Customer Ratings & Reviews

This CPU is one of the most best for gaming. It has plenty of cores to handle gaming and to mutitask. I went with the 12600k over AMD's 5600X because the price was cheaper and this CPU is also faster in single threaded workloads. 6 performance cores plus 4 efficiency cores will be plenty for gaming and moderare workloads for years to come. It also runs fairly cool with a Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 cpu cooler.

Picked this bad boy up over a Ryzen 5700G or 5800X for one simple reason - my local store had it in stock, as well as a motherboard to pair with it. I upgraded from an i3 10100 on a B400 series board. Paired this with a coolermaster 120mm air cooler and a MSI Z690 board. GPU when comparing the two systems was a RX 6600XT. I let the board do the genie OC thing, it bumped the clock up to 4.8ghz across all 6 P-cores and 3.8ghz on all E-Cores. I managed to get it up to 4.9ghz across all P-Cores and 4ghz across the E-Cores. However, this resulted in unacceptable load temperatures, so I dropped the overclock to 4.7ghz and 3.8ghz with a 140mv undervolt. Runs cool, quiet and fast. I haven't done much in the way of CPU specific benchmarking, but I can say there was a notable improvement in gaming, both flatscreen and VR, particularly in poorly optimized games like ARK. The E-Cores are quite fast in their own right - I have used them for gaming as a test, and they aren't dissimilar to the cores on the i3 if you turn off hyper threading. I regularly assign my ARK server to run on them in the background. They also offer amazing power savings - under a typical load of running the server with a browser with multiple tabs open and steam running in the background, the CPU averages only about 12W TDP. I haven't encountered any issues with the Windows task scheduler under Windows 10. Performance seems great, and I'm fairly certain my 3070 will be a bottleneck before this CPU. The onboard GPU is a bonus. A fail-safe in case your GPU ever dies. If you want something with a decent iGPU, get a Ryzen 5700G or wait for the next generation with RDNA2 cores. In previous generations, the only reason to get a K series chip was the overclocking abilities. This time around, the E-Cores actually offer a surprising appeal if you need the extra threads, and may actually result in net power savings if you don't run your CPU under load all that often. If you don't see yourself doing a lot of background stuff, or highly threaded tasks, you would probably be perfectly happy with a 12400 and putting the extra money into a GPU or nvme storage or something. You can get pretty similar gaming performance for a lot less money due to the high price of the Z series boards.

got a great price on it and literally the next day after i purchase it, they raise it by about $100!!! i lol'd hard...but great lil processor non-the-less. 770uhd integrated graphics great for home media server transcoding needs, and 10 cores great for performance and creating some VM's...good for low-mid tier..i honestly dont notice a different from this and my other pcs I7 12700k

great gaming cpu, if you are in a market to buy a great gaming cpou with awesome single thread then this is it. it boost to 4.9 as long as u have great cooler(i have 5ghz on 240mm aio). great for older games like arma which hammers the single core and ofcourse it great for new games since it has 10 core. 6p core and 4e cores. cpu runs cool( mine runs low 70s while gaming on my itx formd t1 with 1 12mm slim fan and 1 25mm fan). pair this cpu with ddr4 mobo and ur good since ddr5 mobo are expensive and useless as of now.

So far this processor has been great! I’m building a gaming pc and I’m getting my gpu tomorrow. But in the mean time, just running off of this processor, it’s the fastest computer I’ve ever had. Still learning more about computers and their parts, but I can run all games not super graphically intensive. Rocket league gets me about 90 fps on low settings, about 60fps on phasmophobia at low settings, 90fps on Minecraft, etc. all without a gpu!

Works well for 1 month and running. Works with Asus Z960-plus wifi and 3070ti. Good for budget build and solid for cheap gaming.

Best CPU out on the market right now for the price amazing amount of cores! Best priced CPU!

Great cpu! Fast, great bang for the buck. Perfect for gaming.

Great value cpu. I use it on my gaming rig at the moment and it keeps up just fine. Debated between this an an AMD alternstive, but decided on this because it can be moves to my media center in a few years to take advantage of quick sync.

I have 12900k and ks’s I overclock on hwbot.org. My 12600k is a beast great bin. Able to stabilize cinebench r23 at 5.4 p core and 4.3 e core memory at 6800 30-39-39-28 1T cmr! R23 score of 21,314 pretty much comparable to a 5900x. That’s a 16 thread cpu vs a 24 thread cpu. The 12600k is that fast for sub $300. In gaming it destroys my 5950x. If you are only gaming get the 12600k it games the same as my 12900ks at 5.5ghz all core.

A very good CPU for most things. I bought this for my wife's build almost a year ago. She games with it and it just about keeps up with my 12900k There is very little different on most games. Really good CPU for the price and it does everything you need it to do without bogging down.

Although I may not be a genius when it comes to computer parts I know that this CPU is very capable and so far has had no issues running RDR2, 4 Minecraft servers, and windows solitaire at the same time. Unfortunately my cooling system does consist of a window unit and a paper fan powered by me but handles overclocking very well.

New kings of mainstream gaming CPUs. Intel finally, after 5-6 years, managed to deliver a good CPU which is also competitive. Good value for money. Take it if you're into mainstream gaming. Content creators better stick with AMD's Ryzen 7/9.

This was a very good gaming CPU when it release. It’s an even better deal almost two years later at less than $199. Gaming? No problem. Streaming? Of course. Coding? Do it. Are there better CPUs for more money? Sure. Do you need to spend more to achieve high fps with your RTX GPU? No.

Great value cpu for a mid-range gaming system. Works like a champ when pair with RTX 4070 Super. Low power consumption.

I recently purchased the 12600K and a Z690 Tomahawk motherboard as an upgrade in my i5-6400 file/media server/Plex box. Overall, I've been really happy with the upgrade. The increase in raw performance and speed is crazy. Compatibility is top-notch (DDR4, DDR5, PCIE5/4/3, etc). My only complaint is that it's a much more power-hungry chip. My previous setup would idle (and stay at idle) using about 35watts. This setup idles at about 45w, but never stays there--it's constantly bouncing from 45 to 90 or more. So, based on a full-days power usage, I figure that it's consuming 60ish watts doing the same tasks. I should note that I have yet to really dig into the advanced power settings. I was hoping Windows 11 and Intel would provide the best case scenario after some time of learning the PC's behavior. Hasn't happened yet. And I also realize that I my usage might've been better served with a non-K processor; however, I ended up purchasing this guy for less than I would have paid for a 12400. For the increased performance and less cost, I opted for the 12600k. Still not mad that I made that choice!

[Employee of bestbuy] Definitely an improvement from my 8th gen Intel CPU. Plays all the modern games well at 1080p 100+ fps with my 3060 TI. Would recommend this CPU for anybody who wants to get high frames within 1080p gameplay.

amazing cpu for the price if you have an AIO or custom loop you can overclock and get amazing results i will say you will have to play with voltage to be able to keep temps down i got mine running at 5 on all p cores and 4 on all e cores with max temps reaching 80c

Great deal on this Intel - Core i5-12600K Desktop Processor 10 (6P+4E) Cores up to 4.9 GHz Unlocked LGA1700, comparing to other cpu's for gaming its a great choice.

I installed this in a GIGABYTE B660 Gaming X AX DDR4 since I'm not overclocking and the board has all the features I wanted at a good price. It's paired with 16 GB DDR4 3200 CL14 RAM and a Phanteks 240 MP AIO liquid cooler. CPU temp never rose above 55 degrees during a 60 minute 100% CPU usage stress test with the stock Phantek fans. With Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM fans, temp is in the high 40s during the same stress test. Running No Man's Sky at 2560×1080 resolution and ultra settings with a GTX 1080 and v-sync enabled, fps never drops below 70 and is over 100 with v-sync disabled. My previous system had an i5-6400 which was usually at 100% CPU utilization while gaming. Now CPU utilization hovers around 14%. Keep in mind the KF does not have the integrated Intel GPU so a discreet card is required. This was a worthwhile upgrade and one I'm very happy with.