Intel

[testcy]

I see a lot of Intel 13th and 14th Gen CPUs at discounted prices. Are these now safe to buy or should Intel 12th Gen if still available or Core Ultra CPUs be considered instead?

[Mumintroll]

If you have the latest bios and use one of Intel's profiles in bios then maybe you're safe.

It might show up new degradation cases, or not. And Intel might release new microcodes addressing the degradation issue, or not.

The microcode updates are mitigations, not fixes.

 

What specific model are you looking at?

The i3 and non-K i5 are not affected by the degradation issues, of the 13th and 14th gen.

So either get one of those or a high end 12th gen.

 

There's also the new upcoming cpus Bartlett lake for the 1700 socket, probably that's why resellers want to get rid of their Raptor lakes taking up space on their shelves. 

[testcy]

16 minutes ago, Mumintroll said:

What specific model are you looking at?

i3-12100/i3-13100/i3-14100 but equally cheap motherboards supporting DDR5 and PCI Express 5 seem difficult to find.

[Mumintroll]

35 minutes ago, testcy said:

i3-12100/i3-13100/i3-14100 but equally cheap motherboards supporting DDR5 and PCI Express 5 seem difficult to find.

well those i3 models are not affected by the degradation issue, as I mentioned in the first post 

[testcy]

9 hours ago, Mumintroll said:

well those i3 models are not affected by the degradation issue, as I mentioned in the first post 

And they are suited for a home/office build, but the problem again is matching one with a decent SOCKET LGA1700 motherboard which is not overpriced for a "dead" platform.

[YoungBlade]

2 hours ago, testcy said:

And they are suited for a home/office build, but the problem again is matching one with a decent SOCKET LGA1700 motherboard which is not overpriced for a "dead" platform.

The PCIe 5.0 support is the thing that would be a problem for cheap boards. The ones around $100 are all only 4.0 for the primary slot.

 

The cheapest PCIe 5.0 capable board I can find is the Asrock B760M Steel Legend WiFi for $140.

 

To be fair though, the Steel Legend is a good board in terms features and VRM quality. You get 3 M.2 slots, 2.5GbE, and WiFi 6E. You could run a 14900K on that board at 253W no issues. A comparable AM5 board isn't actually cheaper.

[testcy]

2 hours ago, YoungBlade said:

The PCIe 5.0 support is the thing that would be a problem for cheap boards. The ones around $100 are all only 4.0 for the primary slot.

 

The cheapest PCIe 5.0 capable board I can find is the Asrock B760M Steel Legend WiFi for $140.

 

To be fair though, the Steel Legend is a good board in terms features and VRM quality. You get 3 M.2 slots, 2.5GbE, and WiFi 6E. You could run a 14900K on that board at 253W no issues. A comparable AM5 board isn't actually cheaper.

I prefer no Wifi at all instead of WiFi6 (or WiFi7) and something better than Realtek ALC897.

[YoungBlade]

1 hour ago, testcy said:

I prefer no Wifi at all instead of WiFi6 (or WiFi7) and something better than Realtek ALC897.

What are you using the computer for? 

 

Better on-board audio will definitely break the bank. I'm having trouble finding anything that has DDR5, PCIe Gen 5, and better than ALC897 for under $200.

[Pusbucket]

17 hours ago, testcy said:

i3-12100/i3-13100/i3-14100 but equally cheap motherboards supporting DDR5 and PCI Express 5 seem difficult to find.

but are you going to even need or see any difference over PCIe 4 with the an i3 and your usage?

 

From most I've read, currently PCIe5 and DDR5 are pretty much overkill for 99% of people and don't yield the phenomenal end results folks anticipate.

sure benchmarks may show the difference, but looking at the monitor and actually using the PC, such boosts are often not noticeable.

[testcy]

46 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

What are you using the computer for? 

 

Better on-board audio will definitely break the bank. I'm having trouble finding anything that has DDR5, PCIe Gen 5, and better than ALC897 for under $200.

Realtek ALC897 is inferior to what I am using now, bought several years ago. If spending more, don't Socket LGA1851 and AM5 motherboards start to make more sense?

7 minutes ago, jmwhite33 said:

but are you going to even need or see any difference over PCIe 4 with the an i3 and your usage?

 

From most I've read, currently PCIe5 and DDR5 are pretty much overkill for 99% of people and don't yield the phenomenal end results folks anticipate.

sure benchmarks may show the difference, but looking at the monitor and actually using the PC, such boosts are often not noticeable.

Are you suggesting to consider DDR4? I won't use PCIe5 for now, but why not choose a motherboard that supports it for the future?

[Pusbucket]

7 minutes ago, testcy said:

Realtek ALC897 is inferior to what I am using now, bought several years ago. If spending more, don't Socket LGA1851 and AM5 motherboards start to make more sense?

Are you suggesting to consider DDR4? I won't use PCIe5 for now, but why not choose a motherboard that supports it for the future?

I agree, future proofing is best, But as your finding that becomes a matter for fitting it within your budget.

 

both DDR4 and PCIe 4 are still viable options. Again it really comes down to your specific needs and budget.

[YoungBlade]

24 minutes ago, testcy said:

Realtek ALC897 is inferior to what I am using now, bought several years ago. If spending more, don't Socket LGA1851 and AM5 motherboards start to make more sense?

Are you suggesting to consider DDR4? I won't use PCIe5 for now, but why not choose a motherboard that supports it for the future?

If you have to go above $200 for the board, and you care about future proofing, AM5 is a way better choice in almost all cases.

[starsmine]

23 hours ago, jmwhite33 said:

but are you going to even need or see any difference over PCIe 4 with the an i3 and your usage?

 

From most I've read, currently PCIe5 and DDR5 are pretty much overkill for 99% of people and don't yield the phenomenal end results folks anticipate.

sure benchmarks may show the difference, but looking at the monitor and actually using the PC, such boosts are often not noticeable.

Yes, 

Any bandwidth bound application will notice it. 
It is not that hard to make bandwidth bound applications. I can fully saturate ddr5 6000 with just 1/10th of a single zen 4 core and then be fully bandwidth bound until that part of the workload is finished. (any kind of FMA transform across a large array (as in larger then 50% of L3). 

PCIe5 is the same way, once you escape a frame buffer you are fully bandwidth bound, not compute bound generally. 

[testcy]

On 10/4/2025 at 3:59 PM, YoungBlade said:

If you have to go above $200 for the board, and you care about future proofing, AM5 is a way better choice in almost all cases.

With rumors about Socket LGA1954, should Socket LGA1851 even remotely be considered? Or AM5 is the only way to go for now?

[YoungBlade]

Just now, testcy said:

With rumors about Socket LGA1954, should Socket LGA1851 even remotely be considered? Or AM5 is the only way to go for now?

All indications point to a refresh on LGA1851, not a full new generation. The refresh will be the same core count, but supposedly they'll get an NPU to make them compatible with Copilot, so if you want local AI capabilities, then I guess that might not be totally pointless.

 

Considering that you're looking for a low-end CPU, there's really nothing for you on LGA1851. The cheapest thing is the Ultra 5 225F for $171. Unless you can find a motherboard you want to make it worth it, the i5 12600KF is just $138 and offers comparable performance.

 

You still haven't mentioned what you're using this computer for, but unless you need multicore productivity performance there's no reason not to go AM5.

 

There's a case to be made for the Ultra 7 265K at $250. It gives you the gaming performance of the R5 9600X with multicore productivity performance usually within striking distance of the R9 7900X.

 

If you need an iGPU, the 8500G is $160 from Amazon. If you don't, the 8400F has unfortunately gone up in price, but you can get it off eBay for $120. Either of those is much faster than the Core i3 options, albeit more expensive.

 

If you care about future upgrade options, AMD is the only way to go. I really hope the rumors of long term LGA1954 support are true. It's getting frustrating to constantly tell people that Intel's not worth it, but to be frank, Intel's platform is trash.

 

With AM5, you can build a good system for any use case and you get the flexibility of an upgrade path. You get more PCIe lanes from the CPU. You get cheaper motherboards at the same feature tier, and better motherboards at lower tiers. 

 

Intel has exactly one CPU on their current platform that is worth considering, and the only niche it makes sense for is mixed gaming and productivity, but with the caveat that you don't get AVX-512 and you need to have no desire to upgrade on that platform.

 

But with the R9 7900X only costing $65 more, you have the issue of motherboard pricing to consider. At feature parity, the two usually come out within $30 anyway, and at that point, why not just get the Ryzen 9? It's usually faster.

 

I'm really sorry that Intel is in such a bad place. I wish I could point you to something that makes sense. But honestly, it just doesn't.

[testcy]

On 10/3/2025 at 8:46 PM, Mumintroll said:

If you have the latest bios and use one of Intel's profiles in bios then maybe you're safe.

It might show up new degradation cases, or not. And Intel might release new microcodes addressing the degradation issue, or not.

The microcode updates are mitigations, not fixes.

 

What specific model are you looking at?

The i3 and non-K i5 are not affected by the degradation issues, of the 13th and 14th gen.

So either get one of those or a high end 12th gen.

 

There's also the new upcoming cpus Bartlett lake for the 1700 socket, probably that's why resellers want to get rid of their Raptor lakes taking up space on their shelves. 

But, I read that the degradation issue affects all Intel CPUs from 13th and 14th generations that have a thermal design power (TDP) of 65W or higher, including non-K models?