Intel Alder Lake price leak suggests considerable hikes from 11th-gen CPUs - Techradar

Purported pre-release pricing spilled via Micro Center.

Intel’s Alder Lake processors, which could go on sale at the start of November, have appeared in yet another pricing leak, this time from major US retailer Micro Center.

And if the spilled price tags – highlighted by prolific hardware leaker @momomo_us on Twitter – are correct, they’re on the disappointing side.

The spotted product listings have since been taken down by Micro Center, but they showed the flagship Core i9-12900K weighing in at $670 (around £490, AU$1,235), with the 12700K pitched at $470 (around £340, AU$865).

That’s just a few days off now, so Micro Center isn’t jumping the gun by that much (and at least it hasn’t accidentally sold the 12900K early, like another retailer).

Even though Alder Lake’s release is theoretically very close, we obviously can’t take any early pricing indications too seriously, and the price tags seen here could easily be placeholders of some kind.

The 11900K launch price was $539 (around £390, AU$720), so a bit more than you can get it from the US retailer now – but if the purported pre-release pricing is correct here, the 12900K will be 24% pricier (though Micro Center’s leaked price does not necessarily correspond with what Intel may be suggesting price-wise).

However, this indication that Alder Lake may come in more expensive than Rocket Lake echoes the other rumored pricing we’ve heard on the grapevine, so it’s starting to feel like 12th-gen chips could indeed command something of a premium compared to 11th-gen products upon launch...