Core Ultra 5 250KF Plus now available
Intel’s Arrow Lake Refresh lineup has finally reached the sub-$200 segment. The Core Ultra 5 250KF Plus is now listed for sale at $199.99, making it the first refreshed LGA1851 desktop CPU to hit that price point.
That is a more realistic entry point for Intel’s Plus series than the higher-end SKUs. The flagship Core Ultra 7 270K Plus was expected to launch at $300, but retail listings currently place it at around $350 to $357 instead. That makes the cheaper 18-core parts easier to justify for mainstream desktop builds.
The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and 250KF Plus both feature 18 cores in a 6P+12E configuration, with boost clocks of up to 5.3 GHz. The main difference is graphics support. The 250KF ships without integrated graphics, while the 250K keeps the iGPU and currently sells for $219.99, a $20 premium.
For gaming systems with a discrete graphics card, the Core Ultra 5 250KF Plus looks like the more practical option. Users who do not need display output from the processor can save some money without giving up the same core layout or peak clock speed.
At current pricing, the 250KF Plus looks like the most accessible Arrow Lake Refresh desktop chip so far. Intel’s updated LGA1851 series may still have pricing issues at the top end, and there’s a big question about the LGA-1851 future. On paper it looks like a dead platform, so perhaps don’t pair this CPU with the flagship board?
