Intel Core i5-12600K vs Intel Core i9-12900H

Core i5-12600K vs Core i9-12900H comparison

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i5-12600K performs better than the Core i9-12900H. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i9-12900H in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i9-12900H has slightly more cores with 14 cores compared to the Core i5-12600K that has 10 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i5-12600K. Our comparison shows that the Core i5-12600K has a significantly higher clock speed compared to the Core i9-12900H. Despite this, the Core i9-12900H has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i9-12900H outputs less heat than Core i5-12600K thanks to a significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Most CPUs have more threads than cores. This technology, colloquially called hyperthreading, improves performance by splitting a core into multiple virtual ones. This provides more efficient utilisation of a core. Indeed, the Core i5-12600K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.