Unannounced Intel Core Ultra 7 260K CPU surfaces in Newegg prebuilt gaming PCs

A new Intel Arrow Lake SKU is listed for sale in multiple prebuilt PCs on Newegg, despite no official acknowledgement of the model from Intel. The Core Ultra 7 260K is a downclocked version of the Core Ultra 7 265K from Intel's main Arrow Lake stack, not the Arrow Lake Refresh stack that's infiltrated our list of the best CPUs for gaming. Outside of a few prebuilt listings on Newegg's website, you'll find no mention of the CPU elsewhere online (including Intel's official Core Ultra Series 2 specs page).

Although retailer-exclusive and late-generation variants are common from AMD and Intel — we recently reviewed the Ryzen 5 5500F, for instance — they almost never fly completely under the radar, as is the case with the Core Ultra 7 260K. The chip itself is identical to the Core Ultra 7 265K based on the specs we know, fitted with 20 cores, eight of which are P-cores. The 260K tops out at 5.4 GHz, however, while the 265K reaches 5.5 GHz.

Otherwise, the specs are all the same. It comes with the same 125W TDP, same 30 MB of L3 cache, and same support for up to 256 GB of memory running at DDR5-6400. We only know of these specs from an image shown on the two ABS prebuilt listings available with the 260K. It's available in the ABS Kaze II paired with an RTX 5060, as well as the Flux II Aqua with an RTX 5070.

The image is below, captured hastily, as you can see, from a Microsoft Teams call. Again, we weren't able to find any information from Intel about the chip outside of this slide.

One critical detail this slide confirms is that the Core Ultra 7 260K belongs to the Arrow Lake family, not the range of Arrow Lake Refresh processors like the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus. It tops out at DDR5-6400, while Arrow Lake Refresh climbs up to DDR5-7200. That means the chip doesn't have access to the hardware-level enhancements available in Arrow Lake Refresh, nor the software-based Intel Binary Optimization Tool that boosts performance in select games.

Although that's enough to categorize the 260K, there are some details that are unclear. In the two PCs it's available in, the chip is referred to as the 260K across the full product page except in Newegg's option selector (pictured below), where it's referred to as the U7-260KF. Intel's KF models are unlocked for overclocking but lack integrated graphics.

Additionally, the slide from Intel referenced above shows the chip boosting up to 5.4 GHz, but the product page lists the chip at 5.2 GHz for maximum boost clock.

Newegg has told us that the chip is exclusive to the retailer and will only be sold through its in-house ABS prebuilts. ABS machines are normally sold with components Newegg already sells piecemeal, offering a convenient way to get a full rig with parts you can identify. The ABS Flux II Aqua, which is available with the chip, is on sale at Newegg now for $300 off.

We've reached out to Intel to get more details about the Core Ultra 7 260K, and we'll update this story when we hear back. Although the specs suggest the 260K should perform almost identically to the 265K, we haven't had a chance to test the CPU ourselves. And, as you can see from the rankings in our CPU benchmark hierarchy, we recommend most Intel shoppers move toward an Arrow Lake Refresh SKU.

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