According to Tom's Hardware, this nostalgic chip is being marketed as part of the Core Series 1 range, a brand supposedly for Raptor Lake mobile and embedded parts. In practice, it has turned into a dumping ground for rebadged silicon. The Core i5-110 is only the second desktop processor to sneak into the lineup after the equally dubious Core 5 120.

Anyone expecting a modern spec sheet will be disappointed. The i5-110 is a clone of the five-year-old Core i5-10400. Both come with six cores, 12 threads, 12MB of L3 cache, and identical clock speeds of 2.9 GHz base and 4.3 GHz boost. Both use 65W of power and rely on the creaky Intel UHD 630 graphics engine. They can limp along with DDR4-2666 memory, which feels positively prehistoric in today’s DDR5 world.

Compatibility is another kick in the teeth. The chip fits only into the LGA1200 socket and works with 400-series or 500-series motherboards. Intel has introduced two newer sockets since then, which makes the potential customer base for this relic laughably small. You would need to be running outdated kit already and for some reason still be willing to pay premium prices to swap in a chip from the same era.

And premium it is. The Core i5-110 is launching at $200, the same price Intel asked for the i5-10400 five years ago. This means that Chipzilla is charging full freight for a processor based on its infamous 14nm+++ process, which should be so cheap to manufacture that they could be giving them away at the bottom of Weetabix packets. Instead, Intel is trying to convince buyers that a reheated slice of Skylake-era silicon is somehow a bargain.

This is presented as a “value” processor, but at $200 it is not clear who the value is for. Certainly not consumers who could pick up far newer and faster silicon for similar money. The only value here seems to be for Intel itself, which can clear out warehouse stock and keep pretending that the 14nm node is not a zombie process that refuses to die.

For those of us who remember the Comet Lake launch, the whole affair has a sense of déjà vu. Intel was already stretching the Skylake architecture well past its sell-by date. Now in 2025, it has decided that flogging those same chips again is somehow a competitive strategy. It feels less like innovation and more like rummaging through the attic and trying to sell the junk on at full price.