Logically, I think Intel is going to need to increase thread counts to stay competitive, so this seems like it could very well be accurate, and is pretty much what I expected them to do. At 14nm, these processors are likely to draw a lot of power and run hot though.
Expect performance to be about the same as their current lineup, only you will now get i5 performance at i3 pricing, i7 performance at i5 pricing, and i9 performance at i7 pricing. It's essentially a price cut to match the Ryzen 3000 series, just like what we saw with Intel's "8th-gen" response to the Ryzen 1000 series, only now AMD's per-core performance is more competitive, and their efficiency is far ahead.
Considering the timing, this likely isn't so much a "leak" as it is Intel's marketing department trying to encourage people to hold out for their processors rather than go with Ryzen right away. As for a release date, Coffee Lake launched in October of 2017, Coffee Lake Refresh in November of 2018, and my best guess would be that at least some of these processors will similarly be out before the end of the year.
water cooling will solve the issue no worries...
But then you are paying significantly more than Ryzen, once again, for what will likely be minimal performance gains.