Friday, June 20th 2025
Intel's Core Ultra 7 265K and 265KF CPUs Dip Below $250
Intel's high-end "Arrow Lake" processors have just become significantly more affordable, with the Core Ultra 7 265K and 265KF now priced below $250 US at major American retailers. In recent weeks, Intel has officially reduced its suggested retail prices from $399 to $309 and from $384 to $294, and retailers have pushed the savings even further. Today, shoppers can pick up the unlocked Core Ultra 7 265K for $239.99 and the graphics-disabled 265KF for $229.99 at Micro Center, reflecting a roughly 40 percent discount off launch pricing. In addition to these cuts, Micro Center is bundling the 265K with an ASUS Z890 AYW Gaming Wi-Fi motherboard and a 32 GB G.Skill Ripjaws S5 DDR5-6000 memory kit for $499, saving buyers approximately $70 compared to purchasing the components separately. Newegg's deal includes a free 16 GB Patriot Viper Venom DDR5-6400 kit with the 265K, while Amazon's Spring Bundle features two full-price PC games, Dying Light: The Beast and Civilization VII, plus software licenses valued at $159.
Internationally, similar markdowns are appearing across Intel's Arrow Lake‑S lineup. In the UK, LambdaTek lists the Core Ultra 9 285 K at £481.18, the 265K at £234.04, and the 265KF at £230.97. The mid-range Core Ultra 5 245 K and 245KF both dip under £220. With their 20 cores and strong multithreaded performance, the Core Ultra 7 265K and 265KF now stand out in the sub‑$250 segment, especially when bundled with motherboards, memory, and games. Consumers should balance these productivity gains against expected Arrow Lake gaming results and keep an eye on AMD's upcoming 3D V‑Cache processors, which promise to intensify competition in the under‑$300 market later this year.
Source:
Wccftech
Internationally, similar markdowns are appearing across Intel's Arrow Lake‑S lineup. In the UK, LambdaTek lists the Core Ultra 9 285 K at £481.18, the 265K at £234.04, and the 265KF at £230.97. The mid-range Core Ultra 5 245 K and 245KF both dip under £220. With their 20 cores and strong multithreaded performance, the Core Ultra 7 265K and 265KF now stand out in the sub‑$250 segment, especially when bundled with motherboards, memory, and games. Consumers should balance these productivity gains against expected Arrow Lake gaming results and keep an eye on AMD's upcoming 3D V‑Cache processors, which promise to intensify competition in the under‑$300 market later this year.
288 Comments on Intel's Core Ultra 7 265K and 265KF CPUs Dip Below $250
At $239.99 these are absolute steals and nothing comes close, lets be real here, it's an 8P+12E current gen chip, where you can get a PCIE x16 GPU + x4 M.2 mobo for $150. CPU/MOBO/RAM for sub $500, which is around what you're paying for a current gen 8P X3D CPU alone. Sure the X3D is a bit faster in most games, but that assumes you a) have a 4080 or better, and b) aren't using 4K, but rather 1080p/1440p high refresh (and by high refresh I mean 240 Hz+, all of these current gen chips from either vendor can easily hold 120 FPS+).
Really struggling to see the argument for anything other than a 265K in the average 1-2k PC build at this point. Sure, a 9600X will be around the same price, but it's still just a 6 P core, with no E cores (meaning it's basically good for just games, for workstation stuff the 265K blows the 9600X out of the water) and I'm not sure the "future proof" AM5 platform argument is relevant when there's just one more gen around the corner with Zen 6, seems like ARL is getting a refresh too anyway.
It's also interesting to note that many new games are having eight core CPUs being in the minimum recommended specs, albeit typically using something like a 9700K or a 2700X, so a 9600X is still a better gaming CPU than either of those, but it's still a marked shift from the old "6 core i5" being the minimum.
Roughly 455 and 480 USD respectively. Even including VAT, it's not okay.
The old Intel would have recorrected by now but the current Intel just pours crap plus one model number higher into a box annually to win their dying corporate and government IT contracts business.
I'm struggling to understand why anyone would go for a 9700X instead at $305, current pricing. Perhaps 9600X at $180, but I mean, $60 for more than 3x the cores and cheaper mobos meaning it's more like $30 more for the ARL chip...
The "AMD is much better for gaming" is mostly from the X3Ds, which are almost twice the price, especially if you consider mobos. Against standard Zen 5? The 265K is faster than the 9900X in applications, and is essentially a 7700X in games, the 9700X is 5% faster with a 5090. That's with essentially the same efficiency, and with 200S (warranty) boost turned off, and ARL running slower RAM than it's rated for. Anyone able to argue for Zen 5 in this case? I find it a weak choice besides at the high end, with 9800X3D/9950X3D. Maybe 9600X3D at ~$250 changes things...
The advent of gaming performance charts/results generated with an RTX 5090 really throws off people's understanding of the actual relative performance with the GPUs they have I think. Besides the whole general ignoring of "application performance" charts.
Edit: looks like Geofrancis likes the platform longevity.
AFAIK Intel has excellent Linux support, so not sure about that point either. It performs better in Linux than in Windows, where benches are already very close and the 265K competition is essentially the 9900X in perf, and the 9700X in price, though obviously it's cheaper now.
• decide on the OS
• download it over my fairly slow connection (100 Mbps)
• find a USB stick in my 200 sqft mess of a room
• burn it with Rufus
• back up everything I care for
• install the OS
• fix all outta box bugs and install everything I need
• beat Max Payne 2 again
...all whilst being totally laxed and not rushing anything. Long-term effect of having a better system overall is absolutely worth it.
But I get your frustration. I have the same frustration with customers buying Nvidia over AMD. No accounting for taste I guess.
The thing that surprise me, is the amount of people on tech forums who seems to believe that it's that easy to make a strong µarch. It took 3 generation of Ryzen before the arch became a good allrounder. Yet people won't give intel new cpu design philosophy time to mature. Let them figure out how to improve the latency issue on their non monolitic design. Throwing money at the problem doesn't always work, sometimes the solution to a problem depends on the evolution of other technologies that might not be ready to market yet.
The first gen pentium 4 also had a negative IPC vs the pentium III. The difference with Arrow lake vs the pentium 4 is that Arrow lake is being compared to a makeshift architecture that ended up having many issues in order to reach a target performance. The pentium 4 was a regression from a very good µArch. So much so that the core µArch took principles from the P III and became a strong product.