Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake K-series CPUs Arrive At Amazon Overseas

Update 10/03/21 12pm PT: Hardware sleuth momomo_us has uncovered new Amazon listings of the Core i9-12900K, Core i7-12700K and Core i5-12600K in France and the U.K. We've added the pricing and amended the story.

Original article:

Amazon Netherlands (via Dellchannel21) has revealed the pricing for three of Intel's 12th Generation Alder Lake processors. The prices include value-added tax (VAT) and could be placeholders before Intel officially announce Alder Lake. For now, we recommend you take pricing with a bit of salt.

The Amazon listings for the Core i9-12900K seem to agree that the 16-core processor could cost over $800, whereas the Core i7-12700K and Core i5-12600K may have price tags above $600 and $300, respectively. In fact, Amazon France and Amazon Netherlands seemingly agree that the Core i7-12700K could sell for $615 and the Core i5-12600K for $310.

Even without VAT, the pricing for the three Alder Lake K-series chips still look out of place. Then again, computer hardware is usually more expensive outside the U.S. market. Provantage, a veteran U.S. retailer, had put up the Core i9-12900K, Core i7-12700K and Core i5-12600K for $605, $422 and $289, respectively. Another U.S. store had previously listed the same processors for $705, $495 and $343, respectively.

Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake Pricing

Naturally, Alder Lake requires a new platform, more specifically motherboards with Intel 600-series chipsets and the LGA1700 socket. Thus far, we haven't seen any retailer listings for the new motherboards so pricing still remains a big mystery. We presume they will carry a premium due to the necessary components to get DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 up and running.

Besides the motherboard and processor, consumers will also have to take into consideration new memory. Memory vendors are diligently preparing their DDR5 products for Alder Lake's launch. TeamGroup previously had a DDR5-4800 32GB (2x16GB) memory kit up for purchase at $310.99 before it sold out. That gives us a more or less estimate of what DDR5 could retail for.

Image 1 of 5

The 12th Generation chips will be an interesting launch for many reasons. Alder Lake is Intel's first hybrid processor on a desktop platform. More importantly, the processors are the first consumer chips to embrace the next-generation DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 interface.

Intel will be holding its Intel Innovation event on October 27 to 28 so we may hear more about Alder Lake then. Hopefully, the chipmaker will finally give us a launch date.