Intel - Core i9-12900K Desktop Processor 16 (8P+8E) Cores up to 5.2 GHz Unlocked LGA1700 600 Series Chipset 125W - Grey/Black/Gold

My experience with the Intel Core i9 12900K has been great, is a very capable cpu and I havent had any problems with it. I have been overclocking it on Cinebench. With a stock Corsair Aio I managed to almost match an AMD thread Ripper.

OMG this thing is fast, I have some extremely fast machines in my arsenals an this one is the fastest. It outperforms my dual Xeon machine hands down in almost every way. I've got mine hooked up with a RTX 3090 as well and in gaming it's blowing every game out of the water. I use it for work building virtual machines regularly for deployment onto servers an this paired with 4x Samsung 980Pro's in Raid0 is the definition of fast, Read Write hovering around 28GBps, yes you read that correct, GigaBytes Per Second. My local storage on this beast is around the same speed as most people's ramdisk. I also have a full 10G network connected to it an it breezes through any remote task I throw at it. Also water cooled it as it does get a tad toasty an it doesn't come with a stock cooler so if your gonna buy this thing keep that in mind.

It's hard for me to decide who I could recommend this to. To put it simply, this CPU is an absolute savage. It's insanely fast, literary crashes everything, but by doing so, it likes to suck a lot of power and push out a lot of heat. Now it is that bad? As bad as some people say the heat and power consumption is? Not at all! Here is what a lot of reviewers don't tell you. While this top of the line i9 12900K can demand a lot of power from your system, it only does that on very intense loads. In normal day-to-day operation, it's actually very energy efficient. In my normal daily use, it uses around 45W on average, with up to 60W spikes from time to time. A bit more in games. Not a big deal. With the temperatures, you have to be a bit more mindful. As long as you have a very good cooler, you don't have to worry about it, but it doesn't have to be anything extreme either. I use a Corsair H100i Caperlix 240mm. A lot of people say 240 is not enough, but it's been fine, and I have my fans set on silent. With regular use it operated at around 40-50C, on idle hovers around 30C, in games it's around 65-75C, and in heavier loads, like video encoding, it reached around 80-85C. The only time I can get it to 99C is in a multicore Cinebench R23 benchmark, about halfway through. If never reached 100C and never throttled on me. I'm fine with that. So do you need this CPU? Well, I still think for the most people, the i7 12700K is more than enough. You would get an almost identical performance for a much lower price, plus lower temps. If you're like me however, and just want the top of the line in your system, this i9 is a monster. One of the quickest out there, period. The best gaming processor, period. Definitely gives you some bragging rights and your friends will be jealous, no questions about it. Plus the box will look very cool on your shelf. So just decide, are you a sensible person who wants a great performance at a great price? Then the 12700K is the one for you. Or, are you a geek with too much money burning a whole in your pocket? Then get the 12900K, and you will not be disappointed! Good luck friends.