Entry level Alder Lake: i5-12400 review, the new value king

[storm-chaser]

https://youtu.be/s3kxo-70FmM?t=438 I’m a little confused about your data points. They seem more in reference to replacing stim with lm vs actual direct die.

Yeah, I stand corrected. Do you have any experience with direct die cooling? Just curious.

 

[storm-chaser]

You need to direct die the 9900k. The delta between my stock ihs and my buddies dd was 15c+

The gap grows at higher loads as well since heat transfer through stim ends up the bottleneck.

Thanks you are right, I was getting unreliable information about that.

My question is, what do you see for MHz improvements after the fact? Even if it's just another 100MHz I'd say it's still worthwhile.

 

[Robert896r1]

A high end 9900k tops out around 5.3 with ht on and 5.4 with ht off. At some point you will run into a voltage wall where the voltage require to hit the next tier is too much.

But 15c of temp savings, assuming you don’t hit the voltage wall, will net a 100mhz bump.

 

[Toasty]

DD on my 9900KS was about 15*C cooler than stock as I recall, basically had no core to core delta either.

Ran it 5.3Ghz no offset daily could bench 5.4

 

[ghuk]

What's performance like in gaming? Are you at 1440p by any chance? I'm very tempted to go for a entry level/budget build this time round.

Hi mate

Actually I still game @ 1920 x 1080. I purchased an Acer G-Sync monitor when they burst on to the scene and I havent got round to replacing it yet lol

I upscale most games to run at either 2880 x 1620 or 3840 x 2160. Combined with my new set up and my RTX 3060ti more or less every game I chuck at it runs butter smooth. Coming from an i7 3770k its a massive improvement

Hope this helps

 

[Drollic]

Hi mate

Actually I still game @ 1920 x 1080. I purchased an Acer G-Sync monitor when they burst on to the scene and I havent got round to replacing it yet lol

I upscale most games to run at either 2880 x 1620 or 3840 x 2160. Combined with my new set up and my RTX 3060ti more or less every game I chuck at it runs butter smooth. Coming from an i7 3770k its a massive improvement

Hope this helps

So tempted

 

[Raelgun]

I'm struggling to find this as a value king, all the motherboards are expensive, where are the stripped down budget 690 boards?

 

[Ayahuasca]

I'm struggling to find this as a value king, all the motherboards are expensive, where are the stripped down budget 690 boards?

You can get a H610 for around £70. The Z690 boards were never going to be cheap.

 

[LePhuronn]

where are the stripped down budget 690 boards?

Doesn't exist. Between the high costs of VRMs that can handle the top end CPUs, PCIe Gen 5 costs and obligatory milking the market, you are never going to get cheap boards. Even B660 is silly money because they're not all that cut down from Z690 boards.

You could go for a H610 board for under £100, but I expect they'd be utter garbage.

 

[Joxeon]

I'm struggling to find this as a value king, all the motherboards are expensive, where are the stripped down budget 690 boards?

You can pick this Z690 board up for around £130 while B660 start around £95.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-z690-motherboard-lacks-pcie-gen-5

 

[Raelgun]

You can pick this Z690 board up for around £130 while B660 start around £95.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-z690-motherboard-lacks-pcie-gen-5

Nice if this holds up, but to the posters above me, aren't the H610 locked and does not allow OCing?

I recall my Ivybridge days that you could get a stripped down Z90 board that just wanted to let you OC the CPU whilst the other things didn't matter as much, sad times where if you want a cheaper board you have to basically go down literal tiers where the performance ( I think ) potential of the CPU is nerfed.

 

[LePhuronn]

but to the posters above me, aren't the H610 locked and does not allow OCing?

Everything is locked down. K series CPUs and Z series motherboards only and has been that way since Sandy Bridge. And since Haswell, the "cut down OC" board hasn't been the cheap option, it's been the top end expensive option as dedicated hardware aimed at record-breaking OC runs.

These few Alder Lake boards with external clock generators for BCLK overclocking are very much an anomaly.

go down literal tiers where the performance ( I think ) potential of the CPU is nerfed.

That's Intel for you. Even their auto-boosting algorithms the past few generations just seem to be half-assed, almost a token gesture to say "we do the same as Ryzen", when actually it's nowhere near as effective and performant.

 

[Tired9]

Great showing from Intel this time around, too expensive for me to jump ship or I would.
Waiting on the 3800x3D to see if I can upgrade my 5600x.