Test Setup
For testing, I used the Intel Core i9-12900K and Core i5-12600K which were sent to us by Intel. The motherboards used included the MSI MPG Z690 CARBON WIFI and the Z690 AORUS Master, both of which fall in the $400-$500 US segment.
Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake CPU Test Platform:
| Processors | Intel Core i5-12400 Intel Core i9-12900K Intel Core i5-12600K Intel Core i9-11900K Intel Core i9-10900K Intel Core i7-10700K Intel Core i5-10600K Intel Core i9-10980XE Intel Core i9-9900KS Intel Core i9-9900K Intel Core i7-8700K Intel Core i5-8600K AMD Ryzen 9 5950X AMD Ryzen 9 5900X AMD Ryzen 7 5800X AMD Ryzen 9 3950X AMD Ryzen 9 3900X AMD Ryzen 7 3700X AMD Ryzen 5 3600X AMD Ryzen 7 2700X |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | MSI B660M Mortar WiFi DDR5 (i5-12400) Z690 AORUS Master (Intel 12th Gen) ASRock X570S PG Riptide (Ryzen 9 5950X) MSI MEG Z590 ACE (Intel 11th Gen) ASUS ROG Maximus XII HERO WIFI (Intel 10th Gen) MSI X299 Creator (Intel 10th Gen X Series) Z390 AORUS Master (Intel 8th/9th Gen) MSI MEG X570 Unify (AMD Ryzen 3000 / Ryzen 5000) ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate (AMD Ryzen 2000) |
| Power Supply | ASUS ROG THOR 1200W |
| Solid State Drive | Samsung SSD 980 PRO M.2 (1 TB) |
| Memory | G.SKILL Trident Z5 32 GB (2 x 16GB) CL36 6000 Mbps (DDR5 Platforms) G.SKILL Trident Z Royal Series 16 GB (2 x 8GB) CL17 4000 Mbps (DDR4 Platforms) |
| Video Cards | MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X |
| Cooling Solutions | Corsair H115i (With LGA 1700 Mounting Kit) |
| OS | Windows 11 64-bit (Only Intel 12th Gen CPUs) Windows 10 64-bit |
Our test rig includes the Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB SSD that boots up our main OS while a 2 TB Seagate HDD is used for the storage of games and applications. In addition to these, we are running an MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X graphics card, an ASUS ROG Thor 1200W power supply. For this specific review, we used the G.Skill's latest Trident Z5 DDR5-6000 memory kit running at CL36 timings. We also got a LGA 1700 mounting kit for the Corsair H115i to use as cooling solution for our test setup. The cooling solution choices are very limited so far due to availability of mounting kits but things are expected to get better by the end of November.
