Intel's Special Edition Core i9-12900KS plummets to all-time low $240 — get 80% off Intel's Alder Lake flagship 16-core chip

[Admin]

Intel's three-generation-old Core i9-12900KS special edition flagship is on the best deal it's ever been on.

Intel's Special Edition Core i9-12900KS plummets to all-time low $240 — get 80% off Intel's Alder Lake flagship 16-core chip : Read more

 

[YSCCC]

Are you sure it's a good deal? on a EOL platform, almost 3 years old... only used to be the TOTL special edition..

 

[rluker5]

Are you sure it's a good deal? on a EOL platform, almost 3 years old... only used to be the TOTL special edition..

Vs $317 for a 5950X, yes.

 

[TheHerald]

The ks is not a particularly good out of the box chip. Actually, it's horrible. Now if you don't mind tinkering in the bios, that price is insane.

 

[TheHerald]

Vs $317 for a 5950X, yes.

Or the 5800x 3d, or the 5700x 3d etc.

But what do you expect, vocal majority wants to shout intel bad from the rooftops. Just ignore it

 

[Amdlova]

The platform is dead. But is cheap! Works wonders... I have a Lga1700 build and will wait for ddr6. Still kicking the ddr4

 

[TheHerald]

The platform is dead. But is cheap! Works wonders... I have a Lga1700 build and will wait for ddr6. Still kicking the ddr4

I never got the dead platform argument tbh.

 

[Thunder64]

Vs $317 for a 5950X, yes.

Flagship CPU's on dead on sockets retain their value well. Anyone building new would be better served by a 9900X at $383.

 

[thestryker]

The ks is not a particularly good out of the box chip. Actually, it's horrible. Now if you don't mind tinkering in the bios, that price is insane.

I definitely agree with this, but I think I'd still lean towards the 13700K at +$40 just for the ease of use standpoint.

I never got the dead platform argument tbh.

The only time I really understand that argument is if someone bought a decent motherboard with low end CPU with the intent to upgrade later. Someone going from say a 7600X to a 9800X3D (or even Zen 6 X3D assuming it's still AM5) has fantastic upgrade path without replacing the motherboard. I think a lot of people associate platform longevity as some great thing because of AM4 which frankly was an anomaly born out of how far behind AMD was.

Personally speaking I don't tend to upgrade platform unless I'm starting to run into performance issues. I'd originally planned on updating with ADL, but didn't particularly like the heat output (which RPL didn't improve on). Zen on AM5 has a bad IHS which makes the chips run less efficiently than they could so I just kept delaying an upgrade. This time the deciding factor between AMD and Intel was just platform features rather than potential future CPU upgrades.

 

[punkncat]

Deal is already done. That was a decent enough value on its own merit. What I see as the issue is that unless you already had a 12th gen capable motherboard it could be difficult to find anything of the quality this CPU will require.

 

[rluker5]

13600kf for $175 isn't too bad:
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-i5-136...3600kf&qid=1731543497&sprefix=,aps,108&sr=8-1

 

[YSCCC]

The only time I really understand that argument is if someone bought a decent motherboard with low end CPU with the intent to upgrade later. Someone going from say a 7600X to a 9800X3D (or even Zen 6 X3D assuming it's still AM5) has fantastic upgrade path without replacing the motherboard. I think a lot of people associate platform longevity as some great thing because of AM4 which frankly was an anomaly born out of how far behind AMD was.

Personally speaking I don't tend to upgrade platform unless I'm starting to run into performance issues. I'd originally planned on updating with ADL, but didn't particularly like the heat output (which RPL didn't improve on). Zen on AM5 has a bad IHS which makes the chips run less efficiently than they could so I just kept delaying an upgrade. This time the deciding factor between AMD and Intel was just platform features rather than potential future CPU upgrades.

For me since decade ago I believe the MB "grade" isn't as important as long as one isn't going to put it into extreme overclocking. the chipset used is more of the decisive factor.

Back in the day when MB have North and South bridge, the MB did affect the base performance, overclock headroom and connectivity, but since we moved to multi core and esseintially moved the north bridge and memory controller into the CPU, the board mainlly affect the extra power into the CPU for extreme overclocking, and the different between different gen chipset in the same socket become less and less prominant, like the latest PCIe lane nos.

Upgrading in socket could be drastic if one goes from zen 2 or even zen 1 to say, 5800X3D, or even like in the lower end Z690 board I bought with the 12700KF, moving to 14900K did provide significant improvement in photo conversion and quite noticeable gaming performance thanks to the larger cache and much higher clock.

But normally, if one gets say the top SKU in the Tick cycle, dropping in the Tok cycle top SKU on the old board don't really make sense, while for AM4 and hopefully AM5 when the socket spans multiple generations, the improvement maybe drastic.

One more consideration is the replacement stock availability if anything goes wrong can be diminishing with a dead platform, if luck strikes replacement stock will vary, so logically the value of the dead platform will goes down.

With all these considerations, the 12900KS still at $250 doesn't look like a deal, just reflects what it is worth at current consumer chips

 

[TheHerald]

I definitely agree with this, but I think I'd still lean towards the 13700K at +$40 just for the ease of use standpoint.

The only time I really understand that argument is if someone bought a decent motherboard with low end CPU with the intent to upgrade later. Someone going from say a 7600X to a 9800X3D (or even Zen 6 X3D assuming it's still AM5) has fantastic upgrade path without replacing the motherboard. I think a lot of people associate platform longevity as some great thing because of AM4 which frankly was an anomaly born out of how far behind AMD was.

Personally speaking I don't tend to upgrade platform unless I'm starting to run into performance issues. I'd originally planned on updating with ADL, but didn't particularly like the heat output (which RPL didn't improve on). Zen on AM5 has a bad IHS which makes the chips run less efficiently than they could so I just kept delaying an upgrade. This time the deciding factor between AMD and Intel was just platform features rather than potential future CPU upgrades.

I have no personal experience with the KS but from the reviews ive seen - and more importantly normal users on reddit etc., oh boy does it stink at stock. It's extremely well binned - much better than my 12900k - but it pushes so much voltage to hit those clockspeeds. My advice to all these people was to drop clocks to 4.9 - drop voltage to 1.15 and enjoy the chip. They all came back saying "holy cow i dropped my temps by 30c".

So yeah, as usual with Intel chips, OOB it's crap. The 13700k is less so, but still not great.

Regarding the platform upgradability, i'd be interested in a zen7 3d but I don't think it will work with am5. Furthermore those new technologies like CUDIMM or even DDR6 won't be compatible, so even if zen 7 is backwards compatible with my mobo id still buy a new one.

 

[thestryker]

Furthermore those new technologies like CUDIMM or even DDR6 won't be compatible, so even if zen 7 is backwards compatible with my mobo id still buy a new one.

FWIW the only thing stopping CUDIMMs from working on AM5 now is the memory controller. If AMD doesn't change out the IO die for Zen 6 I'll be shocked.

Between CUDIMMs on desktop (JEDEC extended their specs to 8800 this year) and MRDIMMs in enterprise I'm not really sure there's a huge rush for DDR6 (or maybe implementation is slower/more costly than expected.

 

[TheHerald]

FWIW the only thing stopping CUDIMMs from working on AM5 now is the memory controller. If AMD doesn't change out the IO die for Zen 6 I'll be shocked.

Between CUDIMMs on desktop (JEDEC extended their specs to 8800 this year) and MRDIMMs in enterprise I'm not really sure there's a huge rush for DDR6 (or maybe implementation is slower/more costly than expected.

Well I guess if they upgrade the memory controller CUDIMMs would be useless since you could theoretically run something like 7000 1:1 that would probably be faster than 9000 1:2

 

[thestryker]

Well I guess if they upgrade the memory controller CUDIMMs would be useless since you could theoretically run something like 7000 1:1 that would probably be faster than 9000 1:2

If they keep the memory subsystems working same as now that would probably be the case, but I think they'll want to start leveraging higher DDR5 speeds especially on the higher core count models.