The Intel Raptor Lake i9 processor sneaks into the black market of gaming PCs

The next-generation Intel Raptor Lake processors are expected to go on sale later this year, but an engineering sample has already appeared on the black market. While the 13th generation preview chip was supposed to return to the blue team headquarters, it held up well on a Chinese auction site with a surprise price.

The Intel Raptor Lake processor spotted by Videocardz is a Core i9-13900K. The next generation chip with eight performance cores, 16 efficiency cores and 32 threads is fully functional depending on the vendor. It is supposed to work well with the Asus Z690 ROG APEX motherboard and even supports overclocking.

Unsurprisingly, the vendor has withheld specific details about Intel’s next-gen gaming processor, including its specs and QR codes. As a result, it’s hard to tell if it’s a genuine 13th gen i9. However, an interested buyer has already noticed this and seems to have paid only 2,850 yuan (about $426) for the chip.

As long as the engineering sample is authentic, its new owner can share performance information prior to its official release. Leaked benchmarks for the non-K i9 13900 hint that it could outperform its predecessor Alder Lake by 20%.

Raptor Lake’s newest competitor is rumored to break the 5GHz limit, helping push AMD’s Ryzen 7000 chips from the CPU throne. However, Team Red has a few tricks up its sleeve when it comes to Zen 4, including increased clock speeds to 5.5GHz, PCIe 5.0 support, and DDR5 RAM.