Intel is a name that needs no introduction. For many years the de facto choice for your PC’s CPU, they’ve since found themselves fiercely competing with AMD in both power and affordability. Hoping to be back on top once more, the 12th generation is here in three forms: the i9 12900, the i7 12700, and the i5 12600 we have on hand for review today. Each CPU comes in both a K and KF model, including and not including integrated graphics respectively, giving you a small saving if you’re going to be using a graphics card either way.

You can find an overview of the specs below:

So to jump to the point, what exactly makes the 12th generation of Intel CPU any different to the 11th? They have a higher performance ceiling, that much can be assumed. The real point of interest here is in the hybrid architecture, taking a page out of Arm’s book with its big-little design. Instead of having each core operate at the same level, the CPUs on offer here have two types: performance and efficiency. Performance cores are the heavy lifters, while efficiency cores are designed to operate, as the name suggests, as efficiently as possible. Where in mobile computing this is particularly useful in battery preservation, only bringing out the performance cores when necessary, there are other aspects that also benefit the battery-less desktop design. Frankly, not every app you run on your PC is going to need its full power. The efficiency cores can be used to handle tasks that are perhaps non-time critical, or that simply don’t need everything being thrown at it. I’ve simplified this a fair bit, but if you are interested in the architecture, there’s a ton of information on big-little floating around.

It isn’t without its flaws, though the biggest kinks have been worked out since the chips launched late last year. Due to the hybrid design, certain DRM detected the efficiency cores as a separate system, causing crashes at startup or randomly during gameplay. Bravely Default 2, Mortal Kombat 11, and Far Cry Primal were among a list of more than 50 titles known to have issues. Though this has since been resolved through patches to games and Windows updates, it does shine an interesting light on the issues that come with this kind of change, at least for early adopters. With some luck, this is the last we’ll hear of it.

I was struggling for pictures to go in this review, so please enjoy this image of the box next to one of its Geekbench scores.

Looking to the actual performance of the 12600 you’re unlikely to be disappointed. I only have two CPUs at my disposal at the moment, the 12600 itself and a more budget Ryzen 5 3600 in my main desktop setup. It’s worth noting the 3600 is more than a year old now and it’s not an even comparison. Our local mag staffer Tom also pitched in with the benchmarks, contributing his scores from a more comparable Ryzen 7 5800X. If you want to look up more CPU benchmarks to get a better idea of where this lands, check out a site like cpubenchmark.net.

The benchmarking tool I had handy was Cinebench R23, a free utility designed to push a CPU to its limits. I had originally installed this when isolating an issue on my personal PC build that caused it to crash, this ultimately leading to me upgrading my cooling solution when I found out the stock fan was causing my CPU to peak at 110 degrees Celsius. As well as this, you can find the scores from Geekbench 5 in the table below.

Beyond raw performance, the 12600K does a good job in future proofing itself in its compatibility for both DDR5 and PCIe 5.0, whilst still retaining compatibility with DDR4 RAM for those not looking to completely overhaul their setup at the moment. This is particularly important with the high costs of DDR5 at the moment though you’ll be needing to buy a new motherboard for the LGA1700 socket either way, and at the time of writing at least, they don’t come cheap. With the CPU also not including a stock fan, you’ll also need to go out of your way to get something that supports this new socket, though it should be noted companies like Noctua already have kits available to fit their existing range.

For those curious, you can find the full build used in the review below:

• Motherboard: ROG Strix Z690-E Gaming WiFi
• GPU: TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3070 Ti
• RAM: Polaris RGB 32 GB (2x16 GB) @ 4800 MHz

All in all, the 12600 stands out as the current primo pick for any budding new gaming PC build, but whether it’s worth upgrading for might be a more difficult question. It’s a money sink no matter which way you look at it, but the performance on offer paired with the DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 support make it a fine choice if you know you’ll be putting money down either way.