This Intel Core i5-12600KF deal from Scan Computers is a pre-Christmas miracle
A crazy good deal on a solid mid-range CPU.
A lot of the focus on CPU deals and reductions that I've seen recently has been more on the red side of the market, as opposed to the blue side, but in this last week before Christmas, we've seen a solid reduction on one of Intel's better CPU offerings in recent times - the Core i5-12600KF is available from Scan Computers for £160 at the moment, down from its £220 list price.
I should preface this by saying that this KF-suffixed version offers identical performance to the i5-12600K we reviewed, but the only difference here is that there are no integrated graphics, hence the addition of the -F. This means you will need a dedicated GPU in order for the i5-12600KF to run, but that shouldn't be a problem for most. At the time of our review when the chip was new, the i5-12600K offered some excellent relative performance against AMD's heavy hitters from the era of Ryzen 5000. In content creation workloads for instance, the 12600K offered better single core results in Cinebench R20 than AMD's top-of-the-line Ryzen 9 5950X, while using less power.
As a gaming chip, the 12600KF should impress too, if the non-F variant is anything to by. It served up some solid results in Flight Simulator 2020 at 1080p for instance, with a result of 54.29fps putting it identical to Intel's then previous generation i9-11900K. What's more, in a range of titles, including Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, the 12600K also traded blows with AMD's immenrse Ryzen 7 5800X3D, one of the best gaming CPUs we've tested in recent years. That certainly puts Intel's mid-range choice in good stead, especially considering the £100 or so price difference between them. Moreover, the 12600KF is also a quicker chip than Intel's newer budget hero, the 13400F, while offering as many cores and threads, as well as higher base and boost clocks.
In a general sense, the i5-12600KF is quite the potent processor, with 10 cores and 16 threads meaning it'll be a monster for both gaming and content creation workloads, as our testing has demonstrated. This is also overclockable if you want to eke out all the performance you can, although that is of course your choice to. Intel lists the max boost clock of the 12600KF at a nippy 4.9GHz, although you can go higher if you want to. As a 12th gen Intel chip, you also get support for speedy DDR5 RAM if you so choose, as well as PCIe 5.0 if you fancy adding in a ridiculously quick SSD, although you will pay the price for it at the moment, as they are ludicrously expensive.
If you're after a capable mid-range CPU for a quite frankly insane price just before Christnas, then this Intel Core i5-12600KF deal from Scan Computers is not to be missed.