Discussion Alder Lake - Builders Thread

[AdamK47]

This thread is for those of us that own or are looking to get an Alder Lake CPU.

Bought mine on release day. 12900K. Memory selection was limited to only Crucial DDR5 4800 at the Micro Center I went to. Bought two 2 x 8GB kits. Motherboard is a Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Master. I did buy a 360mm Lian Li Galahad 360mm AIO. Ended up returning it since the Lian Li Socket 1700 backplate that I bought separately worked well with my NZXT Kraken X73.

 

[igor_kavinski]

IIRC Intel warned regular DDR3 would degrade the IMC right?

Now that makes me wanna get one of those mobos and tweak it to the max!

 

[AdamK47]

If you built 12th gen with a DDR5 board and ram, congratulations. It is aging like fine blueberry wine. In newer games the memory bandwidth is making a difference. The uplift in performance with 6400 versus a typical DDR4 3600 setup, is similar to what AMD owners get with a 3D part over vanilla.

There was only the crappy Micron 4800 and 5200 DDR5 at launch. It wasn't until many months later that DDR5 6000+ appeared.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

There was only the crappy Micron 4800 and 5200 DDR5 at launch. It wasn't until many months later that DDR5 6000+ appeared.

Early adoption of new DDR standard is usually like that. My point is even if someone went 12th gen DDR5 during the holidays last year, or even last week, it was a good decision.

 

[blckgrffn]

Early adoption of new DDR standard is usually like that. My point is even if someone went 12th gen DDR5 during the holidays last year, or even last week, it was a good decision.

I felt like it validated my sons 12700K build. I lucked into a great deal on a B760 "Sonic" board that looks cool and was DDR5. This was during the winter holidays. So I am appreciating it vs wondering if I should have just done the easy 5800X3D build.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Early adoption of new DDR standard is usually like that. My point is even if someone went 12th gen DDR5 during the holidays last year, or even last week, it was a good decision.

DDR5 is the first one that is actually seeing impressive gains. Both DDR3/DDR4 weren't that impressive and didn't see that much jump in performance. DDR3-1333 to DDR3-2400. DDR4-2133 to DDR4-4000. But DDR5 went from 4800 to 8800 on desktop, 9600 on mobile and will probably break 11000 in 2025.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I felt like it validated my sons 12700K build. I lucked into a great deal on a B760 "Sonic" board that looks cool and was DDR5.

Same with me. I had ZERO plans to jump on Alder Lake. But I won a lottery and already knew that DDR5 was scaling better on Intel mobos. Then the Sonic Z790 made me go for it. Only kinda bummer is that it tops out at 7200 and I can't get my 7600 RAM to go over 7000.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I felt like it validated my sons 12700K build.

You might be sitting on untapped potential if you haven't tried tweaking it with Intel XTU. Mine can hit 5.3 GHz on at least one core. I was getting 840 CPU-Z ST score. Without XTU, it manages between 798 to 800.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I always liked Sonic; that board is pretty sweet. I have my eye out for a killer 12th gen deal in the for sale/trade forums. I'd like to do an all Intel build at some point.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I have my eye out for a killer 12th gen deal in the for sale/trade forums.

Those should come in droves after Zen 5 launch But then you'll have a predicament: do you go 12th gen i7/i9 or do you go 9600X, with the latter costing only a few hundred more or possibly same with a cheap B650.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Those should come in droves after Zen 5 launch But then you'll have a predicament: do you go 12th gen i7/i9 or do you go 9600X, with the latter costing only a few hundred more or possibly same with a cheap B650.

I am in no hurry, and can wait for a motivated seller. Unless they fix the newer K SKUs, the platform is going to be about as popular as tooth decay pretty soon.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Unless they fix the newer K SKUs, the platform is going to be about as popular as tooth decay pretty soon.

LOL.