Intel has always enjoyed the performance crown when it comes to processors and last year, it temporarily lost that medal of honor to AMD’s Threadripper platform. The Intel Core i9-7980XE ‘Extreme’ processor is the answer to that challenge and is the highest core count mainstream consumer processor to date. Featuring 18 cores and a price tag of $2000 (that’s MSRP by the way), this isn’t a processor for the average Joe, but it is perhaps a superb choice (once overclocked) for the amateur workstation or rendering rig.