The new Core i5-12600K is the but Alder Lake CPU that we've even so to review, having tested both the flagship 12900K a week before and then the nearly every bit fast (simply more than affordable) Core i7-12700KF. At $320, this latest generation Cadre i5 is a direct competitor to AMD'south Ryzen 5 5600X, which is currently selling for $310, or slightly above its $300 MSRP.

The AMD flake packs 6 cores with 12 threads, while the 12600K includes 6 P-cores and 4 East-cores for a total of xvi threads. The P-cores can clock every bit high as 4.nine GHz, while the E-cores cap out at 3.6 GHz, so clock speeds are very like to that of the 12700K, there's just 25% fewer P-cores, though the East-core count remains the same.

The L3 cache capacity has been reduced to twenty MB as well. Other than that, these new Core i5 and Core i7 processors are very like. Given the 12600K is coming in nearly 30% cheaper, information technology'due south prepare to be a nifty good deal.

Other specs also remain, so 20 PCIe lanes from the CPU, 16 of which are the new PCI Express v.0 specification and back up for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory, though non simultaneously and not by the same motherboard, so you'll take to pick in advance which memory blazon you wish to use.

Intel Cadre i9 12900K Intel Core i7 12700K Intel Core i5 12600K Intel Core i9 11900K Intel Cadre i7 11700K
MSRP $ $650 $450 $320 $540 $400
Release Date November 2022 March 2022
Cores / Threads sixteen / 24 12 / 20 x / xvi 8 / sixteen
Base Frequency 2.4 / 3.4 GHz 2.7 / 3.6 GHz 2.8 / 3.vii GHz 3.5 GHz iii.6 GHz
Max Turbo 3.9 / v.2 GHz iii.8 / 5.0 GHz 3.6 / 4.9 GHz v.3 GHz v.0 GHz
L3 Cache 30 MB 25 MB 20 MB 20 MB 16 MB
Memory DDR5-4800 / DDR4-3200 DDR4-3200
Socket LGA 1700 LGA 1200

Stock memory support includes DDR4-3200 or DDR5-4800, but we've been testing with fifty-fifty faster DDR5-6000 memory, which we evaluated the Cadre i9-12900K with. However we found that for the most office this high-speed retention offers very footling extra performance when paired with an Alder Lake CPU. This lead united states of america to conclude that about potential 12th-gen customers should ignore DDR5 and only become with DDR4.

Thus, for testing the 12600K we won't spend time running benchmarks with DDR5. If you want to see what's all that about, practice check out the 12900K review where we compared both retention technologies.

Every bit for the motherboards, we've gone with the MSI Z690 Tomahawk Wi-Fi DDR4 for testing. Due to the hybrid core design of Alder Lake, the 12600K and all other 12th-gen processors work best with Windows 11 and its improved thread scheduler for optimal performance. Therefore we've tested all CPUs, new and old, using a fresh install of Windows 11.

In a recent Windows 11 operation test we also plant out that Ryzen gaming performance is typically a little faster using the more modern Os. The Ryzen exam system used the Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Night Hero motherboard with the latest BIOS update and all the latest Windows updates and drivers installed. Finally, all application and gaming data was nerveless using the Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics carte du jour.

Application Benchmarks

Starting with Cinebench R23, we find that the 12600K is in a completely dissimilar league to the 5600X delivering a whopping 63% more operation, to even beat the 5800X. We're also looking at a 61% comeback over the 11600K, which is mighty impressive even when taking into account the 23% increase in price.

The single-core operation was likewise exceptional, beating the 5600X and 11600K by a 26% margin, a massive generational uplift. It also means the 12600K should comfortably beat out the 5600X for both multi and unmarried-core workloads.

Having said that, the 12600K and 5600X are evenly matched in the vii-nothing file manager pinch test, though this has been one of the weaker results we've seen for twelfth-gen when looking at the 12700KF and 12900K, so information technology'due south no surprise.

When it comes to decompression performance, the 12600K and 5600X are too tied, and that means the new Core i5 processor was 23% slower than the 12700KF.

The 12600K proves that information technology's in a completely dissimilar league, offering 48% greater operation than the Ryzen 5 5600X every bit information technology took just 86 seconds to complete the render, the exact amount of fourth dimension information technology took the 5800X. Equally we said earlier, y'all're really getting next tier performance with the 12600K.

For content creators, the 12600K offers infrequent value by delivering most 40% more than performance than the 5600X and fifty-fifty outscored the 5800X by a 16% margin. We're too merely talking virtually a thirteen% pass up in performance when compared to the 12700K, which is infrequent value from Intel's latest Core i5 part.

Next upwardly nosotros have Adobe Photoshop and here the 12600K was 11% faster than the 5600X and able to match the 5800X. The Intel Cadre i5 office was as well just vii% slower than the 12700KF, so the 12600K is shaping up to be the sugariness spot in terms of toll to performance for Intel 12th-gen lineup.

We see that the 12600K remains ascendant over the 5600X in After Effects, providing 17% greater performance and that was enough to see it vanquish the 5800X by a 5% margin. We're looking at 12700K levels of performance making the 12600K one of the fastest desktop CPUs for this workload.

Factorio is a simulation game that nosotros put alongside applications considering we're not measuring frames per second, but rather updates per second. This automated benchmark calculates the time it takes to run 1000 updates. This is a unmarried thread test which appears to heavily rely on cache capacity.

The new Core i5 performs exceptionally well here relative to the 5600X, the 5800X, and in particular to its predecessor, the 11600K, which is beat by a 27% margin. Moreover, information technology was just 6% slower than the 12700KF.

The 12600K is also a creature when it comes to code compilation performance, smashing the 5600X by a massive 57% margin, making it xix% slower than the more than expensive 12700KF. We're too looking at a 43% generational comeback over the 11600K, so it kind of sucks if you bought ane of those someday in the concluding 9 months.

The last application benchmark that nosotros're going to look at is Blender, and yet again the 12600K proves it's on a completely different level, smashing the 5600X by a massive 44% margin. In one case once again the new Core i5 processor is comparable to the 5800X and last generation's 11700K.

A massive trouble for the top Alder Lake part, the Core i9-12900K, was power consumption though nosotros constitute this was far less of a concern with the 12700K. Well, with the 12600K information technology'south no concern at all as the 12600K pushed total system usage 46% college than the 5600X, only it also delivered 44% more operation, so in terms of efficiency they're about the same.

The 12600K also matched the performance of the 5800X in this test, and we see total organization usage to be roughly the aforementioned. So Alder Lake's power efficiency is better than we outset thought.

When it comes to cooling, we've used the Corsair iCUE H115i Elite Capellix for our temperature results, rather than the bigger 360mm MSI model used to cool the 12700K and 12900K. Using this more than modest 240mm AIO, the 12600K peaked at 71C for the package and 72C for the cores, and these temperatures were reported in an enclosed Corsair Obsidian 500D case, in a 21C room, afterwards xxx minutes of looking the Cinebench R23 multi-core test.

That's a reasonable temperature that makes the 12600K comparable to the 11600K or 5800X. It likewise means with the 240mm AIO we practice have some thermal headroom for overclocking and this is something we'll explore in the time to come.

Gaming Operation

Time for the all-important gaming benchmarks and we'll first with F1 2022. For all gaming tests we're using the Radeon RX 6900 XT with dialed downwardly quality settings at 1080p. The 12600K enabled 373 fps on average with a 1% low of 260 fps in this racing sim. When compared to the 5600X, nosotros discover the 12600K to be a mixed purse offering a 5% stronger i% low, with 5% slower average frame rate performance. Overall though performance is much the same between these two processors, along with the 5800X and 12700KF.

Moving on to Rainbow 6 Siege, the 12600K is less impressive despite pushing upwards near 400 fps at all times with an boilerplate frame rate of 511 fps. The 5600X is x% faster, though how much that fifty-fifty matters is hard to say given all CPUs tested here were capable of pushing extreme frame rates.

The 5600X and 12600K delivered basically identical performance in Borderlands 3 with no more 2 fps separating them. Both were close to extracting the well-nigh corporeality of fps possible from the 6900 XT under these exam conditions, so needless to say performance was first-class.

Moving on to Watch Dogs: Legion, nosotros again observe that the 5600X and 12600K are evenly matched when gaming, this fourth dimension the Intel processor was faster by a minor 3% margin.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is heavily GPU limited with these higher-end CPUs, despite the fact that we're testing at 1080p with an extremely fast graphics card. Simply we feel results like these are important to include, because despite the unrealistic exam weather that aim to highlight CPU operation, nosotros find that the game is still very much GPU limited, and this is important to annotation as the vast bulk of games out there will be GPU limited when using a relatively powerful CPU. Anyway, given that the 5600X and 12600K are able to max out the GPU, functioning is basically identical using either CPU.

The Shadow of the Tomb Raider results are far more interesting as this is a very CPU intensive title and similar what we found with F1 2022, the results are a mixed purse. The 12600K was 4% faster than the 5600X when measuring the average frame rate, but 5% slower for the one% depression. Still, performance was much the aforementioned and yous're certainly non going to notice whatsoever difference between these two CPUs.

Hitman 3 is also very CPU demanding, just again, if y'all accept a half-dozen-core/12-thread processor from the past few generations you've got more than enough processing power to avoid any frame stuttering with well over 100 fps for the ane% low. That being the case, the 12600K crashed it with 166 fps for the 1% low and 192 fps on average making it 4% faster than the 5600X.

Where the Core i5-12600K really excels is on Age of Empires 4 where it's nearly twenty% faster than the 5600X, and that'due south a major performance advantage. It too meant that the new Core i5 part was a adept bit faster than the 5800X and 11700K.

Previously nosotros made the mistake of suggesting this championship could be hinting at future performance margins betwixt Zen three and Alder Lake, but regrettably I was completely incorrect well-nigh that. Afterwards closer inspection nosotros've discovered that Age of Empires 4 is a single threaded game, and then these results are more indicative of functioning for older games, like StarCraft two, for instance.

Basically what we're looking at hither is the strong single core performance of Alder Lake. The 12600K was 26% faster than the 5600X when measuring single core operation in Cinebench R23, and nosotros're seeing that translate to an nearly twenty% win here.

At to the lowest degree for at present though, most games wait like what we see here in Horizon Zero Dawn and that is to say, the gaming functioning divergence betwixt the 12600K and 5600X is not-existent. The 5600X was five% faster when comparing the average frame rate, but 3% slower for the 1% low, so once again performance hither is indistinguishable.

Cyberpunk 2077 is yet another game where the results are generally GPU limited using the latest generation CPUs from AMD and Intel. In fact, with Intel you can go back a few generations for 6-core/12-thread processors or better. That means the 12600K and 5600X are comparable in terms of performance, though the Cadre i5 did offer 8% greater one% low functioning.

When it comes to power consumption for gaming, at that place'due south very piddling difference between the 12600K and 5600X every bit the Cadre i5 processor pushed total system usage simply 4% higher, which is a negligible difference.

x Game Average

Here'due south the ten game average and overall the 12600K and 5600X are evenly matched with the Intel CPU up to just iii% faster. And so at to the lowest degree when it comes to gaming it doesn't thing which processor you lot use and both represent the all-time value for gamers from their respective lineups.

A Ryzen 5 Killer?

That'due south how the Core i5-12600K performs and damn, Alder Lake keeps getting better the further down the product stack we go. The Core i9-12900K was decent, it traded blows with the Ryzen nine 5900X and 5950X, but wasn't a clear pick over either. The Core i7-12700K is a corking culling to the 5800X and is my preferred choice given the ofttimes significantly stronger awarding performance with typically better results for gaming.

The Core i5-12600K continues that trend, but does even better relative to its nearest competitor, the 5600X. Worst case, the 12600K was only slightly faster than the 5600X in single and multi-cadre workloads, but information technology was often much faster and the performance improvement offset the extra power usage, and so power consumption isn't an consequence for the 12600K. Whatever cooler capable of keeping the 11600K or 5800X in check will work merely fine on the 12600K.

When it comes to gaming, the 12600K and 5600X are a match, especially in modern games that utilize many cores. Where the 12600K has an reward is for older games, or games similar Age of Empires 4 that tax a single cadre -- here the superior unmarried core performance of Alder Lake is put on total display, boosting frame rates by around 20%.

Looking at just the CPUs, the Core i5-12600K for $320 or the Ryzen 5 5600X for $310, we've got to say in that location's no style we'd become with AMD if we were edifice a brand new system, or upgrading my platform. Obviously, if you have a Zen+ or Zen 2 CPU and you're looking to boost performance, the 5600X is a decent driblet-in replacement option, brusque of the 5800X or 5900X, for example. But for those starting over, we'd personally ignore Zen iii at current prices.

The merely hiccup for the 12600K correct now may exist motherboard pricing. That could swing the value equation in AMD's favor, at least until cheaper 600 series chipsets go far. Right now, the cheapest Z690 board we'd consider is the Gigabyte Z690 UD DDR4 at $200, and brusque of any real testing, it's even so a flake of an unknown quantity.

For the 5600X, which of course has been in the market place for an entire year, in that location are a number of cheaper motherboard options, such as the X570 TUF Gaming Wi-Fi which can exist had for $190 or more than affordable B550 options. Assuming you're happy to drop PCIe 4.0 support for iii.0 from the chipset, at that place's a good number of quality B550 boards priced betwixt $110 and $150, such equally the MSI B550-A Pro, MSI B550M Bazooka, Asus TUF Gaming B550M-Plus, MSI B550 Gaming Plus, MSI B550M Mortar and MSI B550 Tomahawk. That'south a whole bunch of MSI boards, not sure what is going on with pricing and availability from Asus and Gigabyte, just we know from outset hand testing that those MSI boards are very good.

The MSI B550M Bazooka for $130 is probably one of the amend quality options there, but nosotros also similar the MSI B550 Tomahawk for $150 a lot and we think it'south worth the extra $xx. Information technology's also a better matchup for the Gigabyte Z690 UD DDR4. In that example, AMD is $50 cheaper on the motherboard side, and that means overall the 5600X + B550 bundle is $threescore cheaper.

This could be seen equally tipping things in AMD's favor when it comes to value... sort of. Prior to the release of Alder Lake I wasn't even recommending the 5600X because it's not great value at $300. In our opinion, it needs to be closer to $250 or less now that Intel has much stronger competition and there are hints of price reductions already.

The reason is that if you desire the ultimate value, then grabbing the Core i5-10400F for merely $180 is the way to become. Throw it on the $100 MSI B560M Bazooka and you've got a great gaming combo for less than the price of the 5600X. And so if y'all're on a tight budget, that's every bit good equally information technology gets at the moment, simply if you've got another $200 to spend on the combo, we'd get with the 12600K on an entry-level Z690 board, or hold out for the cheaper B and H-serial chipsets.

Intel has put AMD in a tight position with the Alder Lake launch, so it'll exist interesting to come across how the Carmine Team reacts. For now though, the Cadre i5-12600K is our go-to CPU in the $300 price bracket.

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