We may earn a commission when you buy through links in our articles. Learn more.

Intel’s Alder Lake gaming CPUs cost almost as much as a gaming PC on Amazon

You might need deep pockets if you want to grab Intel’s new 12th generation best gaming CPUs

Intel's 12th generation i9, i7, and i5 retail packaging lined up side-by-side against a blue background

The die size of Intel’s desktop processors may be shrinking from 14nm to 10nm, or Intel 7 if you want to get technical, but recent Amazon listings suggest that Alder Lake’s smaller size comes with a much larger price tag. Twitter users Dellchannel21 and Momomo_us, have highlighted product listings of team blue’s upcoming chips on Amazon UK, FR, and NL, complete with pricing. Currently, the Core i9-12900K is listed for a whopping £788.15 GBP and between €846,92-€919,88, putting it in direct competition with AMD’s Ryzen 9 5950X.

It’s important to stress that these prices are possibly placeholders and could change prior to Alder Lake’s rumoured release date of November 7. There’s no word on USD pricing but it’s likely to be similar to GBP, meaning that we might see Amazon US listings at around $800 USD.

Other Alder Lake processors were also listed by Amazon, with the Core i7-12700K and Core i5-12600K respectively priced at £545.17 GBP / €636,08€641,38 and £310.23 GBP / €321,16€323,83.

High prices are par for the course with the best gaming CPUs, and leaked gaming benchmarks suggest the Core i9-12900K has a good chance of being top of the pile. However, if your rig needs more than a new processor and/or you’ve been a victim of New World’s GPU killing spree, you’ll be interested to know that Lenovo’s upcoming prebuilt gaming PCs will feature Alder Lake chips.

This probably won’t be the last leak we see concerning the company’s 12th generation processors, with numerous engineering samples finding their way on to the Chinese black market and selling for around $700 USD. Last month, a Cinebench R20 benchmark placed the Core i9-12900K leagues ahead of AMD’s Ryzen 9 5950X, making the chip a top contender for productivity workloads.