Intel - Core i7-12700F 12th Generation - 12 Core - 20 Thread - 2.1 to 4.9 GHz - LGA1700 - Desktop Processor - Grey/Black/Gold

It was time to rebuild my graphics design, CAD, and embedded systems workstation. The old system was built on an ASUS P8C WS motherboard and ran an Intel Xeon E-series V2 processor, 32Gb of DDR3 RAM, a Quadro P2000 graphics card and Windows 10 Pro. Although it all worked very well, many of my software updates would not run on the old Xeon processor (Adobe Media Encoder, for example). So, I studied all that is out there and finally decided to make this 12th Generation i7 the heart of my new workstation build. My old Xeon did not have graphics support built in; neither does this specific i7. So I kept my Quadro graphics card. I built my new system on an ASUS Creator ProArt B660 motherboard, added 32Gb of Corsair Vengeance LPX RAM (I was unable to find the Kingston RAM I prefer), added four Noctua 1200RPM PWM case fans to aid the CPU cooler that came with the i7, and powered it all with a Corsair RM850X power supply. For my boot drive I used a Samsung 980 PRO 500Gb Gen 4 X4 M.2 SSD. I added a 1Tb M.2 for storage and pulled over my old SSD SATA drives from my old system. I then installed Windows 10 Pro and, after a couple of days, upgraded to Windows 11 Pro (through the free upgrade program). This is an amazingly quick and amazingly quiet system. As built the system boots extremely quickly and performs everything I have thrown at it thus far. This little i7 is a real monster of a processor. Just for sake of comparison, I downloaded and ran the Cinebench R23 benchmark software, which is a real test of a CPU's power speed and continuous power. If you look at the attached image you'll see that in this benchmark the only listed processors that outperformed the i7-12700F were two AMD Thread Rippers (one with 32 cores running 64 threads, and the other with 16 cores running 32 threads) and a Xeon processor with 24 cores running 48 threads. This is i7's performance is amazing for a processor with a price of around $330. Pretty impressive! I considered using an i9 processor of some sort in this build but did not want to contend with the heat and power demands of that processor series. And I considered going with another Xeon, but price and other issues put me off of that choice. For a "never gaming" computer, I think using this particular i7 makes perfect sense for graphics design, CAD, and the embedded systems work that I do. This is a keeper! The only negative I found with this "boxed processor" is its "thermal solution" (the CPU fan that comes with it). On this particular motherboard the fins of the fan stick out very close to the first RAM slot on the board. If you want to fill all four RAM slots on this board the CPU fan might interfere with the RAM stick in the A1 slot IF the RAM stick has a tall heatsink attached. I used two 16Gb sticks (mounted in the A2 and B2 RAM slots) and had no problems. The other issue with the CPU fan is it can get really noisy when the CPU has begun to heat up and the fan speeds up. It really lets you know it is working! But, it is rare for the i7 to really work hard enough to cause the fan to spool up. When it does you'll think your robot vacuum snuck under the desk and turned itself on high! This is certainly not a "deal-breaker." I did not make any deductions in my "stars ratings because of it.

This CPU is so much better than my old one, and I can immediately tell the difference with how everything runs.

I wish the fan intel supplied with these processors were not as noisy. It sounds like one of those lawncare machines, weedwhackers or something. And plugging it into your motherboard was an absolute pain (it doesn't use screws, ti uses these push-in type plastic pins). I wasn't even going to think about removing the fan from how hard it was installing it. Besides that, its plenty fast and probably overkill for day to day tasks, and for gaming, that is well covered. However, it is an older model, 3 years old now. But when I bought it was only a year or so old

Works as well as intended. Very fast processing, and very easy to install. Doesn't overheat easily, and is very efficient.

Prefect item , really good for gaming with 4060 its 2k and ultra 60-90 fps on all games cs2-300fps ultra