Re: there is no price difference between "Standard CPU air cooling" and "Advanced CPU air cooling."  definitely get advanced air cooling. The standard air cooler is basic Dell pancake not good at all. [IMAGE] standard air cooling [IMAGE] Advanced air cooling get the 750w psu for gaming.  For demanding gaming consider higher spec gpu 3080 or 3080ti/3090 if you can afford. Very hard and costly to upgrade proprietary psu from 460w up if you do not get the 750w up front. -k cpu is a premium binned cpu.  For multi core it beats non-k 12700 The single-core performance is almost similar in both CPUs. But, in multi-core benchmark tests, 12700K is the winner. You can see the multi-core GeekBench score is too high for 12700K as compared to 12700. [URL]
It took some doing, but I think have the specs I want (listed in full at the end of this post). This system will be for someone who does play some demanding games, so I expect that CPU and GPU usage will get up there. I have three questions for the forum. 1. Is the 750w PSU overkill for this combination of CPU, GPU, RAM, and SSD? i7-12700 (not K)Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti16gb RAM2 TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDoptical drive It took some doing even to add the 750w PSU, since 460w seems to be the default for this combination of CPU and GPU. One might assume that Dell thinks 460w is adequate, but I'm trying to minimize assumptions at this point. We won't be overclocking anything.  2. The CPU I have selected -- 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-12700 (25 MB cache, 12 cores, 20 threads, 2.10 GHz to 4.90 GHz Turbo) -- is not a K, but there is no price difference between "Standard CPU air cooling" and "Advanced CPU air cooling." Does it make sense to select "Advanced CPU air cooling," and is there any reason not to? Is one noisier? Again, this machine will be used for games, but not overclocked. 3. Bonus question for anyone who's still reading: what does the extra $100 for a K processor get you, and who should buy it?   Specs for the machine I have in my cart: Processor 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-12700 (25 MB cache, 12 cores, 20 threads, 2.10 GHz to 4.90 GHz Turbo) [338-CFOM] / G4PAMYH 1Operating System Windows 11 Home, English [619-APTK] / GBIUA48 1Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 Ti, 8 GB GDDR6, LHR [490-BGYV] / GMQWUT6 1Chassis Options 750W Night Sky Bezel Chassis including optical drive [321-BHGX] / GYD49MI 1Cooling Option Standard CPU air cooling [321-BHGL] / GOIFRV9 1Memoryi 16 GB, 2 x 8 GB, DDR5, 4400 MHz; up to 128 GB (add'l mem sold separately) [370-AGSZ] / G19HUOY 1Hard Drive 2 TB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SSD [400-BNCQ] / G9AYEVP 1Optical Drive Tray load DVD Drive (Reads and Writes to DVD/CD) [429-AAXX] / GYS072V 1Wirelessi Intel® Killer Wi-Fi 6E (6 where 6E unavailable) AX 1675, 2x2, 802.11ax, MU-MIMO, Bluetooth 5.2 [555-BGST] / GZ14O0I 1Keyboard Dell Multimedia Keyboard-KB216 Black (English) [580-AILI] / GGUBZ5O 1Mouse Wired Mouse, Black MS 116 [570-AATH] / G963OAD 1  
XPS 8950, please advise on specs, PSU, air cooling type