Intel recently celebrated 40 years of the x86 instruction set by releasing the 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8086K processor and it can be picked up for $389.00 shipped. Intel introduced the first x86 series processor on June 8, 1978 with the 8086 microprocessor and changed the modern world. The 8086 was a screamer back in the day as it was the first 16-bit processor and came clocked at 5 MHz and that was enough horsepower for personal computing to take off. What makes the Core i7-8086K 6-core, 12-thread processor special is that it just happens to be Intel’s first processor to reach 5GHz speeds straight out of the box with no overclocking needed. It took 40 years, but we have finally made it from 5 MHz to 5 GHz!

Our friends over at Intel hooked us up with an Intel Core i7-8086K processor for testing, but rather than being the sweet retail boxed processor we got an Intel Engineering Sample (ES) processor. The real limited edition retail boxed processor comes with some really sweet commemorative goodies – like a a certificate of authenticity and a signed note from Intel’s former CEO Brian Krzanich. This really bumps up the collector item status, but we learned that the ‘limited edition’ run is supposedly going to churn out 50,000 of these processors.