Intel’s Core i9-12900K has popped up on the black market
New Intel processors under the Alder Lake-S banner are to be released this year. However, early engineering samples have reportedly already appeared on Chinese black markets.
According to hardware leaker Yuuki_AnS, samples for the Intel Core i9-12900K cost between 6900 and 7500 Chinese yuan, which corresponds to 980 to 1065 francs. According to Videocardz, there are even actual samples floating around on the black market.
Alder Lake-S
Alder Lake S processors are scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of 2021. Therefore, chips available on the black market are likely to be early versions that won’t correspond to the final product. Since the needed LGA1700 socket motherboards aren’t out yet, the processors won’t be very useful – since they aren’t compatible with existing motherboards. According to Videocardz, some of these motherboards have also found their way onto the black market, but they’re even rarer than the chips.
The Alder Lake S processors rely on different cores. The i9-12900K uses about eight high-performance (Golden Cove) and eight high-efficiency cores (Gracemont). Golden Cove variants are used for computationally intensive tasks such as gaming. Gracemont cores are consequently used for office work, for example, allowing the high-performance counterparts to lie dormant. In total, there are 16 cores with 24 threads, whereby Gracemont doesn’t support hyperthreading.
Regarding clock rates, the large cores should offer up to 5.3 GHz, while the smaller ones get up to around 3.7 GHz. Intel specifies 125 watts for the TDP. Here are the expected specs for these processors:
| Processor | Cores/threads | Max. boosted clock rate | Max. boosted clock rate for all cores |
|---|---|---|---|
| i9-12900K | 8 Golden Cove and 8 Gracemont / 24 | 5,3 GHz (Golden Cove)
3,9 GHz (Gracemont) | 5,0 GHz (Golden Cove)
3,7 GHz (Gracemont) |
| i7-12700K | 8 Golden Cove and 4 Gracemont / 20 | 5,0 GHz (Golden Cove)
3,8 GHz (Gracemont) | 4,7 GHz (Golden Cove)
3,6 GHz (Gracemont) |
| i5-12600K | 6 Golden Cove and 4 Gracemont / 16 | 4,9 GHz (Golden Cove)
3,6 GHz (Gracemont) | 4,5 GHz (Golden Cove)
3,4 GHz (Gracemont) |
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