Avid fans of the brand Intel are both excited and confused with the Alder Lake packaging leak.

So, what exactly happened?

The packaging for the majority of Intel's Alder Lake CPUs has now been revealed, and the Core i9-12900package K's looks particularly fascinating. The majority of Intel's 12th-gen processor packaging, as seen in photos provided by Videocardz, is comparable to that seen in previous generations.

But, what's more confusing is someone has apparently bought the 12th-gen chips from Team Blue.

Intel Alder Lake Leaks

Intel's 12th-gen chips processors are expected to hit the market later this year. However, according to Gizmodo, Alder Lake packaging leaks surfaced all around the Internet.

One very lucky client reportedly acquired two of Intel's new desktop CPUs just this week, way before they were officially released.

User Seby9123 from Reddit provided a few photographs of the new chips in a Reddit thread, and they appear to come in a pretty wafer-shaped package.

The chips are Intel Core i9-12900K processors, which are projected to be among Intel's most powerful in the new 12th-gen family, and which Seby9123 claims they bought for $610 each, despite the chips' MSRP of $699.

Unfortunately, Seby9123 did not specify which shop was responsible for sending out Intel's new chips so early, so if you're interested in getting your hands on Intel's Alder Lake chips before they're released, you'll have to do some searching.

However, while the chip's model number can be seen in the images, Intel's packaging doesn't provide much in the way of other information, such as the chip's clock speed, or even the number of cores.

Nonetheless, the boxes in Seby9123's images appear to match leaked packaging from late September, indicating that these new chips might actually be genuine.

Release Date

According to Techspot, Intel has yet to formally reveal its flagship processor, as well as the motherboards that will support it.

Later this month, Intel is expected to release its Alder Lake desktop CPUs, including the flagship Core i9-12900K.

Intel's latest hybrid architecture, Alder Lake, will include a combination of performance and efficiency x86 cores. DDR5, PCIe Gen 5, Thunderbolt 4, and Wi-Fi 6E will all be supported by Alder Lake.

On October 28, Intel will make the Alder Lake CPUs official at its Innovation event.

Pre-orders will be accepted immediately following the announcement, with shipping scheduled for November 4.

Future12th Gen-Chips

This 2021, Intel spent a large portion of its resources in outlining its future ambitions, including a new IDM 2.0 approach, new process node naming methods, and new desktop GPUs.

As reported by The Verge, the public now got a glimpse of how some of those improvements are coming together in new processors at Intel's Architecture Day 2021, starting with the impending Alder Lake portfolio later this year.

Intel Alder Lake will feature Intel's latest hybrid architecture, as the company has teased since last year's Architecture Day. Rather than just offering the next generation of powerful Intel CPU cores, it will include a mix of both performance and efficiency x86 cores, both of which Intel previewed as part of its announcements.