Intel's 12th-generation Alder Lake chips put the company back on the board in 2021, largely thanks to extremely competitive pricing and great performance. Intel's strategy hasn't changed since, and two of the company's most popular CPUs are on sale during Prime Day for incredibly low prices. The high-end Core i7-13700K is going for $375, a $44 discount, while the Core i5-12600K is getting slashed to $179, making it cheaper than even the cheapest AMD Ryzen 7000 CPU. Whether you're gaming or doing content creation, these are some great choices for a midrange or high-end PC.
Intel Core i7-13700K
The second-fastest CPU in Intel's latest generation, the Core i7-13700K is actually very similar to the flagship Core i9-12900K from 2021. The two CPUs both have eight P-cores and eight E-cores, which gives each CPU roughly the same amount of multi-threaded performance, but the 13700K does have a couple of significant improvements. The 13700K has a slightly higher frequency as you might expect, as well as nearly double the combined L2 and L3 cache, which is extremely important for good gaming performance.
At $375, the 13700K is really hard to beat. While competing AMD CPUs will be more power efficient and more suitable for PCs with limited cooling capabilities, the 13700K will beat many of its challengers at a lower price point with good enough cooling. You can pair it with super cheap DDR4 to make the value even better, or use higher-end DDR5 to get as much performance as possible.
Intel Core i7-13700K
The Intel Core i7-13700K is a mid-range processor from the company's 13th Gen family of chips. It has a total of 16 cores and 24 cores, offering considerably high levels of performance at a reasonable TDP and price.
Intel Core i5-12600K
The Core i5-12600K is actually one of the original 12th-generation chips Intel launched back in 2021, which makes it fairly old but that doesn't mean it's no longer a capable CPU. In fact, Intel actually reuses the 12600K chip for the Core i5-13400, one of Intel's best budget CPUs today. While both the 12600K and 13400 offer the same six P-cores and four E-cores, the 12600K is an unlocked processor, which means it can be overclocked to even higher frequencies if it's paired with a Z690 or Z790 motherboard.
The most recent Intel CPUs can already achieve great bang for buck by using 600 series motherboards paired with DDR4 memory, but a $179 12600K takes this to a new level of value. For comparison, the 7600, AMD's cheapest Ryzen 7000 CPU, is over $200 on its own and has to be paired with an expensive AM5 motherboard and DDR5 RAM, and it also has worse multicore performance. The 12600K is good at its normal price, but at $179 it's pretty much unbeatable.
Intel Core i5-12600K
The Intel Core i5-12600K is a fantastic mid-range processor from team blue, offering 10 cores of performance at a reasonable price. Support DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 is also present, allowing you to create a powerful PC.
Both of these CPUs have great bang for buck and performance, but are held back by their high power draw. This isn't such a big deal for the 12600K since it doesn't consume all that much power in general even though it's inefficient, but the 13700K will require a good power supply and a good cooler. If you want the performance of the 13700K without its power consumption, you might like the 7900X3D, which is on sale for less than $500 on Prime Day and consumes less than half the power. There are other great Prime Day deals on CPUs and GPUs as well.