The CPU comes packaged inside a twist to open golden disc, really drives home how premium the product is.

The performance on this CPU is fantastic and paired with DDR5 you won't need an upgrade in a long time.

Make sure to get yourself a proper cooler because this one runs hot!

I had my last review removed because I did further testing and came to find that the reason for my unfortunate issue with my RAM was the kit itself. DOA CPUs and faulty RAM are both 1-in-a-million occurrences, and my initial verdict was that my IMC was subpar and unable to handle XMP (any fast configuration by extension) on the Z5s with Samsung ICs. I ended up coming to find that because another test CPU acquired, as well as Wootware's in-house CPU all couldn't train the XMP, the kit was 'faulty.' The likely truth isn't so simple, but is elaborated on later in this review.

The i9-12900K is an excellent CPU on the surface. It's not slow - AT ALL. It runs relatively warm, but not any warmer than an overclocked Ryzen 9 (trust me), and the peak power draw is pretty much where you would expect (250W-280W maybe). In terms of pure gaming and productivity, this thing smashes the 5950X. Gaming is not even a contest, this CPU will do magical things like run the old Crysis games relatively smoothly, or run games like COD Vanguard at 400 FPS (first-hand experience). I also noticed a 40 (yes 40) FPS uplift in Farcry 6 going from +-120 or less on my 10850K (5.1/4.8) paired with DR B-die at 4000 15-15-15. Productivity-wise it trades blows, but I honestly can't see any reason that one would opt for the 5950X when this thing is so well-rounded. As FrameChasers puts it; "this thing is the one tool for all the jobs."

Price-wise I'm not even upset. I think the price is totally fine for what you get. Where I do take issue is that Intel seems to have reverted to their Coffee Lake-S binning protocol. I'm not totally sure if it's because Intel 7 isn't yielding super well and they wanted to keep prices down and supply high (probably exactly why they're doing it), but we now again see a massive discrepancy between silicon quality. I would imagine the figure would be close to 5% or less CPUs can all-core 5.2GHz (or better) under an actual stress test. Possibly the top 35% of all chips can all-core 5.1GHz, and everything below that pretty much caps off at 5.0. This is assuming you're not running a monstrous custom loop or a phase change setup, that allows you to run stress tests at 1.35-1.4V under an AVX2 workload while keeping temps down (these CPUs tend to get significantly less stable as heat increases). This entire paragraph also kinda explains why they're making a KS SKU now. I'll leave you to piece that together yourself.

Please do not think you're going to get 5.1GHz all-core by default as it's likely not going to be functionally stable. For some reason, all of the stress-testing methods we used to use have gone out the window, and all you require to be stable is R20 and the game you play. If that's something you feel is reliable for daily use, then go right ahead - it's your PC. In terms of RAM compatibility, it's very vendor-specific because the screeners for the different RAM vendors are likely to have used binned CPUs and the boards from vendors that had less buggy BIOSs and were likely two DIMM'ers (Tachyon/Unify-X). As a result, a lot of XMPs have not been training because the ICs simply can't do the same thing observed in screening in a more common scenario with a basic four DIMM 6-layer board and a run-of-the-mill memory controller with mediocre silicon quality.

If you purchase any Micron kit (generally the 5200Mbps ones), you should be safe. Hynix is supposedly also quite good, but it's basically unpurchasable. The Samsung sticks are a toss-up. XMP may or may not work and your system may or may not be stable. The memory controller on Alder Lake is the flimsiest I've ever come across. It is so bad in fact, that you can pass a full set of runs on IBT V2/Linpack, achieve 700% in HCI Pro, reboot your PC, and find that your memory configuration is no longer stable. IBT V2 will start spitting out math errors and you'll likely error in HCI, Karhu, TM5, or whatever other programs you use (there are no other good ones).

TL; DR:
It's a freakin' fantastic CPU, but...

- Silicon variation is huge.
- The IMC (mainly when communicating with DDR5) is awful, and is more vulnerable depending on which vendor made your board and which BIOS revision you're on.
- The RAM screening has been shoddy at best, and XMP isn't guaranteed - especially with regards to ASUS boards.
- DDR4 on ASUS works somewhat well, and works fairly good on MSI, but don't expect anything good out of Gigabyte, and don't gamble on 4000-4133 in Gear 1.
- The CPU runs warm, but not that warm. Use a 360-420 or a custom loop for sure though.
- Please stress-test every single adjustment you make (even if it's XMP). These CPUs are finicky as ever. The E-cores destabilize the ring, the ring destabilizes the E-cores, the ring destabilizes the memory, the memory destabilizes the ring and the memory controller, and the E-cores by extension can cause memory controller errors. I am not joking.

If you don't have a ton of time or experience, buy ASUS/MSI for a D4 setup, and buy MSI/Gigabyte/ASRock for D5 setups. If you don't mind the prices, the MSI boards win hands down in every way. Do not attempt to pair 4000-5333Mbps D4 XMPs with this thing, it won't end well. If you're going to buy Trident Z5, please do not buy a ROG board unless you like tweaking. Odds are you'll have a lot of tweaking ahead of you.

On account of all of this, I still feel like it deserves at least four stars. I can't give it five because so much *can* go wrong, but if you land in the camp where your RAM ICs and your XMP are fairly anemic and easy to train, and the board you have has a fairly robust BIOS, you might have 0 issues and find that you have no idea what I'm referring to. Quite a lot of discussion around Alder Lake has been taking place on the overclocker and enthusiast forums because the mainstream depiction of what Alder Lake is is not totally accurate, and if you're that one person who experiences all the things I just mentioned, you're kinda left upstream without a paddle.

I absolutely love my 12900K. It runs like a beast paired with a Asus Z-690 Tuf board. No bugs at all, running at 5.3 purring along and loaded my XMP with no issues at all. Thank you so much Wootware for the really awesome service and quick delivery...