Intel Has Replaced the Core i5-12400 with the “Repackaged” Core 5 120 and 120F

Intel has released two new processors, the Core 5 120 and Core 5 120F, in the budget segment. Despite the new names, these are almost complete reissues of the popular Core i5-12400 and i5-12400F, which are gradually being phased out of the market. There has been no official announcement from the company, but the chips have already appeared on Intel's website.

Old Cores in a New Design

Both processors are made in the LGA1700 socket and are based on the Raptor Lake architecture. Inside, there are 6 powerful cores with Hyper-Threading support, 1.25 MB of L2 cache per core, and a total L3 cache of 18 MB. As expected, the 120F version does not have an integrated graphics core.

Minimal Differences From the i5-12400

The new chips run at the same base frequency of 2.5 GHz, but have a slightly increased turbo frequency of up to 4.5 GHz (compared to 4.4 GHz in their predecessors). Power consumption has also been slightly optimized: peak TDP has been reduced from 117 W to 110 W. Another difference is the expanded RAM support: now up to 192 GB, whereas the i5-12400 was limited to 128 GB.

Why Release Something that Already Existed?

There are no official comments from Intel regarding the rebranding, but such an update may be an attempt to refresh the product range without additional costs for developing new solutions. Despite the minor upgrade, the new products still look attractive for inexpensive builds, especially given the current utilization of Alder and Raptor Lake chip stocks.