they dabbled in high-end boards. These days, you may be more familiar with the likes of Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and ASRock, but perhaps ECS is about to make a new splash.