Two years after Intel launched its ultra-high-end “Skylake-X” X-series gaming processors at stratospheric prices (brother, can you spare $1,999?), the company has announced the next-gen “Cascade-X” chips at more affordable prices—if by “affordable,” you mean the price of an Apple iPhone 11 Pro. 

Indeed, compared to its $1,999 predecessor, Intel’s new 18-core Core i9-10980XE Extreme Edition chip is downright cheap at $979. If that's still too rich for you, there's hope: Intel has priced its 10-core Core i9-10900X chip at a mere $590.

Intel says its new Cascade Lake-X processors will go on sale in November, after originally promising the Cascade Lake-X chips in October. That's the same month AMD plans to launch its new Threadripper chips, incidentally. We still don’t know how much the new Threadripper chips will cost—or whether AMD will respond to Intel’s moves with its own price cuts—but it’s clear that competition is beginning to help lower prices at the high end of the PC market.

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