Intel announces 22 more 12th Gen CPUs for mainstream consumer desktops

At CES 2022, Intel is announcing the rest of its Alder Lake desktop lineup: 22 new chips, spanning the $489 Core i9-12900 to the $42 Celeron G6900, designed for mainstream desktops, all-in-ones, and other PC designs.

Now, Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake chips already technically launched for desktops last fall, but the lineup then was pretty limited: just six chips (three, if you don’t count the variants without GPUs as separate models), almost entirely focused for pricey, high-powered gaming setups.

Admittedly, there’s a fair amount of duplication here. A lot of the new chips — like the top-of-the-line Core i9-12900 — are extremely similar to the first wave of unlocked chips Intel already released last fall, albeit with lower power demands (the new wave of chips largely runs at 65W) and without the option for overclocking. Additionally, Intel is also releasing its usual “F-series” variants that lack integrated graphics, along with low-power 35W “T-series” versions of most of its chips.

Image: Intel
The main lineup of Intel’s newest 12th Gen Alder Lake chips.

Image: Intel
Intel’s 35W T-series Alder Lake desktop chops.

As with their more powerful counterparts, the new Alder Lake chips feature the same hybrid architecture design that Intel introduced last year, offering a mix of performance and efficient cores (how many depends on the specific chip) to maximize power and efficiency.

Along with the new chips, Intel is also expanding its ecosystem of motherboards and coolers to go with it. On the motherboard side, there are three new consumer-focused SKUs for its 600 series chipset: the H670, B660, and H610, which join the top-of-the-line Z690 boards. The new models are less feature packed than the Z690, offering fewer PCIe lanes and USB ports but still support major new features like Wi-Fi 6E and PCIe 4.0.

Intel also has a trio of new coolers that it’ll be bundling in with the more powerful 65W versions of its chips: the Intel Laminar RH1, which has RGB lighting and will be included with the i9 models; the Intel Laminar RM1, for the Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 chips; and the Intel Laminar RS1 for Pentium and Celeron chips.

The new 65W and 35W 12th Gen Alder Lake chips for desktops are available starting today.