Intel unveils its mainstream 12th gen desktop CPUs and new stock coolers with RGB lighting

Back in October of last year, Intel stunned the PC crowd with their 12th generation Alder Lake processors. You can read more about it here, but the long and short of it was that their first 10nm chip was a hit, featuring a new hybrid architecture that mimicked mobile processors by having both performance and efficiency cores. However, they had only released their K-series chips back then, meant mostly more for the enthusiast and gamer demographic.

At the recent CES 2022 event though, Intel has finally revealed the rest of their 12th generation desktop CPU series, featuring their more mainstream desktop CPUs. You won’t be looking to overclock these chips, nor would you be able to, but according to Intel they’ll offer incredible performance at a reasonable price. For instance, they are claiming that the Intel Core i5-12600 will outperform AMD’s Ryzen 7 5700G, sometimes up to 31% in content creation, office productivity. Their highest tier Core i9-12900 meanwhile goes a step further, trouncing the AMD Ryzen 5700G from anywhere between 15-44%.

Furthermore, Intel are also claiming a huge jump in performance compared to its own 11th generation of processors. According to them, they see anywhere from 9-55% increase in performance in content creation workloads in their 12th generation chips, while gaming performance also saw some solid rises compared to their last generation silicon. It should be noted though that all these benchmarks were done by Intel themselves, and so should be taken with a small pinch of salt.

The standard bunch of mainstream CPUs weren’t the only ones unveiled today by Intel either. They’ve also launched their 12th generation low power desktop variants. These are still meant for desktops, but have a lower processor base power of just 35W, compared to their mainstream siblings that have processor base powers of up to 65W, with peak turbo power taking as much as 202W for the Core i9-12900. You’ll be able to tell them apart by their T-suffix. As for pricing, the top tier Core i9-12900 will go for USD489 (~RM2,050.62), with the full price lists for each CPU announced today available below:

On top of the new desktop CPUs, Intel also showed off their new laminar CPU coolers that will come in the box with their processors rated below 65W. There’ll be three versions of the CPU cooler, with each higher tier increasing in performance over the other. The highest tier stock cooler, the Intel Laminar RH1, will come with the Intel Core i9 processors and not only feature a bigger copper heat column, but also addressable RGB lighting, a first for Intel stock coolers.

While many were expecting Intel to release the rest of their 12th generation processors at CES 2022 anyway, perhaps not as many saw the new stock coolers coming. That being said, it was long due a revamp, as the old Intel stock cooler was the butt of many jokes in the PC enthusiast community for being a weak CPU cooler that often required users to buy themselves a third party cooler to replace it with. To know more about Intel at CES 2022, you can check out their CES event page on the Intel website.