One great way to save money on your PC build or upgrade is to use some last-generation parts. In the world of AMD, it has long been much cheaper to get a Ryzen 5000 series chip over newer, Ryzen 7000 models. In the Intel ecosystem, it hasn’t made as much sense to buy older processors, because they weren’t much cheaper.
But right now, as part of its spring sale, Amazon has great deals on two speedy Intel 12th Gen Core chips: the Core i7-12700KF and Core i5-12600KF. Both are at all-time lows — $199 and $149, respectively — which makes them significantly cheaper than their successors, the Core i7-13700KF / Core i7-14700KF ($334 / $379) and the Core i7-13600KF / Core i7-14600KF ($254 / $279).
These processors are pretty fast. The Core i7-12700KF (also known as the 12700K, if you get it with a built-in GPU), sits just below the Core i5-13600K in our CPU hierarchy’s list of multi-threaded benchmarks and above AMD Ryzen 9 5900X. The 12600KF is just a tad below the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D and above the Ryzen 7 7600X. Both processors handily surpass the Core i5-13400F, our most recommended processor.
By the way, we recommend the 12700KF and 12600KF instead of the 12700K and 12600K, because the non-F CPUs cost a little bit more ($224 and $169, respectively) and what you get for the extra $19 – $25 is integrated graphics. If you’re building a gaming PC, you are going to buy a graphics card — perhaps one of the best graphics cards — and don’t need to pay extra for an iGPU you won’t use.
These CPUS are part of Intel’s Alder Lake series, which debuted back in November 2021. However, they use the same LGA 1700 motherboard socket as their two successors, Intel 13th Gen “Raptor Lake” and Intel 14th Gen “Raptor Lake Refresh.” So if you buy a current-generation Intel motherboard, you can use it with an Alder Lake CPU. And if you buy an older motherboard that supports Alder Lake, you can later upgrade to a 13th or 14th Gen processor if you want.
All of the LGA 1700 CPUs can run on a motherboard that is either built for DDR4 or DDR5 RAM. While the difference in motherboard prices between a board that takes the faster RAM and one that requires the slower RAM is small, you’ll save a fair amount on RAM by going with DDR4.
If you look on Newegg, LGA 1700 boards start at just $79, though you probably should spend a few dollars more for a board with built-in Wi-Fi and support for M.2 SSDs. A 32GB kit of DDR4 RAM is as low as $53 these days, though you’ll probably want to spend around $65 to get DIMMs with decent timing. Of course, if you have DDR4 RAM from a previous build that you want to carry over, that makes opting for a DDR4 motherboard an even sweeter deal.
