(Hardware) Intel's 12th Gen Core i9 12900KS flagship is out in the wild

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Intel’s upcoming 12th Gen flagship CPU, the Core i9 12900KS, is already in the hands of users. This indicates that the launch is imminent and if rumors are true, the 12900KS will launch later in March.  According to a post at overclocking.com (via Tom’s Hardware), a user by the name of Daginatsuko has already received a retail 12900KS that they purchased prior to the listing being removed. The packing certainly looks well presented, complete with the inclusion of a mock wafer.  The post includes a screenshot of the CPU paired with an Asus motherboard. An idle BIOS temperature of 78°C is notable, though perhaps just the result of a bad cooler mount. It's not a leap to suggest that nothing short of a top-end air cooler or AIO will be sufficient to keep this CPU from throttling under an all-core load. We’ll have to wait and see if there will be any overclocking headroom. At a 5.5GHz single-core boost, it would seem as though that’s about the maximum on ambient cooling.