Some lucky people may have received their 12th Gen Intel "Alder Lake" processors early from Newegg. Are they some of the new best CPUs? We don't know — the customers allege the company has asked them for a code of silence.
On Reddit's r/intel forum, several people say that they bought the new chips from Newegg and either received them or expect to receive them early. Then they claim they got phone calls from the retailer asking them not to post anything until November 4, the day the processor's release.
"Just got a phone call from Newegg and the lady said I can't post anything until 11/4?" u/Hyphnx posted. Several others reported similar experiences.
Another user, u/NoveltyNetwork, wrote that they "[j]ust got the same call, and mine just came in about an hour ago." This person followed up by posting images of boxes for the Core i9-12900K and the Core i7-12700K.
"Have mine in-hand, got the same call, asked why they aren't shipping motherboards early because why not try :)," wrote u/chrismog2 "'Sorry but they aren't released until Nov. 4th [, they said.]' well that didn't stop you guys so far..."
Just because they may have received processors, however, doesn't mean they can use them. The Alder Lake processors require new motherboards to use them, and those also aren't meant to ship until the release date.
"My 12900K also just got delivered," u/coffeeblowout wrote. "Not like can do any testing without our boards or memory though. It's an awesome box though."
Tom's Hardware reached out to Newegg for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
These wouldn't be the first 12th Gen Intel CPUs to hit early. There have been a handful of Alder Lake processors getting into hands earlier than Intel intended. For instance, earlier this month, China-based sellers on Taobao were selling black market engineering samples of the Core i9-12900K for as high as $700.
Earlier this week, Intel announced pricing and specs for Alder Lake, going up to $589 for the flagship Core i9-12900K with 16 cores.
