Intel Core i3 Alder Lake i3-12100 BOX

Younger representatives of the Core i3 family, which were released in the 12th generation of Intel processors under the code name Alder Lake. All chips from this series are manufactured in accordance with an updated technical process (10 nm) and support work exclusively with Intel motherboards with a Socket 1700 processor socket. Another key difference from the 10th and 11th generations of Core i3 is support for fast next-generation DDR5 RAM.

Moreover, unlike the Ryzen 7000 processors, which have completely switched to DDR5, the Core i3 Alder Lake chips also support the previous DDR4 standard, which significantly simplifies the assembly and design of the system with an eye to a future upgrade. The maximum supported clock speed of DDR5 is 4800 MHz, while DDR4 is limited to 3200 MHz. The maximum amount of RAM in both cases is 128 GB.

The entire Core i3 Alder Lake family is made according to the usual scheme of recent years: 4 performance-class physical cores with support for turbo boost and Hyper-Threading multi-threading technology, due to which 4 virtual cores are added to 4 physical cores. In normal mode, all chips operate at a frequency of 3.3 GHz, and if necessary, they can be overclocked to 4.3 GHz.

This dynamic load balancing ensures an optimal balance between system performance, noise, heat and power consumption. The volume of L3 cache memory is traditionally somewhat limited for the Core i3 series. In this case, its volume is 12 MB. The maximum heat dissipation level for the entire line does not exceed 89 W, so a stock cooler (if included) or the simplest entry-level fan will be sufficient for cooling, which makes this family an attractive option for installation in an entry-level gaming or work PC. As a bonus, the processor has an integrated graphics subsystem Intel HD Graphics 730, which in the case of budget and office assemblies eliminates the need to buy additional video cards. The GPU is integrated into all chips in the series except for models with the F suffix at the end of the name.