Intel has increased the prices of Alder Lake processors in the Ark online product database. Through said database, which users can easily and openly consult, an increase of 10% is shown, which, depending on the case, can translate into an increase of up to about sixty dollars.

With the increase in price of Alder Lake processors (12th generation Intel Core), we find that these products are now more expensive than Raptor Lake (13th generation), according to data provided by Intel and at least for the United States. However, the “joy” could be short-lived because Everything indicates that the chip giant intends to increase the price of Raptor Lake as well to restore the normal scenario, this means that the latest generation processors are worth more than the previous ones.

New prices of selected Intel Alder Lake processors.

This move is a bit odd considering there are already several studies that suggest a sharp decline in hardware sales, both for CPUs and dedicated graphics.

Forecasts suggest that, barring a miracle, 2023 could be the worst year ever for first-hand hardware sales, and that means the still high prices that exist (especially graphics card prices), along with the context of many crises in which we live in has meant that many haven’t refreshed their hardware in recent years. The situation is that graphics most used by Steam users with GTX 1650 recently taking the top spot and GTX 1060which was number one for many years, so it’s safe to assume that the supposed prevalence of things like 4K and ray tracing is more hype than reality among “real world” gamers.

Second, Intel may be trying to improve its margins in the context of Raptor Lake doing much better than Ryzen 7000 from a business perspectiveand the point is that AMD’s latest generation of CPUs collapsed due to the motherboard refresh requirement, the cost of the motherboards themselves, and the requirement to use DDR5, while Alder Lake and Raptor Lake retained compatibility with motherboards and DDR4.

We’ll see how this price increase affects Europe, if it ends up being implemented in these parts. We remember that the rise of Alder Lake is confirmed, but seeing that the models of the mentioned generation are now more expensive than Raptor Lake, Intel will surely raise the prices of the latter not long after.