Introduction

The Intel Core i5-12400F is designed to be 12th Gen "Alder Lake" for the masses who game. At a retail price of just $180, this 6-core/12-thread processor has some pretty big shoes to fill as nearly all its predecessors sold in heaps, from the i5-8400 to the extremely popular i5-9400F, i5-10400F, and, to a lesser extent, i5-11400F. These SKUs have been characterized by a price well under $200, but with the hardware feature-set resembling the top $250–280 Core i5 part, albeit with lower clock speeds. With its 12th Gen Core family, however, Intel has fundamentally changed the Core i5 brand.

The new Core i5-12400F isn't just a locked, lower-clocked sibling of the i5-12600K we reviewed last year. In fact, we couldn't simulate this chip by underclocking that one. This is because the i5-12400, i5-12400F, i5-12500, and i5-12600 (non-K) have a different core-configuration from the i5-12600K and i5-12600KF. With "Alder Lake," Intel introduced its Hybrid CPU core architecture to the desktop segment. For the i5-12600K/KF, this meant four "Gracemont" Efficiency cores (or E-cores) besides the six "Golden Cove" Performance cores (or P-cores), along with 20 MB of L3 cache. It turns out that only the i5-12600K/KF feature E-cores in the 12th Gen Core i5 desktop series, while the other SKUs simply lack them.



There's another big difference between the i5-12400F/12400/12500/12600 compared to the i5-12600K. The newer chips are based on a physically different silicon, dubbed "H0." This die is smaller, and physically only features six "Golden Cove" P-cores, zero "Gracemont" E-core clusters, and a shared L3 cache that's only 18 MB. The i5-12600K and KF are carved out of the larger "C0" die, the same one the flagship i9-12900K is based on, by disabling two out of eight P-cores, and one of the two E-core clusters.

Intel's Hybrid core architecture comes with an interesting and essential piece of clockwork called Thread Director; a middleware that helps the OS send the right kind of processing workload to the right kind of CPU core, it also plays a big role in power management. With no E-cores on the silicon, and thus no Thread Director, the i5-12400F is a more traditional multi-core processor. It has six "Golden Cove" P-cores, with HyperThreading enabling 12 logical CPUs. There's a 50% generational increase in L3 cache, from 12 MB in the previous-generation i5-11400F to 18 MB.

The I/O capabilities of the "H0" silicon appears unchanged from "C0," it puts out 16 PCI-Express Gen 5 lanes for the PEG slot (the main x16 slot meant for your graphics card); four PCI-Express Gen 4 lanes for a CPU-attached M.2 NVMe slot, and an 8-lane DMI 4.0 chipset-bus. It supports both DDR5 and DDR4 memory types. As an "F" SKU, the i5-12400F lacks onboard graphics. It's hence targeted squarely at gamers with a discrete graphics card. Unlike the i5-12600K, it lacks an unlocked base-clock multiplier, and Intel rated the chip's processor base power (PBP) at 65 W, with maximum turbo power (MTP) at 117 W. The processor has a nominal clock speed of 2.50 GHz, with maximum turbo boost frequency of 4.40 GHz. There's no fancy Turbo Boost Max 3.0 (and hence no preferred cores being exposed to the OS), but you get classic Turbo Boost 2.0.

Intel is pricing the Core i5-12400F at $180. If you absolutely want onboard graphics, you can pick its twin, the Core i5-12400, for around $195. We chose the i5-12400F for review because we wanted to test just how much processing muscle you get for $150 less than the i5-12600K, and whether it's all you need for gaming these days, so you could push the money saved toward graphics.


Intel paper-launched the 12th Gen Core processor family on October 27, allowing us to post everything about the processor except performance testing, so we did a more comprehensive Preview Article on the "Alder Lake" microarchitecture. The Core i5-12400F is based on a physically smaller die than the C0 die the i9-12900K is based on, and is codenamed "H0." There are no die-shots from Intel of this die, but MSI OC Lab de-lidded a Core i5 "H0" processor and compared its die-size with that of the larger die. Built on the same Intel 7 node, formerly known as 10 nm Enhanced SuperFin, as the C0 die, the new H0 die is about 24% smaller in area. Considering these are high-volume SKUs, that's a massive savings in wafer consumption at scale.


Unlike the C0 die, which physically features 8 "Golden Cove" P-cores, and 8 "Gracemont" E-cores, the H0 silicon lacks E-cores, and physically only has 6 "Golden Cove" P-cores. With the E-core clusters and a couple of P-cores out of the way, the shared L3 cache size is proportionately reduced to 18 MB. The uncore (integrated northbridge), Xe-LP graphics core, and I/O interfaces are the same as the C0 die. You get 16 lanes of PCI-Express Gen 5 which go toward the PEG slot, 4 lanes of PCI-Express Gen 4 toward a CPU-attached M.2 NVMe slot, and 8 DMI Gen4 lanes toward the chipset bus. The Core i5-12400F features all 6 P-cores present on the die, but the graphics core is disabled. You'll need a graphics card to go with this processor.


The "Golden Cove" performance core (P-core) features numerical increments to the decode unit, micro-op queue, and micro-op cache. The out-of-order (OoO) engine sees similar increments with 6-wide allocation and 12-wide execution ports, compared to 5-wide allocation and 10-wide execution ports for Cypress Cove. The execution stage sees the addition of a fifth execution port and ALU, FMA with FP16 support, and an updated fast adder (FADD). Similar improvements are made to the cache and memory sub-system. These add toward the 28% IPC uplift for this core.

There are no E-cores physically present on the H0 silicon. With no Hybrid CPU Core architecture present, the Core i5 H0 processor is a traditional multi-core processor that doesn't quite need the Intel Thread Director middleware, although we don't know if Thread Director is absent on these chips, or a vestige of it is present.


To eke out the best-possible thermals from the 14 nm node it was stuck with, Intel pulled off some innovative ways to transfer heat between the silicon and cooling solution over the past couple of solutions. These innovations continue with "Alder Lake." The die and STIM are now thinner, and the copper IHS thicker. Among the new overclocking capabilities are the ability to tweak even the E-cores, DDR5 memory, new XMP 3.0 profiles for DDR5 memory, synthetic BCLK that ensures a base-clock overclock doesn't break sensitive clock domains relying on it, and external clock generation, in addition to the processor's internal clock generator. The Core i5-12400F lacks an unlocked multiplier and hence doesn't offer a multiplier value beyond 44x. You could try playing with the 100 MHz base-clock on a Z690 chipset motherboard, as it is de-coupled with other sensitive clock-domains, such as PCIe.

Intel Z690 Chipset

The Z690 chipset is Intel's first client chipset with PCI-Express 4.0 downstream connectivity. It talks to the "Alder Lake-S" processor over the DMI 4.0 x8 chipset bus. Downstream PCIe connectivity includes 12x Gen 4 and 16x Gen 3 PCIe general-purpose lanes. The rest of its chipset-attached connectivity is the same as the Z590, including MIPI SoundWire support, NVMe RAID, 8-port SATA 6 Gbps, and recommended network interfaces that include 2.5 GbE and Wi-Fi 6E.

Intel B660 and H610 Chipsets

As of this writing, Intel decided against launching the H670 client chipset, making the B660 Intel's mainstream desktop chipset targeted at everyone with a "locked" 12th Gen Core processor, those who don't need the I/O options of the Z690 and want to save big on the motherboard. The B660 lacks CPU overclocking support, but permits memory overclocking. Motherboard vendors can choose to give it a PCIe Gen 5 PEG slot, as well as DDR5 memory, although you may come across plenty of motherboards with PCIe Gen4 PEG and DDR4 memory. The B660 chipset uses a narrower 4-lane DMI 4.0 chipset bus than what 12th Gen Core processors are capable of (up to 8 DMI 4.0 lanes). This shouldn't be too much of a problem as the chipset only puts out 6 downstream PCIe Gen4 lanes, besides 8 Gen3 lanes. Motherboard designers should use the downstream Gen4 connectivity to wire out another M.2 Gen4 slot. You also get fewer high-bandwidth USB3 port types. The H610 is the bare entry-level chipset. You lose out on memory overclocking, only get Gen3 PCIe connectivity across the board, and no CPU-attached NVMe. For the Core i5-12400F, both Z690 and B660 make for good chipset choices.

Unboxing and Photography

Here it is, the processor itself. It measures 37.5 mm x 45.0 mm and is a more rectangular-looking processor, much like the LGA1366 before it.


Include in the package is this new Intel stock cooler. Its a relatively simple, compact solution with a copper base.


Intel Socket LGA1700 has an intuitive installation process that should be familiar from many past LGA sockets. Trouble is that it comes with a different cooler mount-hole spacing than LGA1200 and the five different Socket-H series sockets before it, so you'll need to search for a compatible cooler. Most cooler companies are handing out adapters, but these aren't available in all countries.

Test Setup

• All applications, games, and processors are tested with the drivers and hardware listed below—no performance results were recycled between test systems.
• All games and applications are tested using the same version.
• All games are set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise.

Super Pi

SuperPi is one of the most popular benchmarks with overclockers and tweakers. It has been used in world-record competitions since forever. It is a purely single-threaded CPU test that calculates Pi to a large number of digits—32 million for our testing. Released in 1995, it only supports x86 floating-point instructions and thus makes for a good test for single-threaded legacy application performance.