Performance per price, higher is better.
Intel Core i5-12600KF: specs and benchmarks
Summary
Intel started Core i5-12600KF sales 27 October 2021 at a recommended price of $264. This is an Alder Lake, Golden Cove, Gracemont architecture desktop processor primarily aimed at office systems. It has 10 cores and 16 threads, and is based on Intel 7 manufacturing technology, with a max turbo frequency of 4900 MHz and an unlocked multiplier.
Compatibility-wise, this is FCLGA1700 processor with a TDP of 125 Watt and a maximum temperature of 72 °C. It supports DDR5-4800, DDR4-3200 memory.
It provides poor benchmark performance at 21.79% of a leader's which is AMD EPYC 9654.
General info
Core i5-12600KF processor market type (desktop or notebook), architecture, sales start time and pricing.
| Place in performance ranking | 252 | |
| Value for money | 68.57 | |
| Market segment | Desktop processor | |
| Series | Intel Core i5 | |
| Architecture codename | Alder Lake, Golden Cove, Gracemont (2021) | |
| Release date | 27 October 2021 (1 year old) | |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $264 | of 305 (Core i7-870) |
| Current price | $255 (1x MSRP) | of 15710 (Xeon Platinum 8276L) |
Value for money
Technical specs
Basic microprocessor parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base frequency and turbo boost clock, lithography, cache size and multiplier lock state. These parameters can generally indicate CPU performance, but to be more precise you have to review its test results.
| Physical cores | 10 (Deca-Core) | |
| Threads | 16 | |
| Base clock speed | 3.7 GHz | of 4.7 (Ryzen 9 7900X) |
| Boost clock speed | 4.9 GHz | of 6 (Core i9-13900KS) |
| Bus support | 8 × 16 GT/s | |
| L1 cache | 80K (per core) | of 7475.2 (Apple M2 Pro 10-Core) |
| L2 cache | 1.25 MB (per core) | of 36 (Apple M2 Max) |
| L3 cache | 20 MB (shared) | of 768 (EPYC 7773X) |
| Chip lithography | Intel 7 nm | of 4 (Ryzen 9 7940H) |
| Die size | 215.25 mm220.5 mm × 10.5 mm | |
| Maximum core temperature | 100 °C | of 110 (Atom x7-E3950) |
| Maximum case temperature (TCase) | 72 °C | of 105 (Core i7-5950HQ) |
| 64 bit support | + | |
| Windows 11 compatibility | + | |
| Unlocked multiplier | + |
Compatibility
Information on Core i5-12600KF compatibility with other computer components and devices: motherboard (look for socket type), power supply unit (look for power consumption) etc. Useful when planning a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. Note that power consumption of some processors can well exceed their nominal TDP, even without overclocking. Some can even double their declared thermals given that the motherboard allows to tune the CPU power parameters.
| Number of CPUs in a configuration | 1 | of 8 (Xeon Platinum 8160M) |
| Socket | FCLGA1700 | |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 125 Watt | of 400 (Xeon Platinum 9282) |
Technologies and extensions
Technological capabilities and additional instructions supported by Core i5-12600KF. You'll probably need this information if you require some particular technology.
| Instruction set extensions | Intel® SSE4.1, Intel® SSE4.2, Intel® AVX2 | |
| AES-NI | + | |
| AVX | + | |
| vPro | + | |
| Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST) | + | |
| Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST) | + | |
| Speed Shift | + | |
| Turbo Boost Technology | 2.0 | |
| Hyper-Threading Technology | + | |
| Idle States | + | |
| Thermal Monitoring | + | |
| Turbo Boost Max 3.0 | - |
Security technologies
Processor technologies aimed at improving security, for example, by protecting against hacks.
| EDB | + | |
| Secure Key | + | |
| OS Guard | + |
Virtualization technologies
Supported virtual machine optimization technologies. Some are specific to Intel only, some to AMD.
| VT-d | + | |
| VT-x | + | |
| EPT | + |
Memory specs
Types, maximum amount and channel number of RAM supported by Core i5-12600KF's memory controller. Depending on the motherboard, higher memory frequency may be supported.
| Supported memory types | DDR5-4800, DDR4-3200 | of 5600 (Ryzen 9 7940H) |
| Maximum memory size | 128 GB | of 786 (Xeon E5-2670 v3) |
| Max memory channels | 2 | of 12 (Xeon Platinum 9221) |
| Maximum memory bandwidth | 76.8 GB/s | of 460.8 (EPYC 9654) |
Peripherals
Specifications and connection types of supported peripherals.
| PCIe version | 5.0 and 4.0 | |
| PCI Express lanes | 20 | of 128 (EPYC 7401) |
Benchmark performance
Single-core and multi-core benchmark results of Core i5-12600KF. Overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range, higher is better.
Combined synthetic benchmark score
This is our combined benchmark performance rating. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.
Passmark
Passmark CPU Mark is a widespread benchmark, consisting of 8 different types of workload, including integer and floating point math, extended instructions, compression, encryption and physics calculation. There is also one separate single-threaded scenario measuring single-core performance.
Benchmark coverage: 68%
GeekBench 5 Single-Core
GeekBench 5 Single-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses only a single CPU core.
Benchmark coverage: 41%
GeekBench 5 Multi-Core
GeekBench 5 Multi-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses all available CPU cores.
Benchmark coverage: 41%
Send in your benchmark results
Send your test results of Core i5-12600KF.
Relative perfomance
Overall Core i5-12600KF performance compared to nearest competitors among desktop CPUs.
AMD equivalent
According to our data, the closest AMD alternative to Core i5-12600KF is Ryzen Threadripper 1950X, which is faster by 1% and higher by 3 positions in our ranking.
Here are some closest AMD rivals to Core i5-12600KF:
Similar processors
Here is our recommendation of several processors that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.
Recommended GPUs
People consider these graphics cards to be good for Core i5-12600KF, according to our PC configuration statistics.
14.1%
12.1%
9.7%
8.8%
4.1%
3.6%
2.5%
2.1%
These are the fastest graphics cards for Core i5-12600KF in our user configuration statistics. There is a total of 4296 configurations based on Core i5-12600KF in our database.
1% (45/4296)
0.5% (20/4296)
3.6% (153/4296)
0.02% (1/4296)
1.1% (48/4296)
0.2% (9/4296)
0.3% (13/4296)
2.1% (92/4296)
0.4% (19/4296)
0.6% (26/4296)
