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We used an EVGA Dark board for testing the i9-10980XE. Most boards this far on the high end look like they escaped from Las Vegas—this one goes for a quiet, clean aesthetic instead. [credit: Jim Salter ]
Intel's new i9-10980XE, debuting on the same day as AMD's new Threadripper line, occupies a strange market segment: the "budget high-end desktop." Its 18 cores and 36 threads sound pretty exciting compared to Intel's top-end gaming CPU, the i9-9900KS—but they pale in comparison to Threadripper 3970x's 32 cores and 64 threads. Making things worse, despite having more than double the cores, i9-10980XE has trouble differentiating itself even from the much less expensive i9-9900KS in many benchmarks.
This leaves the new part falling back on what it does have going for it—cost, both initial and operational. If you can't use the full performance output of a Threadripper, the i9-10980XE will give you roughly half the performance for roughly half of the cost, and it extends that savings into ongoing electrical costs as well.
Power
Our i9-10980XE system desktop-idled at 69W, and drew 257W at the wall under full CPU load. (credit: Jim Salter)
Our i9-10980XE test rig was a lot easier to share an office with than the competing Threadripper 3970x rig. Its EVGA X399 Dark motherboard didn't make it look like a scene from Poltergeist was playing out in the office, and it drew a lot less power and threw off a lot less palpable heat.
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