12600K price drops are making me hesitate.

[nomdeplume]

Below $150 is making me wonder how bad 12th gen really were. Since 13th and 14th accomplish little different results at twice the price currently. Even more comical is the comparison on paper between 14400 and 12600K.

Really starting to falter. Pretty sure this is not a great idea to follow through on. Gaming only system would be a nice step up though. I just keep coming back to the horror stories of 12th gen hardware failures and unsolvable issues.

 

[chrcoluk]

Never heard of 12th gen chips failing, you have any links?

 

[nomdeplume]

Never heard of 12th gen chips failing, you have any links?

Not the processor itself per se. At least a few members here had a lot of troubles with mb and system hardware that didn't exist in their counterpart for team red. Then there is the really bizarre implementation of how optical drives are handled. All in all a fair number of weirdness that didn't plague 13th gen.

 

[RussellBKK]

There are no "stories" (at least reported by major outled) of any kind about 12th gen failures, and tons of stories about 13/14 gens not undervoltable + stupid temps and power compunction.
If ur feelings are based on a "random dude problem on a forum" well there is not gen or tech without issues.

Alder Lake is the best release of intel in years, more e-core are semi-useless, especially for gaming. So like many people who bought promos about the 12700, enjoy safely a 12600k which is a very good gaming cpu and at a very low price.

If you ask me, the sweet spot of intel overall is probably a 13700 currently, but according to budget and geography, 12600 can be very VERY good especially OCed.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Just the nature of aging silicon.
Not sure p-e core scheduling on win-11 will apply to 12 series think I read it was ?

 

[nomdeplume]

There are no "stories" (at least reported by major outled) of any kind about 12th gen failures

There are no stories where there can be no resolution. A connector breaks and starts a fire you have a story. At random anything on cpu lanes suffers undiagnosable ills leading up to failure and... when it disappears in the next gen in spite of numerous BIOS and other firmware updates it's a mystery. One to be avoided.

Alder Lake is the best release of intel in years, more e-core are semi-useless, especially for gaming. So like many people who bought promos about the 12700, enjoy safely a 12600k which is a very good gaming cpu and at a very low price.

If you ask me, the sweet spot of intel overall is probably a 13700 currently, but according to budget and geography, 12600 can be very VERY good especially OCed.

Thank you. Very tricky to assess current gaming hardware. 15th gen and whatever the gpu side does are a pretty large question mark or I'd be firmly holding the line until their capability is defined.

Not sure p-e core scheduling on win-11 will apply to 12 series think I read it was ?

Even with years of firmware updates and mb bios they can't get w11 to work right?
I was on the fence here but if that is the reason I'm not interested anymore.

 

[N/A]

1512600K MB H610 DDR4 3200 32GB and a 4070 Super now or wait for 15th gen and 50-series

 

[ir_cow]

Haven't known of widespread of 12th gen CPU failures yet. I mean a small % will always be bad no matter the generation, but I've heard nothing catastrophic like the AMD meltdown.

The only problem with 12th gen is you are limited in RAM speed.

I'm using 12700K with a Z690 on Windows 11 as my main desktop. No problems to report day in and day out.

 

[Ruru]

It's still a relatively new platform, at least I haven't heard of any failures so far.

1512600K MB H610 DDR4 3200 32GB and a 4070 Super now or wait for 15th gen and 50-series

Why the hell a H610 board with a K CPU?

 

[N/A]

Good cheap, it starts piling up $169 12600K $169 fot Z790, $169 for AIO and many many more times by $169 2TB Nvme DDR4 4800,
and all that to unleash the power of the 12GB lemon of a GPU,
just because you once saw a $69 discount for an outdated processor on a dead end socket

 

[Ruru]

Hi,
Just the nature of aging silicon.

Aging? ADL is a little over 2 years old, not a decade old like SB/IB/HW/etc. Yet still my 2500K shows no signs of a degradation, hell, OC's to 5.2GHz easily.

 

[Toothless]

I had a 12600KF system in the house for a while. Never had an issue that was major or couldn't be fixed. Solid little thing.

 

[nomdeplume]

Why the hell a H610 board with a K CPU?

Actually I was going to attempt getting out as cheap as I could if I made this happen. Maybe not that cheap, but just enough to get current PCIe and NVMe standards and reasonable VRM. Plunk in a 3xxx/4xxx/5xxx gpu and be glad the games I enjoy are fairly light and still updated regularly.

The only problem with 12th gen is you are limited in RAM speed.

With DDR-5. Also the cache is diminutive.

RAM and cache on my 8400 are the biggest limitations.

 

[ir_cow]

12th Gen will be 6400-7000 range depending on IMC lotto for normal daily voltages. If you use a Z690 or Z790 Motherboard.

 

[nomdeplume]

12th Gen will be 6400-7000 range depending on IMC lotto for normal daily voltages. If you use a Z690 or Z790 Motherboard.

If one were willing to spend enough to escape the deficits that eat some ways into the Z boards. Anyways, last I noticed DDR5 was considered less a must have than a bullet point option. At the top end you get a few percentile OC and fairly balanced overall performance so lacking in many other (tiered) options surrounding the last three gen of cpu/gpu.

Perhaps the more useful measure would be noting if your daily use 12600K system is D4 or D5.

 

[P4-630]

I just keep coming back to the horror stories of 12th gen hardware failures and unsolvable issues.

No horrorstories here on Z690 Aorus Master with i7 12700K, it has been performing great sofar for me.

 

[Sithaer]

No issues here either with my 12100F and a budget B660 mobo+DDR 4 since early 2022.

 

[ThrashZone]

Even with years of firmware updates and mb bios they can't get w11 to work right?
I was on the fence here but if that is the reason I'm not interested anymore.

Hi,
I'm not sure it gets better with 13-14 series either
All up to MS/ Intel/ and what ever board firmware you choose so yeah is a real shit show hehe

I personally just went amd conventional 8 core 16 thread.

 

[ir_cow]

Perhaps the more useful measure would be noting if your daily use 12600K system is D4 or D5.

@Toothless has been using DDR4 and I've been on DDR5.

DDR4 range is around 3600-4000 for 2x dual rank. I was able to do 4600+ with 2x single rank. Just depends on how much you want to fiddle with voltages.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Yep DDR4 prices are pretty low for even good samsung b-die sets
Difference is latency raise speed on it and latency goes down.

DDR5 tries to beat it with speed but I believe it fails unless it's super duper fast and tight timings which is typically not ddr5 that's out atm good thing is some is very adjustable but still has higher latency but this stuff is not cheap.

 

[nomdeplume]

I personally just went...

Towards a foregone conclusion I should feel bad for not instantly realizing. The final delivery got a laugh out of me.
There was honest bias towards this gen on my part that hasn't fully dissipated.

I think DDR4 would be what I went with unless a board related development supplanted it. Stability is good, balanced performance is usually better long term. Which should taken as I'd move this still theoretical build to general use in a heartbeat if the next product cycle offered a large jump in outright power and enthusiast products.

No issues here either with my 12100F and a budget B660 mobo+DDR 4 since early 2022.

I certainly recalled that. Comment by one our German members on his 14400/B670 not really being noticeably worse in gaming than his i9/Z as well. At least outside heavy RT AAA games that choke a 4090.

 

[droopyRO]

12600K with a Z690, DDR4, i have them since February 2022, with Windows 11 since day one, have no issues to report. The CPU was even a opened box(resealed) one, so i'm not the first owner. It runs stable at -50mV undervolt, and with a Noctua U12 it stays bellow 70ºC in OCCT.

 

[Sithaer]

Towards a foregone conclusion I should feel bad for not instantly realizing. The final delivery got a laugh out of me.
There was honest bias towards this gen on my part that hasn't fully dissipated.

I think DDR4 would be what I went with unless a board related development supplanted it. Stability is good, balanced performance is usually better long term. Which should taken as I'd move this still theoretical build to general use in a heartbeat if the next product cycle offered a large jump in outright power and enthusiast products.



I certainly recalled that. Comment by one our German members on his 14400/B670 not really being noticeably worse in gaming than his i9/Z as well. At least outside heavy RT AAA games that choke a 4090.

I will say tho, if you do end up going down that route do check some reviews of the mobo's VRM of your choice.
Since I'm an early adopter of Alder Lake my options were seriously limited in my country at the time and overpriced + I did not expect my mobo to have such a weak VRM which kind of limits my options now even as a budget user. 'basically I shouldn't go higher than a 13400/13500 for gaming use case and even the 13500 is pushing it to be honest'

 

[bobbybluz]

My 12600K has been rock solid at 5.3GHZ and runs very cool with an Arctic Liquid Freezer II 240 w/4 stock Arctic fans in push/pull externally mounted and using the Thermalright contact frame. I'm still debating on putting my 13600KF in that rig along with upgrading the fans to Arctic P12 Max's I have on hand. I bought the 12600K new in June of 2022 from Micro Center. It's proven to be a better piece of silicon than the 12700K I bought on Black Friday 2021. The 12700K is an early one that has AVX512 and I may keep it just because of that as a collector's item.

 

[Dr. Dro]

It's dropping in price because it's 12th Gen and people want 13th or 14th due to Raptor Cove IPC improvements coupled with higher clocks. Alder is still very solid on a budget, and a Core i5-12600K for $149 is an absolute steal. Go for it on a DDR5 platform!