Intel Core i9-12900KS Just Revealed, And It Has An Eye-Watering Price

Intel‘s new flagship Alder Lake desktop CPU, the Core i9-12900KS, has been listed on Newegg with an eye-watering price-tag. Initially announced at the CES 2022 in January, the i9-12900KS is Intel’s fastest Alder Lake CPU and comes with higher clock speeds than the standard i9-12900K. It is expected to go on sale soon, although recent reports suggest that the chip has already started shipping to a few lucky buyers ahead of its scheduled release date.

Along with AMD, Intel is one of the leading x86 CPU-makers globally, but unlike its competitor, it has stayed away from the discreet GPU market until now. However, that it all set to change in the coming months, as the company is prepping the release of its first desktop graphics cards later this year. Intel’s all-new Arc Alchemist graphics cards were originally rumored to launch in January 2022, but they are now only expected to be released between May and June 2022.

Newegg, one of the major retailers of computer hardware in the United States, listed Intel’s Core i9-12900KS Alder Lake desktop processor at a whopping $799.99. However, the listing has since been removed suggesting it went live by accident. Either way, the price is $185 more than the list price for the standard Core i9-12900K, making the existing chip the better buy in terms of value. The newer chip, however, is clocked higher and has a new boost mode that can reportedly push up single-core frequencies to as high as 5.5GHz and multi-core speeds up to $5.2GHz. While those figures are for the performance cores, even the efficiency cores can go up to as high as 4GHz on boost mode.

The Listing Also Revealed Some Specifications

The listing has also confirmed some of the specifications of the Core i9-12900KS, which comes with 16 cores and 24 threads. The 16 cores include eight high-performance Golden Cove cores clocked at 3.40 GHz and eight energy-efficient Gracemont cores clocked at 2.50 GHz. In addition, there’s Intel’s UHD Graphics 770 integrated GPU alongside 14MB of L2 cache, and 30MB of L3 cache. As with all of Intel’s ‘K’ series processors, the 12900KS comes with unlocked multiplier that allows for easy overclocking on compatible motherboards. The listing also revealed that the Core i9-12900KS has a 241W maximum thermal power (MTP) and 150W base power.

It is worth noting that the list price on Newegg could be a placeholder, given that the processor is yet to be officially available for purchase. However, Intel had earlier confirmed that the chip will go on sale by the end of March, which means it will be available to buy within the next few days, if not today. As far as the pricing is concerned, earlier rumors suggested that the new Intel chip could be priced around the $800 mark, and the latest developments would suggest that those rumors were pretty much spot on.

Source: Newegg