Intel Core Ultra 270K and 250K Plus review: Conditionally great CPUs

Key Points:

• Intel has launched refreshed Core Ultra 200S Plus CPUs—the $199 Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and $299 Core Ultra 7 270K Plus—with improved multi-threaded performance and power efficiency, offering good value compared to AMD’s similarly priced non-X3D processors.
• These new Arrow Lake chips feature increased E-core counts (four extra cores) and support faster DDR5-7200 memory, but the current high prices of DDR5 RAM and SSDs driven by AI data center demand make building or upgrading PCs costly overall.
• The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus generally outperforms Intel’s previous flagship 285K and competes well against higher-priced AMD Ryzen 7000 and 9000 series CPUs in multi-core workloads, though it still lags behind AMD’s X3D chips in gaming performance.
• Intel’s LGA 1851 socket used by these CPUs offers no future upgrade path, as upcoming Nova Lake processors will use the new LGA 1954 socket, limiting the appeal of upgrading existing systems based on this platform.
• While the refreshed CPUs represent solid midrange options if component prices normalize, the current inflated costs of DDR5 and SSDs significantly diminish the overall value proposition for new PC builds or upgrades.