Intel's Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is down to its lowest price ever at $145

The Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is down to its lowest price ever, with Amazon slashing 34% off the list price to bring it down to $145. That's even cheaper than the lowest price we've seen on the Core Ultra 5 250KF. Despite being priced like an entry-level CPU, the 250K Plus ranks among our best CPUs for gaming.

• Check out this Core Ultra 5 250K Plus deal on Amazon

The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus originally launched for $200, but it didn't take long for its recommended price to climb to $220. That's likely because it punches far above what its price would suggest, even at full MSRP. It, along with the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, was framed as a last-ditch effort to bring Arrow Lake to the masses after the failed launch of the original range.

And the refresh has worked. The Ultra 5 250K Plus is an 18-core CPU with a split between six Lion Cove P-cores and 12 Skymont E-cores. As with all Arrow Lake CPUs, the 250K Plus doesn't have Hyper-Threading, but having 18C/18T isn't too shabby, with its AMD arch rival offering 6C/12T. The chip comes with a maximum boost clock of 5.3 GHz, and a PL1/PL2 power of 125W/250W. As it's an unlocked K-series processor, you can overclock the chip, though you'll need to pair it with a more pricey Z-series chipset.

Although we almost always recommend a Z-series chipset with a K-series SKU, there actually isn't a locked version of the 250K Plus. Further, many of the OC improvements are baked into the chip, including a 900 MHz bump in die-to-die frequency and a 400 MHz increase in memory fabric speed. Overclocking is a big upside, though it's not strictly required, especially when we're looking at a $145 CPU.

Although the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is priced like an entry-level CPU, it performs much better than its current sales price would suggest, particularly in productivity workloads. You can see the results for the 250K Plus from our CPU benchmark hierarchy in the gallery below.

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(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

The 18 cores and threads help Intel's mid-ranger punch up in multithreaded performance. The chip is 33% faster in our multithreaded productivity geomean compared to AMD's competing Ryzen 7 9700X, despite Team Red's chip costing twice as much right now. Compared to the Ryzen 5 9600X that's in the same price bracket, Intel is a massive 80% ahead. Check out our Intel Core Ultra 250K Plus vs AMD Ryzen 5 9600X faceoff feature for more about that particular battle.

Intel's multithreaded performance here isn't a result of simply throwing a ton of weak cores at the problem. As you can see from our single-threaded rankings, the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus came out ahead of every AMD offering we tested, including the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X. Last-gen's Core i9-14900K is slightly faster, though it also costs nearly three times as much.

Gaming is where Intel has started to take a backseat to AMD, and the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus slips some rankings. On average, the chip is about as fast as the Core i5-14600K. That's marginally faster than the Ryzen 5 9600X and about 3% behind the Ryzen 7 9700X. AMD's Ryzen 5 7600X3D is about 10% faster, though in this current Core Ultra 5 250K Plus sale, Intel's CPU is about $100 cheaper.

At under $150, just getting a competent CPU is tough — just see our list of the best budget CPUs — and the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is more than competent. Don't miss this deal on Amazon.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, gaming chair, or CPU Deals pages.