Hiya, hope this is a fitting qustion for this community.
So recently made a purchase from a second hand market. I just wanted the case that the computer I bought used, but got the full computer with all its parts However when I removed the cooler and cleaned off the remaining paste I saw this CPU was marked as Intel Confidential.
Frankly I’ve got no idea what this means, was this CPU used for Intel Internal only and somehow ended up in the wild? Did it belong to some third party company? How do I know what generation the CPU is? (Guessing some software will be able to tell me this). Are these normal to find second hand?
If anyone knows anything regarding this strange occurrence - please let me know 😅
It’s an engineering sample that was produced before the final product was available. They use the really early ones to figure out if what they got back from the fab actually runs and how fast it will go safely. Later ones end up at motherboard partners so they can test their new board designs.
It is pretty common for them to leak out onto the second hand market after the final release. I’ve never heard of one that had any real problems, but in theory you might be buying something that has some issue that they hadn’t discovered at that point.
The big caveat is that the BIOS must allow it, and most released versions do not.
I’d still keep it. Even though it doesn’t appear to be a more rare CPU (like, a 5950X or similar). Might become worth a little bit in a few years.
5950x is rare?
More rare than an i5-8600 and probably becomes rather rare as time moves on.
Thanks for the explanation!