Every year for the past decade, Intel has released a new generation of its Core processors. And every year, we’ve recommended that people buy the ne

Don’t Buy a Desktop PC With One of Intel’s Newest Processors—Here’s Why

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2021-07-02 22:30:04

Every year for the past decade, Intel has released a new generation of its Core processors. And every year, we’ve recommended that people buy the newest version they can get—if you’re paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for a computer, you should get one that will feel fast and run all the apps you use for as long as possible. But Intel’s 11th-generation Core processors are a little different, and there are some models we don’t think you should buy.

Specifically, the 11th-generation Core i5, i7, and i9 processors that will be available in many desktop computers in the next couple of months are difficult to recommend because they are only a little faster than the 10th-generation processors they replace, and because they run much hotter and use much more electricity than either those 10th-generation processors or competing AMD Ryzen chips do. Here’s what you need to know about the problems with these processors, what you should look for instead if you’re shopping for a desktop PC, and why, in contrast, we believe Intel’s 11th-generation laptop processors are safe to buy.

To understand why these 11th-generation desktop processors are having problems, you need to know a little about how the processors in computers, tablets, phones, and game consoles get better over time. First, there’s the chip’s architecture, or how it has been designed—a processor is structured a bit like the blueprint of a house, with processor cores, cache memory, and blocks for playing 3D games or high-definition video files all laid out in a precise arrangement. And then there’s the manufacturing process, or how the chip is physically constructed in a chip maker’s factory.

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