One of the key semiconductor technologies beyond 3D FinFET transistors are Gate-All-Around transistors, which show promise to help extend the ability to drive processors and components to higher performance and lower power. Samsung has always announced that its first generation GAA technology will align with its ‘3nm’ nodes, with its 3GAE and 3GAP processes. As part of the Samsung Foundry Forum today, some more insight was put into the timeline for the rollout, as well as talk of its 2nm process.
Sometimes choosing a CPU is hard. So we've got you covered. In our CPU Guides, we give you our pick of some of the best processors available, supplying data from our reviews. Our Best CPUs for Gaming guide targets most of the common system-build price points that typically pair a beefy graphics card with a capable processor, with the best models being suitable for streaming and encoding on the fly.
ASRock Rack has listed a new motherboard on its website supporting AMD's latest Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3000WX series of processors. The ASRock Rack WRX80D8-2T is currently under 'preliminary' status and features eight memory slots, seven full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, as well as twelve SATA ports and support for two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives. It also includes dual 10 GbE and is supported by an ASPEED BMC controller with a dedicated management LAN port and D-sub video output.
In terms of design, the ASRock Rack WRX80D8-2T follows a basic green design with blue memory slots and black PCIe slots, and power connectors. Surrounding a transposed sTRX4 (WRX80) socket is eight memory slots with support up to 2TB of capacity, with ECC and non-ECC UDIMM, RDIMM, LRDIMM, and RDIMM3DS memory types supported. Providing power to the motherboard is a 24-pin 12 V ATX power input, while CPU power comes from a pair of 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power inputs, all of which are located in the top right-hand corner.
Dominating the lower half of the board are seven full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, which are designed to maximize 112 of the supported 120 PCIe lanes from the Zen 2 based Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3000WX processors. Focusing on storage, the WRX80D8-2T has support for twelve SATA ports from the WRX80 chipset with two OCuLink ports, including four regular 7-pin SATA ports. Users can add U.2 storage with two OCuLink ports at PCIe 4.0 x4 or use these for an additional four SATA ports apiece. Other storage options include two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots with support for form factors up to 22110 M.2. Cooling options consist of seven 6-pin fan headers.
On the rear panel are two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports, with a dedicated Realtek RTL8211E Gigabit management LAN port and D-Sub video output powered by an ASPEED AST2500 BMC controller, which adds IPMI support. Users looking to add more USB ports can do so via front panel headers, including one USB 3.2 G2 Type-C header and one USB 3.2 G1 Type-A header for an additional two ports. Networking includes two RJ45 ports, which an Intel X550-AT2 10 GbE controller powers. Finishing off the rear panel is a Serial port, and a small UID identification LED button.
At the time of writing, we don't have any information on either the pricing or availability of the ASRock Rack WRX80D8-2T.
To be precise, we’ve witnessed price tag spillage from Amazon UK, as well as Amazon in France and the Netherlands, but as ever with leaked prices, put on your most skeptical head while perusing these – they could well be placeholders, as we often see when product listings go up before release.
As flagged by regular leaker @momomo_us on Twitter and Dellchannel21 (via Tom’s Hardware), the prices are in the ballpark of the $800 to $900 mark for the Core i9-12900K, while the Core i7-12700K is pegged at around $620.
The midrange Core i5-12600K demands an asking price of around $310 to $350 (note that those are currency conversions from either Euros or pounds, but minus the VAT).
In its native currency, Amazon UK pitches the Core i9-12900K at £791 (that’s including VAT), with the Core i7-12700K at £550, and the 12600K at £311.
Whichever way you dice it, with or without taxes, these Alder Lake early product listings make for worryingly pricey propositions.
Analysis: Placeholder prices, for sure?
In fact, the prices provided here look way off the mark. Surely Amazon UK can’t be thinking of listing the Alder Lake 12900K flagship at almost £800? Naturally, that wouldn’t be the recommended price from Intel, but of course retailers can set their own levels for chips – though Amazon surely wouldn’t push that far.
Remember, the asking price for the 11900K, its predecessor, stands at around the £500 mark on Amazon UK currently, and while we could expect something of a hike for the 12900K, it wouldn’t be to the tune of almost 60%. Far more likely that these are early placeholder prices for the 12th-gen processors, and the same is no doubt likely to be true for the other European Amazon operations cited in this latest bit of leakage.
The other point to consider here is that we’ve seen price leaks for Alder Lake before, and recently retailer Provantage listed the Core i9-12900K at $610, which seems far more reasonable as a palatable cut above the suggested price of $549 in the US for the 11900K.
So, as observed, we could well expect something of a price increase – these are new products bringing some exciting CPU innovation to the table, and Intel is seriously talking up Alder Lake performance.
Plus the global component shortage which is still very much in evidence may well exert upward pressure on prices too (and mean retailers could charge a fair chunk more than the recommended pricing). Even given all that, though, we still feel that this latest price leakage seems pretty clearly unrealistic.
An extra bit of memory can breathe all new life into your computer, and make heavy tasks like gaming and multi-tasking a breeze. With enough RAM, you won’t need to worry about leaving a couple extra browser tabs open. So why don't you take a look at our guide to the best RAM prices and deals.
Even if you were thinking of buying a brand new Mac, MacBook or pre-built PC instead of building your own setup this year, you can often save a bit of cash by not paying extra for an upgraded RAM model. This can work out quite an expensive way to add memory, and instead it’s far cheaper to purchase RAM separately, especially if you can find the best RAM deals like we have found below.
DDR4 RAM is the fastest memory that came on the block just a few years ago. At first, it was prohibitively expensive for anything but the most extreme gaming PCs, but now you can find it in many mainstream laptops or desktops. The Corsair Vengeance LPX is among one of the most solidly reliable kits of RAM you can purchase. It’s low-profile form factor makes it an easy fit for most PC builds, and its 2,400MHz starting speed is plenty quick too.
DDR4 RAM might be the fastest and hottest memory on the market now, but more than a few PCs aren’t designed with the right slot for it. Fear not, though, with DDR3 RAM going on its way out, you’re bound to find even more amazing deals on it, like this set of Kingston HyperX Fury memory. Like the Corsair kit above, Kingston makes solidly reliable RAM and they also feature low-profile designs to work with most PC builds.
Gaming requires a higher-class of memory, and this usually means higher frequencies, bigger capacities and a better cooling solution to keep it running, especially if you’re overclocking it. With all this in mind, you should check out the Corsair Vengeance RGB, which features a taller heatsink, a faster 3,000MHz frequency and RGB lighting over the DDR4 set of Vengeance LPX memory we pointed out earlier.
Best Mac RAM deal
Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) Memory for Mac
The most affordable way to upgrade your Mac systems
Adding extra memory to any Mac is notoriously expensive. Instead of throwing Apple a few extra hundred bucks, you could simply double or even triple the amount of RAM on your system with an inexpensive kit. Crucial is another proven RAM maker, and you’ll definitely want to check out its 16GB or 32GB memory kits that will cost far less than the corresponding upgrades provided through the Apple Store.
MacBooks aren’t the only laptop that you can add extra memory to. As long as they aren’t glued together, like a Surface Laptop, upgrading your RAM is one of the easiest things you can do to improve the performance of your notebook. TimeTic makes relatively inexpensive kits of Hynix IC RAM that could seriously bump up your memory capacity.
What is RAM?
RAM is an acronym for Random-Access Memory. It is one of the fundamental pieces of the computing puzzle alongside the processor (or CPU) and classic storage (usually coined as ROM for Read Only Memory).
RAM is needed in order to facilitate data transfer to and from your system storage (can be hard disk drive or solid state drive). The processor is the one that does the compute, the calculations etc and just next to it sits the cache, which is a super fast version of RAM but only available in tiny amounts (up to a couple of hundreds of MB at most).
Then comes RAM (usually around 16GB on standard computers) and beyond that system storage. The further they are from the processor, the cheaper they are per unit storage and the slower they become.
With our guide to today's best processor deals you'll be looking to save some serious cash on the most integral part of any PC build. Whether you're on a budget, a gamer, or simply building a machine for working from home, we've rounded up all the latest offerings from Intel and AMD and tirelessly searched to find the best prices on the top processors.
We've separated this week's best CPU deals into sections for high-end, mid-range, and budget shoppers, which you can jump to using the navigation links provided.
In a nutshell, if money's no object and you want the best, you'll definitely see the benefits of going with a high-end chip, since these beastly processors will give you excellent performance for years to come. That said, this week's mid-range processor deals are going to be more than adequate for someone who wants top-end gaming performance and to build a machine that'll last a few good years. Finally, our budget CPU deals take into account those who simply want a functional, reliable machine, although you might just be surprised at how much performance you can get out of these options - cheap processors have come a long way in recent years.
You'll find discounts from Amazon, Best Buy, and other well-known retailers in our processor deals roundup. If you're visiting from outside the US, you'll also find relevant prices for your region, which we've factored in accordingly. So, without further ado - check out today's best CPU prices just down below.
See how these CPUs shape up with our best processors buying guide
Best high-end processor deals
High-end processors are squarely aimed at the enthusiast and professional market, and, as you'd expect can carry some pretty hefty price tags. If cost is no factor, however, then these 8-core and sometimes even 16-core beasts will absolutely give you the most performance possible - so much in fact that they might be overkill for some users.
AMD's Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 chips are the companies flagship chips right now, with the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X being the current performance king from team red. Retailing for around $549 / £599 means this chip is a serious investment, although the good news is the now older AMD Ryzen 9 3900X is starting to come down in price, giving users another great viable option.
For Intel processors, the Core i9-10900K and Core i7-10700K are the current high-end chips, with the latter being more than enough for most applications including gaming. Performance on the i9-10900K is more or less neck and neck with the Ryzen 9 5900X on most applications save from the most intensive productivity tasks, although the good news for Intel fans is the i9 tends to retail for quite a bit less than the Ryzen 9 currently.
Best mid-range CPU deals
Mid-range CPUs are generally targetted towards most mainstream gamer builds, being better bang for the buck than the high-end enthusiast chips. They'll also be the sort of thing you'll want to invest in if you're wanting something that will perform decently for intensive applications and last a few good years down the line. Intel's long-standing Core i5 range has traditionally dominated the mid-range processor market, but in the past few years, we've seen that near-monopoly shattered by AMD's Ryzen 5 chips, which are just as popular these days.
The AMD Ryzen 5 5600X is the latest mid-range entry from team red and is a fantastically powerful chip for the money, although availability can be so-so at its original $299 / £279 asking price. Another option is the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X; a previously high-end processor, but now it's superseded by the latest 5-series version, prices are dropping, making it a really compelling alternative. The best-selling AMD Ryzen 5 3600 series are also widely available right now still great cost-effective component for a mid-range build for both gaming and productivity.
On the Intel side of things, the Core i5-10600K is the current mainstream performance flagship and is built for easy overclocking. That said, those on more of a could also consider the Intel Core i5-10400 - which isn't quite as speedy, but still offers great performance with its six-cores.
Best entry-level CPU deals
Budget CPUs mostly come in the form of the latest Intel Core i3 and AMD Ryzen 3 series of processors - which are essentially consumer-grade chips meant for cost-effective productivity builds. Generally retailing for around $100 / £100, these chips are great if you're simply building a desktop for working from home or everyday use.
Surprisingly, these chips have come a long way in recent years and can actually handle a bit of gaming on the side too, although you can expect bottlenecking if you're pairing them up with a serious graphics card.
AMD's latest Ryzen 3-3200G is a good cost-effective processor with its in-built Vega graphics processing providing surprisingly good graphical performance. That said, it's often out of stock at retailers and those remaining sales tend to feature prices inflated above the original retail price of $99 / £80.
More readily available is the Intel Core i3-10100 - a CPU that doesn't quite match the Ryzen 3 in gaming and multi-threading performance, but still has plenty of bang for the buck. It's also got fully integrated Intel graphics too, which means you can forgo that expensive graphics card and simply run the monitor directly from your motherboard.
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Intel’s Alder Lake processors have been spotted and pics of the purported product boxes shared online, with the CPUs also going on sale via the black market in China.
The juicy bit with this latest leakage, however, is those retail boxes, with the obvious caveat that we can’t take it for granted that these are genuine pics – although they look convincing enough, it has to be said.
VideoCardz shared the images of Core i5, Core i7 and Core i9 boxes for the 12th-gen processors, and they look neat and tidy, but nothing particularly special; until you get to the next-gen flagship, that is.
Intel’s Core i9-12900K apparently comes in a large box packaged with a mock silicon wafer in all its golden circular glory, which we have to say, looks quite cool.
(Image credit: VideoCardz)
What’s also interesting here is that the images of the Alder Lake range lack a Core i3 box, and that could align with the rumor that these low-end chips are coming later down the line, and may not be arriving with the initial 12th-gen launch supposedly on November 4.
As mentioned at the outset, the other Alder Lake spillage today is that VideoCardz also reports that 2nd-generation engineering samples (purportedly the Core i9-12900K) are being sold on the Taobao second-hand market in China (as originally spotted by @yuuki_ans on Twitter).
These chips are likely to be very flaky, of course, as they’re effectively unfinished products (just test chips, with slower clock speeds to boot), so buyers – who are apparently forking out to the tune of $700 (around £520, AU$970) – will have to take their chances.
You may recall that early Alder Lake sample chips have supposedly been out there to purchase in China since July, but those transaction were on closed (not public) forums, which is the main difference here. That and the fact that these are much more recent engineering samples, so closer to the final product, of course.
Analysis: Should 12th-gen CPUs be renamed Alder Leak?
We think the wafer inclusion with the 12900K package is a nice touch, but that’s likely to be a subjective thing. Doubtless others will feel it’s gimmickry that is wholly unnecessary, and/or a waste of packaging resources. (Though if it’s not going on your bedroom wall, you could always reuse it maybe as a frisbee, or a large coaster).
Whether you like the idea or not, it’s certainly different, and will make the 12900K stand out from the CPU crowd.
As for the Alder Lake engineering samples available on the Chinese black market, seeing as the processors launch in a month anyway – or should do, and even if that’s wrong, it likely won’t be much further out than the rumored launch date of November 4 – it’s difficult to see why you wouldn’t wait for a finished product at this point. Particularly given that you’ll need an Alder Lake compatible motherboard, and those aren’t available on the black market.
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