Selfhosted

I used to work at a games studio that would get these delivered fairly regularly, usually paired with a particular motherboard and presumably a custom BIOS.

I think we were technically supposed to return them but the manufacturers never enforced it, so once the chip was actually released to the public - and assuming the sample was stable enough for general use - the PC would rotate into normal stock and eventually get sold for cheap to staff or end up in the spare parts bin.

While it was cool at first to get pre-production chips before anyone else, it became pretty mundane and I'm not at all surprised to see them out in the wild decades later. Interesting piece of history though!

Frame it. Neato.

It's an engineering sample that was produced before the final product was available. They use the really early ones to figure out if what they got back from the fab actually runs and how fast it will go safely. Later ones end up at motherboard partners so they can test their new board designs.

It is pretty common for them to leak out onto the second hand market after the final release. I've never heard of one that had any real problems, but in theory you might be buying something that has some issue that they hadn't discovered at that point.

It’s a i5-8600 3.1 Ghz 6-core.

as others have said it’s a pre release sample for testing and might have bugs but the QP4W tells you the processor type

https://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/QP/QP4W.html

Confidential Lake

Very likely stolen from an Intel dev partner.

This seems to be an engineering sample CPU. Since these are pre-production, that could mean it's basically a fully functional CPU. It could also have serious issues.

confidential cpus are typically engineering samples, usually given to motherboard companies to work on bioses for the cpu generation and meant to be returned to the company after done. engeering sample cpus can be missing features, lower clocks and such that the retail varient may have.

as for geneeation of cpu, its easier to find out via what motherboard socket it is

on thecontext of finding second hand, i wouldnt say its common, but can happen. some chinese companies sell dirt cheap ES cpus for basic computing.

the ilm says lga 115x, so its either 1156(1st gen), 1155(2nd or 3rd gen), 1150(4th and 5th gen) or 1151(6th to 8th gen)

This is a special chip, salt and vinegar flavour

Could be a prod ready engineering sample. They get around more than you may think.

Neat. What does your OS tell you it is?

I've ended up with a different one before. only worked with the included motherboard but the guy I gave it to claims to have gotten it running with a modded bios in an overclocker board.