Intel's new Rocket Lake-S line of processors are all set to be launched on March 16. Although we won't get to know about its performance metrics until March 30, several leaked benchmarks from earlier have told us that chips such as the Intel Core i7-11700K can hold their own against similarly-specced AMD counterparts. If you can't wait that long and have a few extra bucks to spare, you can get your hands on one today, thanks to German retailer Mindfactory.de.
An eagle-eyed Videocardz reader stumbled upon the listing, which costs an exorbitant €469 (including tax). That's nearly i9 territory under normal circumstances. The markup is probably the price one has to pay for early access to a highly-anticipated piece of hardware. Videocardz adds that this listing is the real deal and not a pre-order page because it has a photo of the retail packaging. However, there is only one way to know for sure, and that involves buying the processor.
The Intel Core i7-11700K non-K sibling, the Core i7-11700 has already been benchmarked by a YouTube content creator. That should give us a decent-ish idea about how the 11700K will fare. If the aforementioned listing is real and Mindfactory.de does ship out a CPU before launch, it shouldn't be long before someone grabs one and puts the Core i7-11700K through the paces. However, we have to consider the fact that the listing could have been made in error and could be taken down soon.