U.S. Retailer Reveals Alder Lake Boxed, Tray Pricing: Up To $600

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

Provantage (via Harukaze5719), a retailer in the U.S., has listed pricing for Intel's 12th Generation Alder Lake K-series processors. Alder Lake will be the first hybrid x86 desktop chips on a mainstream platform, and given the competitive price listings, they certainly look like they'll compete with AMD's Ryzen 5000 chips for a spot on our list of Best CPUs for Gaming.

Although Provantage is a reputable store, we recommend you approach the pricing with caution. Alder Lake won't debut until Fall 2021, so Provantage's pricing could just be a placeholder. However, the prices do fall in line with the listings from another retailer, so they could be a very good indication of how Intel could price the heterogeneous processors.

Provantage listed the Core i9-12900K, Core i7-12700K, Core i5-12600K, and their corresponding KF-series counterparts. The KF models come with a $26 to $27 discount, so that's seemingly what Intel's Gen12 Xe graphics is worth. That's not a huge surprise, considering that Alder Lake has been rumored to retain the Xe-LP graphics engine that's inside Intel's Tiger Lake chips, but with up to 32 EUs.

Intel 12th Generation Alder Lake Pricing

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ProcessorBoxed PricingTray PricingBase / Boost Clocks (GHz)L3 Cache (MB)TDP (W)Boxed PNTray PN
Core i9-12900K$604.89$605.923.2 / 5.230125BX8071512900KCM8071504549230
Core i9-12900KF$578.13$578.493.2 / 5.230125BX8071512900KFCM8071504549231
Core i7-12700K$422.17$420.263.6 / 5.025125BX8071512700KCM8071504553828
Core i7-12700KF$395.61$392.363.6 / 5.025125BX8071512700KFCM8071504553829
Core i5-12600K$288.77$283.593.7 / 4.920125BX8071512600KCM8071504555227
Core i5-12600KF$261.77$263.153.7 / 4.920125BX8071512600KFCM8071504555228

Provantage has the Core i9-12900K, and Core i9-12900KF listed at $604.89 and $578.13, respectively. The pricing looks modest compared to another retailer that posted the same processors for $705 and $674, respectively. However, if we look at the current Rocket Lake lineup, the Core i9-11900K and Core i9-11900KF sell for $549 and $529, respectively. Apparently, the Alder Lake equivalents carry a $55 and $49 premium.

Pricing-wise, the Core i9 models compete with the Ryzen 9 5900X, which has a $549 MSRP. However, AMD's chip features 12 Zen 3 cores with SMT, and while the Core i9-12900K has 16 cores in total, only eight are high-performance Golden Cove cores. So it'll be interesting to see how Golden Cove stacks up to Zen 3 with a four-core disadvantage.

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

The Core i7-12700K and Core i7-12700KF, on the other hand, might cost $422.17 and $395.61, respectively. For comparison, the other retailer listed them for $495 and $464, respectively. The Core i7-11700K and Core i7-11700KF are available for $409 and $384, respectively, so we're looking at a price increase between $11 and $13, which sounds reasonable.

The only Zen 3 chip in that price range is the Ryzen 7 5800X that debuted at $449. This might be a fair fight as the Core i7 SKU is rumored to rock eight Golden Cove cores, and the Ryzen 7 5800X has eight Zen 3 cores.

The Core i5-12600K and Core i5-12600KF will likely be the favorite SKUs for gamers. The first may carry a $288.77 price tag, while the latter is priced at $261.77. Again, Provantage's pricing is lower than the other U.S. retailer that listed the Core i5-12600K for $343 and the Core i5-12600KF for $312. The Core i5-11600K and Core i5-11600KF typically go for $272 and $247, respectively. With Alder Lake, it's a $16 higher price tag on the former and a $14 premium on the latter.

The Core i5 Alder Lake chips are expected to arrive with six Golden Cove cores and would have to face the hexa-core Ryzen 5 5600X that retails for $299.

Zhiye Liu
RAM Reviewer and News Editor

Zhiye Liu is a Freelance News Writer at Tom’s Hardware US. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • watzupken
    I feel the success of Alder Lake as usual is subjective to its pricing. Performance is expected to be good, at least when compared to the existing Rocket Lake/ Tiger Lake. The problem I feel is that anyone transitioning to Alder Lake will face a high cost of entry because besides the CPU, one will also need get a good motherboard, cooler, and potentially, RAM and PSU. Potentially RAM because it depends if the user chooses to go straight for DDR5 or stick with DDR4. And for PSU, I think it depends if motherboard makers will adopt the replacement for the 24 pins motherboard power connector.
    Reply
  • dalek1234
    This TDP is for Base Clock or Boost Clock? Given Intel's previous CPUs' TDP specs, and actual power draw, I suspect this is for Base Clock. There is quite a large Mhz difference between Base on Boost on this chart. I fear that Boost power draw to be as ridiculously high as previous CPU gens, maybe even higher.

    Interesting pricing. Looks like Intel is expecting these CPUs to not be very competitive, and is keeping prices low to hold on to market share. But pricing doesn't tell the whole story. It's about total cost of CPU ownership, and that includes the electrical bill, need for a new motherboard...

    We will know for sure once real world tests have been conducted by unbiased reviewers, but of course, first these CPUs need to be released. For now it's all just marketing fluff.
    Reply
  • Neilbob
    Intel's TDP ratings are always for the base clock. These new CPUs may compete with and perhaps even exceed the performance of the AMD competition, but as has been the case for the last 3 or 4 years, power consumption at boost clocks/multi-core workloads will likely be pushed far beyond the ideal efficiency curve in order to achieve this.

    At least, that's my cynical point-of-view - but based on various articles I've read about Alder Lake.
    Reply
  • ThatMouse
    Wow I'm feeling pretty good about going with the Ryzen 9 - 5900X for $500 when it was on sale. Where you at Intel???
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    You're talking around $700 for a new motherboard, CPU, and DDR5 RAM, and be required to use Windows 11. Also if you're a professional you will likely be using software licensed on a per-machine basis, which could mean hundreds more in costs.

    That's a big ask for anyone not classified as a prosumer or professional. In games, especially at high resolutions, even comparatively antique 4770k doesn't really hold back frame rates, it's still a 2560x1440 120fps and 4k 75fps processor, which TH demonstrated with the 3080. In applications the performance benefit with vary greatly of course depending on what you use, but if you're already using a 9th generation Intel CPU or Ryzen 3000 series or newer, it doesn't make any sense to upgrade unless you're a prosumer or professional where time is critical.

    How Much CPU Does the GeForce RTX 3080 Need? | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)
    Reply
  • ohio_buckeye
    As someone on a ryzen platform, I’ve got a b350 and a 3600. Maybe I should just go to a 3900x, or perhaps I’ll catch a decent b550 on sale and a 5800x or better and be happy a couple of years and see if prices drop.
    Reply
  • wifiburger
    prices look good, might force Amd to start lowering Zen3/Zen4 prices especially if Intel comes on top for productivity benchmarks

    What kind of prices are we expecting for a good motherboard ?
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    ohio_buckeye said:
    As someone on a ryzen platform, I’ve got a b350 and a 3600. Maybe I should just go to a 3900x, or perhaps I’ll catch a decent b550 on sale and a 5800x or better and be happy a couple of years and see if prices drop.

    Personally I'd do what I'm doing and getting an X570S motherboard and going long with my Ryzen 3700X. PCIe 4.0 is going to be far sufficient for bandwidth outside the server market for a long time to come, some X570S motherboards ship with 3 or 4 M.2 slots for futureproofing, GPUs are the limiting factor in games and will continue to be for quite a while, and you can drop in a 5000 series, or even a 6000 series if AMD does a Zen 3+ refresh, when prices become cheap as they are clearanced.
    Reply
  • ohio_buckeye
    Yeah, I can get a b550 board cheap, so maybe I'll do that and sell my 3600 and get a 3900x for a little extra and hold on a while. I'll see.
    Reply