Cheap laptops, the ones with a wheezy fan and a battery that taps out by lunch, have burned me before, which is why I usually stay away from them and advise my friends to do the same.
So, when a leak claims Intel is building a chip just for them, with a power rating of only 6W (compared to 15 to 20W for regular chips), I’m a bit excited, but perhaps even more cautious.
What does a 6W laptop chip mean for you?
Intel is reportedly working on Moon Lake chips, a new family of entry-level laptop processors with four low-power cores and a 6W base power rating (via Wccftech).
That 6W figure is the chip’s TDP, or thermal design power. In simpler terms, it indicates how much heat the laptop’s cooling system must handle under a defined operating condition. Compared to the 10W starting point of Intel’s current Core Series 3 chips, that’s a significant drop.
As the report notes, Moon Lake gets there by swapping performance cores for four LPE cores, designed to handle lighter workloads while using less power.
With so little heat to shed, laptop makers could potentially ditch the cooling fan altogether. And because the chip sips power instead of gulping it, the battery could last longer between charges.
How capable could Moon Lake be?
The new architecture will reportedly use Intel’s 18A manufacturing process, which I’d say is the smartest part of the design. Pair that with 8GB to 16GB of memory, and you could have the makings of a cool, quiet, and relatively affordable laptop.
There is a trade-off, though, and I’d take this seriously. With no performance cores, I wouldn’t expect heavy editing or gaming. Instead, a Moon Lake-powered laptop could be ideal for browsing, working on documents, and streaming.
What’s interesting is that makers might be able to increase Moon Lake’s power limit (its configurable TDP) to 15W, potentially unlocking extra performance at the cost of more heat and fan noise.
Obviously, Moon Lake would sit below Wildcat Lake, the Core Series 3 family that launched earlier this year with up to two performance cores and a power range of 10 to 28 watts. There’s no official date, and Intel hasn’t confirmed anything yet. So, take everything mentioned here with a pinch of salt.
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