CPUs are a duopoly. While some alternatives to AMD and Intel technically exist, their market share is so tiny that they do not appear on some statistics tracking pages. It is for this reason that we rarely talk about only Intel or only AMD. We instead compare them to one another, as they are both the only true competition to each other.
So, in today’s update article, as we turn our attention to whether there’s a place in our PC build chart for Intel’s strange new CPU release, named ‘Arrow Lake’—we also consider how this release fits into the history of the battle between two impressive (sometimes clumsy) tech giants.
(Information on Steam’s top games were gathered for this article from Steam Charts)
A couple of weeks ago I went through eight of the most popular Steam games at the time, and linked which Logical Increments PC build tier is needed to play that game at a specific performance level. Well, that proved to be a popular article, so I’m here to round out the list with more of Steam’s most successful titles (and maybe a couple trending ones)!
January brought a lot of CPU options to our attention from AMD and Intel, and as a result we’ve made a whole host of changes to the processor column of our main chart!
Availability and pricing issues have stirred up the PC market in general, and the GPU market in particular. But that doesn’t mean that every type of builder is affected equally!
Today, for example, we will demonstrate that it is still possible to build a computer with a good ‘bang for the buck’ and robust performance that is entirely suitable for office and school tasks.
Virtual Reality is an amazing thing. It lets you temporarily escape whatever mortal problems you grapple with in life: politics, expensive GPUs, your in-laws… the list is endless! But in order to power an entire virtual universe for you to freely explore and withdraw into, you’ll need quite a beefy computer to handle it.
That’s why, in this article, we’ll be taking a look at building a PC with Intel’s new flagship CPU—the powerful i9-12900K. Building around that new chip, we’re aiming to put together a computer that will crank out VR performance with incredibly high fidelity.
Before we start looking at all the bits and pieces, though, let’s closely examine the heart of this beastly PC: the i9-12900K!
After spending the last several generations playing it safe and letting AMD enjoy the CPU spotlight, Intel finally decided to provide a more robust competition with their recent 12th-generation Alder Lake chips. New DDR5 RAM support, much smaller lithography, and lots more cores await to provide plenty of gaming and multitasking performance this holiday season.
Today, we’ll be looking at a build including the i5-12600K that focuses on being compact yet powerful—capable of fitting in a tight space, or moving with relative ease from house to office (or from home office to entertainment room). As we’ll see, the i5-12600K is a multitasking master for a great price, so this will be a gaming-workstation hybrid in a nice tight package.
Before we begin, let’s explore the 12600K in a bit more depth so we know what we’re working with!
With Intel releasing their new 12th-generation chips into a market still saturated with scalpers peddling $2000 GPUs, it’s fair to say that most people interested in this new hardware are looking to upgrade just their CPU (and motherboard) rather than putting together an entirely new build.
But it’s a lot easier to conceptualize what to upgrade when you see how the part fits into an entire build. And maybe some wild people out there are looking to build an entirely new PC regardless of the difficulties. For those reason, the ongoing graphics card woes won’t stop us from having a little fun and planning a handful of creative builds with Intel’s Alder Lake series of CPUs! For this specific build, we’ll be looking to make a quiet PC capable of letting you game in peace (without it sounding like a passenger jet is preparing for takeoff right on your desk).
First, let’s take a close look at the star of the PC: the i7-12700K!
The i9-11900K is a somewhat confusing component. On the one hand, it compares unfavorably with its own predecessor, the i9-10900K: it has 8 cores (down from its older sibling’s 10), yet has the same top speed. And indeed, benchmarks by Gamers Nexus show that performance is very similar, with the i9-11900K sometimes slightly behind its predecessor.
On the other hand, 8 cores (and 16 threads) is likely to be more than enough for the vast majority of both gaming and workstation users, 5.3 GHz is still an excellent native top speed, and the two fewer cores do make a slight positive difference in favor of cooler temperatures on the 11900K. Thus, although the core count has been ‘downgraded,’ this i9 remains a powerful processor.
Intel recently launched a new lineup of chips, and one of them was the i7-11700K, an 8 core/16 threaded powerhouse with a boost clock of 5 GHz. With such specifications, this processor runs any game smoothly. As a result of the high core count, it would also be fit for workstation purposes such as video rendering.
It does have a noticeably high TDP: 125 Watts! This already tells us the processor might get a little hot under high loads. Nevertheless, the performance is astounding and makes up (slightly) for the high TDP.
In this article, we’ll be building using the new i7 to build a PC for high-tier gaming. Let’s dig in:
