Intel's Alder Lake CPU Prices Leak via European Retailer

Intel 12th Generation Alder Lake
(Image credit: Intel)

A European retailer has accidentally published preliminary prices of Intel's upcoming 12th-Gen Core 'Alder Lake-S' processors for desktops. The list includes Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 CPUs and not only gives some basic understanding of what to expect from Intel's new processors, but also looks to confirm some of their specifications. As this is a leak, take the news with a grain of salt.

If the information from the retailer is to be believed, Intel intends to offer six Alder Lake-S models at launch (as discovered by @momomo_us), which seems to be consistent with the company's previous launches as well as unofficial information leaked in the past few weeks. The general specifications mentioned by the store also line up with earlier reports as well as listings in Primate Labs' Geekbench 5 database. 

As expected, Intel's Core i9-12900K with eight performance and eight efficiency cores will be the flagship offering, accompanied by the Core i9-12900KF model that will have its integrated graphics core disabled. Both CPUs will cost over €700 ($829.67) per unit with BTW (which is Belgian and Dutch VAT / Sales Tax) included. This significantly exceeds the current pricing of Intel's Core i9-11900K as well as Core i9-10900K/10900KF in Europe. It is unclear whether it is the retailer that intends to sell Alder Lake-S CPUs at a premium (as it offers them early), or Intel plans to increase its MSRPs for these chips. This pricing tells us that Intel sees this chip as a worthy competitor to AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X. 

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Row 0 - Cell 0 Base ClockCachePrice per Unit with VAT
Core i9-12900K3.20 GHz30MB€736 ($872.34)
Core i9-12900KF3.20 GHz30MB€704 ($834.41)
Core i7-12700K3.60 GHz25MB€524 ($621.07)
Core i7-12700KF3.60 GHz25MB€492 ($583.14)
Core i5-12600K3.70 GHz16MB€365 ($432.62)
Core i5-12600KF3.70 GHz16MB€333 ($394.69)

Other SKUs that Intel presumably intends to offer sometime in mid-October include the Core i7-12700K, the Core i7-12700KF, the Core i5-12600K, and the Core i5-12600KF. All of these CPUs are more expensive than Core i5 and Core i7 processors that belong to previous generations (even in preliminary listings), so either the retailer plans to capitalize on agiotage created by Alder Lake-S and sell them at high prices, or Intel that charges more for its first hybrid processors that may dethrone AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X

Intel

(Image credit: Twitter.com/momomo_us)

Intel does not comment on pricing of unreleased products, but with more performance benchmarks and information surfacing by the day, its clear that we're on the cusp of the Alder Lake launch. 

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • spongiemaster
    If it performs like a 5950x, Intel is not going to charge less than a 5950x.
    Reply
  • JWNoctis
    Weren't there some old parable - Japanese, perhaps - about washing potatoes by stirring them in a barrel: Sometimes they float, sometimes they sink, but neither for long.

    Probably still the same with only two big ones left, if the analogy did not break down long before.
    Reply
  • PCWarrior
    Basically, this means that there will be up to a $100 price hike on the MSRP gen over gen. More specifically there will be $100 price increase on the i9s, $60-$70 on the i7s and $70-$80 on the i5s. Summarising the MSRPs should look like this:
    SKU
    Expected MSRP12900K
    $639- $64912900KF
    $613- $62412700K
    $469-$47912700KF
    $439-$44912600K
    $342-$35212600KF
    $317-$327
    If performance leaks are accurate then Intel will be undercutting AMD's cpu offerings by $100-$186 in price while offering better or equivalent performance. That should in turn spark a price correction of $100-$200 on some AMD parts, at least during Intel's launch window during the holiday season, especially around Black Friday.

    SKU
    Expected MSRP
    SKU
    MSRP
    Expected Price Difference12900K
    $639- $649


    12900KF
    $613- $624
    5950X
    $799
    $175-$18612700K
    $469-$479


    12700KF
    $439-$449
    5900X
    $549
    $100-$11012600K
    $342-$352


    12600KF
    $317-$327
    5800X
    $449
    $122-$132
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    Significantly higher prices on the CPUs due to all of the extra manufacturing complexity, likely significantly higher prices on motherboards due to the larger socket and faster IOs, pretty much guaranteed massively more expensive memory for most of the first two years.

    Looks like I'm going to be glad I got an i5-11400 to comfortably skip most if not all of this with.
    Reply
  • PCWarrior
    InvalidError said:
    Significantly higher prices on the CPUs due to all of the extra manufacturing complexity, likely significantly higher prices on motherboards due to the larger socket and faster IOs, pretty much guaranteed massively more expensive memory for most of the first two years.
    Sure, being on 10nm (Intel 7) instead of 14nm makes manufacturing more advanced/complex by default. And sure, the cpu design is more complex due to the more advanced microarchitecture (Golden Cove vs Sunny Cove). But I doubt that the hybrid core topology of Alderlake affects the manufacturing complexity significantly. The chip is still monolithic. So I don’t expect it to be any more complex to produce compared to Rocketlake than going from 14nm 10th gen Cometlake H-series to 10nm 11th gen Tigerlake H-series cpus on laptops. You still had a massive core microarchitecture change (Skylake to Willow Cove), iGPU change (from Intel UHD 630 to Intel UHD Xe 750), inclusion of AVX512 units, PCIe transition (from PCie3 to PCIe4) and RAM transition (from DDR4-2933 to DDR4-3200/LPDDR4x-4266).

    I doubt memory pricing will be much of an issue. Pricing should be similar for equivalent capacity plus demand will not be high as it will only come from people purchasing Intel Z690 and K skus. I agree that motherboards will see yet another price hike at least when looking at it from equivalent tier models. For example, the ASUS ROG Maximus Hero went from costing $290 in Z390 to costing $490 in Z590. However, you now get a lot more features to the point that even the cut down Strix A or Strix F boards that cost $310-$340 are offering much more than what the Z390 Maximus Hero Wi-Fi offered for $290. So it is more of a $20-$50 increase and with that you get several upgrades.

    Z390 Hero WiFi ($290)
    Strix Z590 A or F ($310-$340)1GBE
    2.5GBEWiFi5
    WiFi6BT5
    BT5.216 CPU lanes PCIe3
    20 CPU lanes PCIe4DMI 3.0 x 4 lanes to the chipset
    DMI 3.0 x 8 lanes to the chipset2 M.2 slots (both via chipset)
    3 or 4 M.2 slots (1 PCIE4 direct to CPU, 2 or 3 PCIE3 via chipset)8+2 power stages (no doublers)
    14+2 power stages (no doublers)1 x Type-C USB 3.2. Gen 2
    1 x Type-C USB 3.2. Gen 2x2DDR4 4400 (O.C)
    DDR4 5333 (OC)4 layer PCB
    6 layer PCBLGA 1151
    LGA 1200
    Reply
  • SkyBill40
    PCWarrior said:

    If performance leaks are accurate then Intel will be undercutting AMD's cpu offerings by $100-$186 in price while offering better or equivalent performance. That should in turn spark a price correction of $100-$200 on some AMD parts, at least during Intel's launch window during the holiday season, especially around Black Friday.

    It's all speculative at this point. Intel has fudged the numbers with regularity on their performance versus AMD. It's never been a straight apples-to-apples comparison and I don't expect this time to be any different. It sure would be nice if AMD and Intel did releases at the same time to truly compare equivalent generations rather than new to old, but that isn't going to happen. Given how things are in terms of the chip shortage, we'll see if any of this even comes around when they're expecting it to launch. I'm not holding my breath here and neither should anyone else.
    Reply
  • chalabam
    Xeon: 54 cores
    Desktop: 16 cores. Why
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    chalabam said:
    Xeon: 54 cores
    Desktop: 16 cores. Why
    Desktop: < $1000 CPU on a < $300 motherboard
    Xeon: > $10 000 CPU on a > $1000 motherboard
    Reply
  • JWNoctis
    chalabam said:
    Xeon: 54 cores
    Desktop: 16 cores. Why
    InvalidError said:
    Desktop: < $1000 CPU on a < $300 motherboard
    Xeon: > $10 000 CPU on a > $1000 motherboard
    Core counts of that kind might well become common on desktop before the decade is out. Remember graphic cards with, what, 8 pixel and 4 vertex shader pipelines?

    Just gonna take a while.
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    JWNoctis said:
    Core counts of that kind might well become common on desktop before the decade is out. Remember graphic cards with, what, 8 pixel and 4 vertex shader pipelines?

    Just gonna take a while.

    You mean like how the RTX 3090 has so many cores they can't be used effectively in the consumer space because game engines aren't advanced enough, or Threadripper motherboards have to come with a down-core selector because some software can't handle 32-64 cores?

    We're at or almost at the time when pure x86 is capped out, with these first hybrid chips from Intel and in development chips from AMD being the first step towards a future where there may be 2-8 general purpose x86 cores on a chip, but also complemented by multiple sets of specialized sub-processors on their own chiplets in order to perform tasks that much faster. This kind of setup is not unheard of. Back before GPU processing became the thing for supercomputers, IBM built a system using thousands of their own PowerPC processors, but also thousands of AMD Opteron processors whose main task was to feed data to the proper PowerPC processors.
    Reply