After the announcement made in the run-up to CES 2022, Intel is preparing to bring to market the most powerful processor of the 12th gen Core "Alder Lake" series, we are talking about the infamous Core i9-12900KS. The Core i9-12900K (Review) was specially selected by Intel and pushed to the limit in frequency - if you can call it that - but at the same time still thermally manageable with a good liquid cooling system.

Needless to say, this is a product aimed at those looking for the ultimate in performance or, more simply, those who overclock and try to squeeze every megahertz out of their CPU. Some will argue that there's no need to pay Intel for an overclock that can be done manually on a Core i9-12900K, but we've done some polling on the web and found that most owners of this CPU who have overclocked have stayed pretty much at the frequencies Intel guarantees for the Core i9-12900KS . The only difference is, as you can guess, that an i9-12900KS is guaranteed to operate at these values while a Core i9-12900K needs to be overclocked/overclocked, thus losing a possible warranty in case of malfunctions (there would be some discussion actually).

Leaving aside this issue, which is almost superfluous given the user base, the Core i9-12900KS begins to appear in the US for the first pre-orders starting at $780; we don't know if this figure is close to Intel's MSRP, but we're still talking about almost $200 more than the current top-of-the-line Core i9-12900K. In terms of technical specifications, the Core i9-12900KS offers 16 cores/24 threads, with 8 P-Core and 8 E-Core cores with 44MB cache and UHD 770 (Xe) graphics; the base frequency of the chip is 3.4 GHz with an all-core boost to 5.2 GHz and a maximum boost to 5.5 GHz.

Power level values are also different from the Intel Core i9-12900K, going from a PBP/PL1 of 125W to 150W with a MTP/PL2 rising from 241 up to 260 watts. The Intel Core i9-12900KS is expected to be officially available on the market in early March.

Written by: Joshua Wilson