Intel Core 7 350 socket: BGA 1516

What the Core 7 350 is

The Intel Core 7 350 is a 6-core, 6-thread mobile processor that Intel launched in April 2026 near the top of Core Series 3, the family codenamed Wildcat Lake. Its two Cougar Cove Performance-cores run at 1.5 GHz and reach up to 4.8 GHz, while four Darkmont low-power Efficient-cores handle parallel and background work at 1.4 GHz and up to 3.6 GHz. The six cores share 6 MB of Intel Smart Cache, and one thread per core gives six threads in total.

Graphics are the strongest in the value tier. Intel Graphics with two Xe3 cores and 32 execution units runs at up to 2.6 GHz with 21 TOPS of Int8 throughput, driving up to three displays at 3840 × 2160 at 60 Hz through eDP 1.5, DisplayPort 2.1 and HDMI 2.0b outputs. AV1 encode and decode plus Quick Sync video keep streaming and conferencing smooth. A discrete NPU with 17 TOPS of Int8 throughput, the highest in the family, covers camera effects and local AI features. Intel builds the compute tile on the Intel 18A process at 15 W of processor base power and up to 35 W of maximum turbo power.

The 350 is the consumer flagship twin. Its cores, clocks, cache, graphics, NPU and power ratings match the Core 7 360 exactly, and Notebookcheck identifies Intel Stable IT Platform Program (SIPP) support on the 360 as the difference between them. Home buyers and small offices with no fleet image to maintain lose nothing by taking the 350, while IT departments that standardise on SIPP validation pick systems built around the 360. Early PassMark sightings reported by the press put the 350 at the head of the Wildcat Lake results, ahead of its Core 5 siblings.

Against the rest of the family the 350 holds a clear clock advantage. Its 4.8 GHz Performance-core turbo beats the fastest Core 5 by 200 MHz, and its 2.6 GHz graphics peak is the highest any Wildcat Lake SKU offers. That makes it the pick for buyers who want the fastest everyday response in a thin 15 W laptop without paying for the Core Ultra tier above.

Socket and motherboard compatibility

The Core 7 350 is soldered to its board in the BGA 1516 ball grid array, so there is no socket to plug into and the chip cannot be replaced or upgraded later. The 1,516-ball joint is made once at the factory on a 35 × 25 mm FCBGA1516 package, and each laptop or compact board design is qualified around this exact SKU for its whole service life.

There is no board or chipset choice in the retail sense. The system vendor fixes the memory type and capacity, tunes the power policy between the 10 W minimum assured power and the 35 W turbo ceiling, and validates the thermal design for that envelope. Thunderbolt 4 support in the silicon reaches the buyer only where the vendor wires and certifies the ports, so port lists vary by chassis.

The BGA 1516 footprint carries all seven Wildcat Lake SKUs, and the 350 shares its board class with the Core 7 360. Moving between the two still means a different factory build rather than a part swap. Buyers who need SIPP manageability choose a 360 based system from the start, since the feature follows the SKU, not the socket.

Memory, PCIe and cooling

Memory is single-channel by design. The controller supports LPDDR5X up to 7467 MT/s or DDR5 up to 6400 MT/s, with up to 64 GB depending on memory type, and the fitted type and size are fixed when the board is built. Thin laptops usually pair this SKU with soldered LPDDR5X at the top of the speed range, which feeds both the CPU cores and the 32 execution unit graphics engine from one pool. Capacity is a permanent choice on soldered builds, so buyers should size for the life of the machine.

Expansion comes from six PCIe 4.0 lanes out of the processor, configurable as one by four, three by two, or six by one. Those lanes typically serve NVMe storage and fast peripherals, while displays run off the integrated graphics. The exact lane split and port list are set per system design, so the vendor specification governs.

Cooling is a system responsibility across the 10 W to 35 W span. The 4.8 GHz peaks make the 350, with its 360 twin, the hardest Wildcat Lake SKU to cool, so chassis and fan policy decide how long turbo holds under combined CPU and graphics load. There is no boxed cooler and no retail heatsink list for a soldered mobile processor.

Upgrade paths

There is no CPU upgrade path on a soldered package. The 350 already sits one step below the top of the family, so the only in-socket move is a 360 based system for SIPP validation rather than speed. When six cores stop being enough, the answer is a new machine on a higher power platform.

Memory size changes mean a new board for the same reason, which makes capacity planning part of the original purchase. The LGA, PGA and BGA: CPU package types explained guide explains how soldered packages differ from socketed ones and why the whole device is the unit of replacement here.