Intel is seemingly planning to restart production of several 13th-gen and 14th-gen Raptor Lake desktop processors amid high demand for DDR4-compatible systems in China. According to reports, Intel also aims to maintain an abundant presence of 10th and 12th-gen processors, while ensuring a steady supply of 13th and 14th-gen chips.
Chinese tech site IT Home shared this gossip after seeing it on ChannelGate, the WeChat account of long-running Chinese tech leak site Bobantang. None of this has been confirmed by Intel, so park this in the rumour mill for the moment, but it looks as though the reintroduced CPUs will be available to both OEMs and DIY PC builders looking for a more affordable platform in China.
As a reminder, while 12th, 13th, and 14th-gen CPUs support DDR5 memory, they are also compatible with DDR4. In other words, all Intel CPUs from the 10th-gen Comet Lake to the 14th-gen Raptor Lake Refresh can be paired with DDR4 RAM.
This is extremely important nowadays, as DDR5 RAM prices have quadrupled since December last year, locking many users out of the upgrade cycle. RAM went from a footnote on new builds’ receipts, sometimes costing less than a PSU or cooler, to the second most expensive part of any new machine. And we can thank AI’s unsatiated thirst for this situation.
While DDR4 has also seen a drastic price increase, it remains cheaper than DDR5 at equivalent capacities, and there are also a lot of people who already gave DDR4 RAM, but can’t afford to upgrade DDR5. For this reason, some motherboard makers, such as ASRock, have started rereleasing motherboards with DDR4 and DDR5 slots. It looks as though Intel is simply completing this chain by remaking old CPUs that feature DDR4 memory controllers.
With up to 24 cores and 32 threads clocked beyond 5GHz, you won’t miss out on much if you buy a Raptor Lake CPU compared to Intel’s latest platform. In fact, the i9-14900K, and even the i7-14700K, often beat Intel’s latest flagship, the Core Ultra 9 285K, in games, although the new 270K Plus is much better in this respect.
The company is also rumoured to be planning a Raptor Lake Next lineup in 2027, which should also support DDR4 memory on LGA1700 platforms. These chips are said to pack up to 20 cores, but with no major architectural changes compared to Raptor Lake.
