Intel's respectable i5-12400F is down to a great price at Amazon right now
A true value hero.
Intel's previous two generations of chips haven't offered enough game-changing and meaningful upgrades compared to the older 12th gen to stop us recommending them in a hurry. You can get rather close performance for a great deal less if you shop around a little, as chips like this Core i5-12400F become discounted quite heavily. At the moment, Amazon's got it for £115, which is a fantastic reduction on its £203 list price, as well as compared to its 13th gen equivalent (£187) and 14th gen equivalent (£193).
At the time of its release, we dubbed the 12400F one of the best value gaming CPUs, even if it has been surpassed in our rankings by the newer 13400F. Still, in our 12400F review, we noted it offered around 85 percent percent of the performance of the then top-end Core i9 12900K in many games at 1080p, with even smaller margins at 1440p and 4K. If you're using a 1440p or 4K monitor, then going for the 12400F instead of CPUs like the 12600K, 12700K or 12900K, or their 13th gen equivalents makes a lot of sense.
The Core i5-12400F, outside of its gaming exploits, is also a great value CPU for content creation workloads, too. While its multi-core scores in Cinebench R23 come in below processors that offer higher core counts, its single core scores put above comparable Ryzen 5000 chips we've tested as well as the fastest 11th-gen Intel processors. That makes it one of the fastest six-core CPUs on the market, only falling behind AMD's base model Ryzen 7000 chips, so if you want to stream games, transcode videos or render 3D scenes, it's a good value choice.
The benefit of going for 12th gen is also the choice of components on offer, too. Compatible Z690, H670 and B660 boards can be had for a good price, and supply varying degrees of support for hardware standards. More expensive boards may offer the benefit of PCIe 5.0 support for a forward-looking future alongside speedy DDR5 RAM, which itself is coming down in price. However, Alder Lake can also still run on DDR4 RAM if you're particularly budget-conscious, and in big capacities with good transfer rates, is especially affordable these days, making this CPU a good starting point for your next build, with a useful upgrade path up to Intel's 14th gen if you're that way inclined.
If you're after a reasonably powerful CPU for your next PC build with a lot to like about it for less, this Amazon deal on the Intel Core i5-12400F is not to be missed.