If you’re looking to build a powerful gaming PC on a tight budget, then you’ll want to snap up this latest Intel CPU deal, which gets you a Core i7 CPU, complete with eight P-Cores and four E-cores, for just $199.99. The price of the Core i7-12700KF is now at the cheapest price we’ve ever seen for this 12-core titan, costing less than half its original $430 launch price.
Don’t be put off by the 12 at the beginning of the model number, as the Intel 12th gen Alder Lake architecture is very similar to the architecture used In Intel’s latest 14th gen Raptor Lake CPUs, such as the Core i9 14900K, which you can find on our best gaming CPU guide.
The Core i7 12700KF gives you 12 cores, which is a fantastic offer for the current price. Importantly, you get eight P-Cores, which are the ones that count for gaming, plus you get a further four E-Cores to help out in multi-threaded workloads, such as video encoding.
Meanwhile, the boost clock tops out at a healthy 5GHz in lightly threaded workloads, and if you have a motherboard with a Z-series chipset, such as the Z690, then you can overclock this CPU too. I’ve had this chip happily running with all of its P-Cores running at 5GHz, rather than just a couple of them, giving it a solid boost in multi-threaded workloads.
That ‘F’ in the model name means this processor doesn’t have an integrated GPU, which is why it’s a bit cheaper than the Core i7 12700K, but that doesn’t matter if you’re using a separate graphics card, which you’ll want to do if you’re building a gaming PC anyway.
In terms of performance, in my own benchmarks, the Core i7 12700KF is slightly quicker than the 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X in multi-threaded work, and well ahead of it in single-threaded software, thanks to its 5GHz boost clock. It’s not as quick as the new Ryzen 9 7900X, but you don’t get everything for $199.99.
What you lose by going for this CPU, compared to the new Core i7 14700K, is clock speed and E-Cores. The new Core i7 has 12 E-Cores, compared to just four on the 12700KF, but E-Cores are largely irrelevant for gaming. The Core i7 14700K does have a higher clock speed, though, boosting to 5.6GHz in lightly threaded workloads, such as gaming.
Even so, at a price of $199.99, this 12-core Intel Core i7 CPU is a steal if you’re looking to construct a powerful gaming rig on a tight budget. If you’re new to the world of PC building, then make sure you also read our full tutorial on how to build a gaming PC, where we guide you through all the parts you need, and every step of the build process.