About 12 hours ago (1pm on the 28th my time) I was helping a friend with a new build. We went to our local retailer to buy most of a new system and I asked if they would be releasing Ivy Bridge tomorrow. The reply was yes however seeing as they had them in the store at the time they were happy to sell us the new unlocked i5 a day early. Pricing so far is the exact same as Sandy. I asked about the new i7K and the pricing is the same there too. The stock cooler looks slightly different too. Although that could just be me. Pics because it happened. I felt very special. Possibly one of the first people in the world to buy one of these. Anyone else lucky enough to get a sneaky early purchase? Anyone planning on getting one on release day?
Can you remove the heat-spreader and see if it has thermal paste underneath? Use a thin blade to slice around the edge and prise the IHS off. Good boy.
I would rather not remove any heat spreaders. Unfortunately it is now 2:30AM for me and I don't have the machine with me so by the time I have any access to it there will be many reviews available. I will say I have never had a faster install of Win7 before. Idle temps were about 7 degrees above an ambient of 20 off the top of my head.
Ahh... ok. Not been keeping up with IB that much, as I'm on socket 2011. IB-E is the one I'll be paying attention to.
Once again and for everyone - Intel doesn't drop prices. It either keeps the price, or retires the processor. There are few exceptions when they want to start selling a new CPU at top of their generation, while keeping the maximum price the same, but otherwise the CPU is still at same price. If you don't believe me, then check out what is the current price of i7-760. Guess what - pretty much the same as i5-750 had at launch, and pretty much the same as an average i5-2x00 CPU. And if they would be still selling S775 Q9xx quads, then they would be same price as well.
Just seen from scan, on a build I put together about a week ago it has dropped in price, by 7quid, still, 7quid in my friends pocket.
Well, here you go - 10€ price cut for i7-2600K, 15€ price cut for i7-2700K, no price cuts for anything else : http://www.techpowerup.com/165121/Intel-Cuts-Prices-of-Core-i7-2600K-and-i7-2700K.html This is actually the exception i wrote about - a bit reorganization at top of the line, which won't affect anything bellow.
