Intel reluctantly confirms launch date of 11th Gen Rocket Lake-S processors

What you need to know

• Intel confirmed that its Rocket Lake-S processors will go on sale on March 30, 2021.
• The company previewed its 11th Gen desktop processors at CES 2021.
• Intel confirmed the launch date of the CPU after a German retailer started selling them early.

Intel confirmed that its 11th Gen Rocket Lake-S processors will go on sale on March 30, 2021. The company had not previously shared a specific release date, but shared details about the CPU after a German retailer started selling it early (via TechRadar). Intel did not specifically mention any retailer by name, but it is likely connected to Mindfactory.de putting the cards up for sale early (via VideoCardz).

You could actually purchase the card early at one point, but that no longer seems to be the case.

Andreas Schilling from hardwareLuxx shared an exchange with Intel on Twitter.

In that exchange, Intel told Schilling, "We take our embargo agreements seriously. We are aware of a retailer selling unreleased products and are following up as appropriate."

The company also specified that the 11th Gen Rocket Lake-S CPU will go on sale on March 30, 2021 at 9 AM ET.

Intel didn't share all of the details about the 11th Gen Rocket Lake-S chips at CES 2021, but it did explain several aspects of the cards.

The Core i9-11900K is an eight-core, 16-thread chipset with boosted clock speeds of 5.3 GHz. Those clock speeds should deliver a significant boost over preceding processors.

The Core i9-11900K supports up to DDR4-3200 and has 20 total PCIe 4.0 lanes. It works with Intel's new 500 series chipset but is also backwards compatible with Intel 400 series chipsets.