*** The Official Alder Lake owners thread ***

[mrk]

Can some-one make an owners thread perhaps so things can be a bit more focused?

You heard the man

New stuff:
12700KF
Gigabyte Z690 Gaming-X
Arctic Freezer II 280mm + Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut
Corsair 5000D Airflow

Using existing stuff off current build:
NVMe - 970 Evo Plus 1TB
SATA - 870 QVO 8TB
32GB Vengeance RGB Pro SL 3600MHz
Phanteks AMP 750w
3x Arctic P14 PST, 1x Arctic P12 PST

So long i7 6700K, it's been a solid 5 years for sure.

Edit*

Here's pics of my build!

 

[mrk]

Logistics lottery ftw?

 

[mrk]

That reminds me actually, the Arctic mounting kit for 1700 has not arrived yet, shipping form Germany so may actually arrive at the weekend. I guess it's a good thing the mobo stock is MIA then.

 

[mrk]

No different to applying thermal paste to any other CPU, you can do the blob in the middle or spread it out. Thermal Grizzly say spread it out and give you a little spreader in the pack for example.

My mobo order with ocuk cancelled as still no stock ETA, could be weeks, could be days was told today but I found 2 in stock elsewhere and it's arriving tomorrow, same price. Kinda weird how these are distributed around the country as yesterday afternoon there were no stock anywhere lol.

Only thing left is Arctic's 1700 mounting kit and I can get ahead and start building.

 

[mrk]

All but the mobo is here now. Surprisingly the LGA1700 mounting kit arrived even though Arctic's account area has no tracking or shipping detail lol.

Mobo tomorrow.

 

[mrk]

ye funny timing as after I posted the letterbox made a noise and it was here

 

[mrk]

12700KF and K are this years best CPU from Intel full stop, power use is sensible and matches a 12900k in real world without the silly heat and power issues.


I warned people when they were not part of the review kits that Intel was hiding it for a reason, now we know why.. it's their best value and best chip this 12th gen.

All that got a 12700K or KF, nice job ..

 

[mrk]

Nice! The one thig I am realy looking forward to is on this GB board the fans can be "off" when below a certain temp threshold so just like the GFX card that does this anyway, my case fans will be doing this too. Less dust in the case, near total silence apart from AIO pump almost at all times until I game or export a batch of images in Lightroom. Never thought this sort of feature would be possible especially on such a modern CPU/platform.

 

[mrk]

Do you wish to go DDR5 or stick to DDR4?

 

[mrk]

In that case go for a decent looking board in your budget range for a mobo and whatever DDR5 is available in the size you want. Current batch of all DDR5 is high latency anyway so in a year or so you can shift them on and switch to tighter timed modules and benefit from that.

I might be biased, but for £200 the Gigabyte Gaming-X Z690 has the best pack of features from what I could see when comparing all boards in this price range. It's basically an Auros board without the price tag or fancy aesthetics.

 

[mrk]

Bit bummed the 12700 box is just a cardboard whack affair and the 12900 gets a box with a display wafer!

 

[mrk]

There's no risk with an AIO unless you damage it. It's a sealed loop that has no maintenance needed on it.YYou'll never see the liquid inside it because you can't.


I've had plenty since the H80 and never an issue. In fact I've never read of any issues with them lol.

 

[mrk]

There's little to no noticeable (to be obvious to the ear) pump noise though. Unless you have mounted the rad wrong in which case the pump gets noisy, then the noise is virtually non existent. It's a noise floor level hum at best and some AIOs even let you control the pump speed. My H115i currently is set to performance for example and the pitch/frequency of the sound is such that I find it quieter in performance than in quiet mode but that's my hearing and someone else's preference may well vary based on their hearing.

I find the Arctic P14 PST fans I have in my case are louder than the AIO pump too, and I'm running them below 800rpm!

 

[mrk]

What PSU do you have at the moment? 750w would be more than enough for most builds especially if you're not overclocking/playing around with volts etc. Or if you have loads of HDDs and other power sapping stuff connected.

I've had Corsair HX 700+, SuperFlower Leadex 850 (both very good) and am now on a Phanteks AMP 750w which was highly rated after I spent a few days reading reviews. What won the AMP for me was the 10 year warranty and that it's essentially a Seasonic on the inside.

12700K seems to be fairly easy to cool so you could go air cooling or AIO if you like. I've not had an air cooler since going AIO back in the H80 Corsair days as really like how open they make the case interior look and feel, plus the reduced noise etc. Personal preference in this area really I'd say. You'll need a cooler that makes full contact with the IHS on the rectangular surface area of these new Intels though to get the best out of it. Arctic's coolers do seem to have that but from what I read in the other thread, Corsair's AIOs don't. Worth checking up on though.

Ive got a few 95nm Intel (real) wafers. You can have one if you want.

Interesting do you have any pics? Also thanks for the offer!

 

[mrk]

I don't think Task Manage differentiates between core type, it just displays available threads only. You could install a tool like HWINFO64 or Intel Extreme Tuning Utility which may do that though.

Edit*

I did find this which gives understanding and you can then figure out which listed core is P and e:

With single core processors (like the Pentium 4 with HT), it's pretty straight forward, since you only have one pair - so it's (0, 1). With quad core processors (like Nehalem), the logical cores pairs are (0,4), (1,5), (2,6) and (3,7). The pattern of having all the first halves of each pair then having all the second halves shuold scale with future CPUs that have even more cores.

 

[mrk]

The build is complete! My RAM is currently not in XMP as sorting out a few settings etc but so far everything is lightning quick even at JEDEC. All cores maxed in Prime95 Small FFTs results in a max temp from a short run of 91 degrees, average idle temp is 27 degrees

The Arctic Freezer II with Kronaught is a beast, and in a custom silent fan profile too in the BIOS.

This mobo looks even better in the flesh than in the stock photos.

 

[mrk]

Very nice and stelthy @mrk , tell me does the Gigabyte board need a 1700 bracket or can it take 115x like the Asus boards? I have the same Arctic.

Ta!
The included 11xx mounting bits in the box of the Arctic would not fit in the holes so yeah you do need 1700 mounting kit for whatever coole ryou will be using!

Tidy build.

Thanks!

Freezer 2 quiet?

Very quiet yep. It's quiet on the standard fan curve but even more so on the silent or custom curves in the BIOS. I'll get a curve pic shortly from the BIOS to show the range I've got it set to and update this post.

Edit*

 

[mrk]

For some reason Photoshop 2022 (v23) would crash as soon as you open an image and do anything. I'm on Creative Cloud so installed the previous version (2021 v22) and that's working perfectly. Have uninstalled 2022 for now as I guess there's some weird bug in the latest version that doesn't like this core architecture or something. I replicated the issue by reinstalling 2022 so it's only a change in Photoshop 2022 where this is an issue so am gonna stick with 2021 for now until Adobe fix it.

Excellent setup there for my build I've chosen the nzxt 710i white

That should be rather good! I liked the black/grey colour on the ocuk website but opted for full stealth with Corsair and liked a few extra bells and whistles this one has although for the life of me can't find where the power led and hdd led is. There isn't even a hdd activity led front panel header to plug in!

@mrk
Have you disconnected the VRM fan on the block? Worth doing for noise.

I've not disconnected it purely because I don't notice any noise form it at all! It may be because it's also controlled by the PWM fan curve in the BIOS with the rest of the fans so this is fine by me if it's so low it's basically passive at this point until I fire up a workload.

Looks great

Also, look at these temps!

 

[mrk]

Running now, I take it I need to run both ST and MT one after the other so 20 mins in total?

 

[mrk]

Can you do a 10 minute R23 throttling test and report the highest temps.

Single thread:

Multi Thread:

During the ST run the CPU fans never spooled up as the temps were always below 50 degrees.