We don’t have all of the pertinent info, so we included each chip’s Skylake counterpart, and that chip’s details, in order to help see exactly where each CPU falls in the grand scheme of the Kaby Lake rollout.
SKU | Base Clock | Skylake Counterpart | Base Clock | Boost Clock | Cores | TDP |
Core i5-7400T | 2.4GHz | Core i5-6400T | 2.2GHz | 2.8GHz | 4 (4) | 35W |
Core i5-7400 | 3.0GHz | Core i5-6400 | 2.7GHz | 3.3GHz | 4 (4) | 65W |
Core i5-7500T | 2.7GHz | Core i5-6500T | 2.7GHz | 3.5GHz | 4 (4) | 35W |
Core i5-7500 | 3.4GHz | Core i5-6500 | 3.2GHz | 3.6GHz | 4 (4) | 65W |
Core i5-7600T | 2.8GHz | Core i5-6600T | 2.7GHz | 3.5GHz | 4 (4) | 35W |
Core i5-7600 | 3.5GHz | Core i5-6600 | 3.3GHz | 3.9GHz | 4 (4) | 65W |
Core i5-7600K | 3.8GHz | Core i5-6600K | 3.5GHz | 3.9GHz | 4 (4) | 91W |
Core i7-7700T | 2.9GHz | Core i7-6700T | 2.8GHz | 3.6GHz | 4 (8) | 35W |
Core i7-7700 | 3.6GHz | Core i7-6700 | 3.4GHz | 4.0GHz | 4 (8) | 65W |
Core i7-7700K | 4.2GHz | Core i7-6700K | 4.0GHz | 4.2GHz | 4 (8) | 91W |
Not much has changed between Skylake and Kaby Lake, at least on paper. There are slightly higher clock speeds, except on the lower-end T chips, which have a much lower TDP. The only chips that will concern PC builders are the Core i5-7600K and Core i7-7700K, the two unlocked chips in the series, which should fall right around the same price point as their Skylake counterparts. The Product Change Notification document also includes a Xeon workstation chip, the E3-1205v6, which appears because it’s part of the same manufacturing location change that affects the other chips.
Of course, new chips also means new chipsets, and a related document features the names of the new 200-series chipsets. Nothing groundbreaking here, the Z270 chipset is targeted at enthusiasts who want to overclock their K series chips. Q270, H270, and H250 fit mostly the same bill as the H150, H170, and Q170 chipsets, which lack overclocking but still hold midrange features and support. The B250 is the budget-friendly chipset option, and the one a lot of pre-built manufacturers will reach for. Don’t worry, your 100-Series chipset will still work after a BIOS update, if you wanted to upgrade from Skylake to Kaby Lake for whatever reason.
The only mystery on the chipset front is the inclusion of the X299 platform. The previous X99 platform supported both the Haswell-E and Broadwell-E chips, but those usually don’t appear until later in the release cycle. If there’s a Skylake-E chip on the way, we certainly don’t know anything about it.
While the info comes directly from Intel’s domain, a little skepticism is always a good idea when it comes to leaks. It’s very unlikely there will be changes to the SKUs before release, but you never know.