Bang-for-Buck 2022 Gaming CPU
by Big.WayneI wanted to sell my AMD X570/5900X combo before the new AM5 platform was released, so I started looking for something new to tide me over. The Intel Alder Lake P-Cores piqued my interest, but as I'm a Windows 10 user not looking to move yet, I thought I would give the lowly Core i3-12100F quad-core a spin, paired with a B660 motherboard, 32GB DDR4 B-Die and an RTX 3070. The six-core I5-12400f was tempting, but at the time I purchased, it cost nearly double what the 12100F does and offered only a little extra FPS. I couldn't get my 32GB 8-Pack B-Die running at 3600MHz, it wouldn't even boot, no matter how much I played in the BIOS. Apparently, on the 12th Gen Intel platform, you can't overclock memory properly unless you have a "K" class CPU. The voltage that boosts the CPU's memory controller (System Agent S/A) is locked, so you can only overclock the memory as far as the default S/A voltage will allow. I enjoy tinkering with B-Die, and I thought buying a B660 platform enabled full memory overclocking but apparently not. I eventually settled on DDR4-3466MHz with tight timings (14-14-14- etc) and getting around 53ns memory latency, that is actually lower than my previous AMD 5900x setup. Cooling is an old Noctua 140mm tower keeping the chip running in the 27c-50c range, and the low-power usage is especially welcome during the energy crisis. Been using this setup since the start of August 2022, and I'm pleasantly surprised by how good it is for the money. The RTX 3070 seems happy enough paired with a £100 CPU and all my games play very well @ 1080p 144Hz.
