Intel announced its first 12th-gen Core processors as a part of its new Alder Lake family last year. These chips are built on the Intel 7 node and offer the company's new hybrid technology with P-cores and E-cores. Today, Intel is expanding its Alder Lake portfolio by announcing the launch of new processors. The 12th-gen Alder Lake desktop processor family is now getting as many as 22 new SKUs with ultimate scalable power and performance for gaming, creation, and productivity.

Just like the last year's announcement, there's a lot to unpack here. Unlike the trio of unlocked CPUs that came out in 2021, the new lineup includes both 65W mainstream and 35W low-powered CPUs. From the low-powered Celeron G6900T (35W) to the Core i9-12900(F) with 65W base power, we now have a complete lineup of processors to choose from. Let's take a look at everything that's new in the Alder Lake-S desktop family.

Intel's new 12th-gen Alder Lake Desktop processors

Intel has announced two separate lists of CPUs today as a part of its CES 2022 announcements. First off, there are the mainstream CPUs that are essentially what we expect distributed in huge numbers. This particular lineup includes the locked variants (non-K) variants including the Intel Core i5-12600, Core i7-12700, and Core i9-12900. There's also the new Core i5-12400, the true successor to the highly popular Core i5-11400 from the Rocket Lake lineup.

Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake-S mainstream (non-K) SKUs

In addition to the SKUs mentioned above, you'll also be able to buy the variants of Core i5, i7, and i9 CPUs without the integrated graphics. They're denoted by the suffix 'F'. For instance, the Core i5-12600 is also available in the Core i5-12600F flavor, with the only real difference being the lack of iGPU. The 'F' variants tend to cost slightly less than the vanilla variant and it's a good option to consider if you already have a discrete graphics card for your PC. The same is also true for the already existing Alder Lake CPUs i.e. Core i5-12600K, Core i7-12700K, and the Core i9-12900K.

In terms of the performance, Intel is claiming some big numbers on the board, at least for some of the chips in the lineup. The Intel Core i5-12600, for instance, is said to be up to 31% faster than the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G in some content creation workloads. We're also expecting the Core i5-12600 to outperform the Ryzen 5 5600G based on these claims. Furthermore, Intel is also claiming a significant gen-on-gen performance with the Core i9-12900 over the last-gen Core i9-11900 CPU. We'll have more to talk about the performance of these chips once we get our hands on them for testing, so stay tuned.

Intel 12th-gen Alder Lake-S low-powered processors

Intel's Alder Lake-S desktop lineup also includes low-powered CPUs with 35W base power. Here, take a look at the lineup below:

Besides the Core i9 and the Core i7 SKUs, the rest of the lineup lacks the E-cores. These chips will essentially function with up to 6 P-cores depending on the variant. You still get to take advantage of things like an iGPU, support for DDR5 memory, and PCIe 5.0, but it'll be interesting to see how these new chips will stack up against the competition.

Platforms & Compatibility

The new crop of Intel CPUs joining the Alder Lake family will also carry their own CPU coolers inside the box. Intel has announced a batch of new CPU coolers called Laminar coolers. These chip chillers will be bundled with the newly announced 65W CPUs. There are three new CPU coolers -- Intel Laminar RH1, Laminar RM1, and Laminar RS1. Only the Laminar RH1 that's bundled with the Core i9-12900 comes with RGB lighting, but we expect all of them to perform equally well to maintain the thermal output of the CPUs under stock settings.

Another thing that's new to the Alder Lake family is the introduction of the new Intel 600 series chipset SKUs. The new H670, B660, and H610 motherboards will now join the existing Z690 and our LGA 1700 motherboards list. While both B660 and the H610 motherboards will cater to the lower end of the budget, we think the H670 chipset boards offer a similar set of features with just the lack of P & E and BCLK overclocking capability.

Intel's existing Alder Lake CPUs have shown a surprising amount of performance uptick over the last-gen as well the competing chips from AMD. The new lineup of chips added to the Alder Lake family also looks promising. We'll have more to talk about these new chips in the future, but it's safe to say that we'll see some new additions to our best CPUs collection soon.

Pricing & Availability

Intel's new 12th-gen Alder Lake mainstream CPUs start at $42 for the Celeron G6900 and it goes all the way up to $489 for the Core i9-12900. These new processors are now available to purchase and you can find the price of each CPU in the specs table above. The new relatively low-powered mainstream CPUs may not be as powerful as the fully unlocked parts that came out last year, but they'll also save you some money for the build. Not to mention, you'll also be able to buy more affordable motherboards based on the updated chipset design. It'll be interesting to see how these new chips stack up against the competition on the market.

Intel has also partnered with a lot of OEMs to bring the best support for Alder Lake CPUs. We'll als0 be seeing new Project Athena-based desktop designs around the Alder Lake chips on the Intel vPro platform. We'll have more to talk about the general performance of these new processors once we get a chance to test them out. In the meantime, you can check out our Intel Alder Lake review from last year with two of the best CPUs on the market right now.