Core i9 12900K processor review - Overclocking

Overclocking

Intel's Core i9-12900K will be one of three unlocked CPUs available initially on the Z690 platform. The Core i9-12900K will be the fastest in the lineup. We achieved overclocked result of the processor at 5.3 GHz across all performance cores. That is however roughly the maximum you'll get on liquid cooling (LCS will suffice). Mind you the Core i9-12900K has 16 cores and 24 threads. 8 P-Core (16 threads) and 8 E-Core (with 8 threads). The Intel Core i9-12900K has base and boost clocks of 3.2 GHz/5.3 GHz for P-Core and 3.0 / 3.9 GHz for E-Core. These are single-core boost clocks. The P-Core on average will to boost to ~5.0 GHz and the E-Core to ~3.7 GHz. All 8 performance cores were overclocked to 5.3 GHz, we leave the E cores at defaults settings. Intel Core i9-12900K at 5.3 GHz outperformed the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X by a small margin in multi-core tests. However it also needs to be stated that a Ryzen 9 5950X easily consumes almost 33% less power than the Alder Lake CPU.

Our Intel Core i9-12900K CPU used 469W in the stress tests at 5.3 GHz (~1.40V). Pushing the little cores may result in higher power consumption, though not as dramatic as the P-Cores. We rate it well over double the chip's PL1 TDP of 125W. Overclocking it will necessitate severe amounts of cooling to tame this beast.

We did not want to push any higher due to energy consumption and thus inevitably heat. In a multi-threaded scenario you this gain roughly 5% performance.