Intel announces Arrow Lake 'Plus' desktop chips with more cores and clocks for less cash—and IPC-boosting 'BOT' tool

Intel announces Arrow Lake ‘Plus’ desktop chips with more cores and clocks for less cash—and IPC-boosting ‘BOT’ tool | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these Processors Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 Arm CPU pops up in Geekbench and wallops the x86 laptop competition by over 30% in single-core performance Processors Best CPU for gaming in 2026: These are the chips I recommend for gaming, productivity, and peace of mind Motherboards Best gaming motherboards in 2026: these are the AMD and Intel mobos I’d build a system around today Processors AMD’s CPU division is booming as CEO Dr. Lisa Su says sales ‘far exceeded my expectations’ Processors The cores in Nvidia’s upcoming PC processor achieve ‘performance parity’ with Intel and AMD’s latest chips, but will it actually be any good for games? 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From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we’ve got you covered. Signup + Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Signup + An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter Much rumoured, perhaps not necessarily all that anticipated, Intel’s refreshed Arrow Lake CPUs have finally arrived. We give you the new Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 520K Plus. And you know what, they’re not half bad, even if that’s more than 50% down to attractive pricing. They also come with an intriguing new software optimisation tool that promises to further boost performance over existing Arrow Lake chips.That’s right, the refresh amounts to just two new “Plus” SKUs. But, actually, that’s fine and the two models pretty much hit the main enthusiast sweet spots. Well, as far as any CPU based on Intel’s Arrow Lake Architecture can.The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus gets the full eight Performance and 16 Efficient compliment of cores, despite the “Ultra 7” rather than “Ultra 9” segmenting. Indeed, by the specs, it loses out remarkably little to the existing top dog Arrow Lake model, the Core Ultra 9 285K.Article continues below You may like It’s 2026, CES is over, and there’s still no sign of Intel’s Arrow Lake refresh, but one hardware channel is adamant it’ll be here in the spring Intel’s ‘Serpent Lake’ rumoured to be its first chip developed in collaboration with Nvidia Intel’s new top-end Core Ultra Series 3 mobile chips promise up to 77% faster iGPU gaming performance than Lunar Lake, and come with a whole host of friends That chip has the same core counts but only marginally higher clock speeds. The new 270K Plus and existing 285K share the same base clocks, while the 270K Plus maxes out at 5.5 GHz on its Performance cores to the 285K’s 5.7 GHz. But here’s the thing. The 270K Plus comes in at just $299, miles below the $550-ish the 285K currently goes for. In short, the 285K now looks fairly pointless.As for the Core Ultra 5 520K Plus, we’re talking six Performance and 12 Efficient c