This Black Friday, $260 will bag you Intel's best Arrow Lake CPU, with an AIO liquid cooler and a free AAA game to boot

Save $50

Intel Core Ultra 7 265K: was $309.99 now $259.99 at Newegg

With eight P-cores and 12 E-cores, the 265K has plenty to throw around in games or content creation applications. It's definitely the best of the bunch when it comes to Intel's Arrow Lake chips. While we still prefer the latest Ryzen generation, you'd have to spend at least $300 to get the loosely equivalent Ryzen 7 9700X. Use promo code BFEFE38 for the full discount.

Key specs: 8 P-cores/12 E-cores | 20 threads | 5.5 GHz boost | 30 MB L3 | 125 W

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As I type away at my keyboard, writing out this deal post, the Core Ultra 7 265K nestled inside my main PC is quietly just doing its thing. And I literally mean quietly, because after years of rampant power consumption, Intel has finally got a handle on it all with Arrow Lake. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the 265K is Intel's best processor for a long time.

I certainly wasn't saying this last October, when I reviewed the Core Ultra 9 285K and Ultra 5 245K at Arrow Lake's launch. They were pretty underwhelming, especially in gaming, and the 285K was—and still is—wildly over-priced for what you were getting.

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However, since those dark days, Intel has done a lot to improve matters, with various BIOS, CPU microcode, and Windows updates. AMD's Ryzen 9000-series processors are still better in games, especially the X3D models, but compared to the Core Ultra 7 265K, they're quite a bit more expensive. For example, the Ryzen 7 9700X is currently $309 at Newegg, and $50 is nothing to be sniffed at.

For some folks, though, that extra money won't matter because the Intel LGA1851 motherboard that you'll have to buy to go with the Core Ultra 7 265K is only going to support one more generation of CPUs, the Arrow Lake refresh models.

With AMD's chips, you can pick up a last-gen AM5 board and fit any desktop 7000, 8000, and 9000-series processor, and at least another round of Ryzens. Personally, I prefer to keep to the same CPU and motherboard for three to five years, and then upgrade the whole lot in one go, rather than drip-feeding a new chip into the system every so often.

If that's the same for you, then I heartily recommend the 265K, as it's a very capable chip. Decent at gaming, brilliant at multi-threaded workloads. And to sweeten the deal even further, Newegg is throwing in a free MSI MAG Coreliquid A15 240 liquid cooler, plus Intel has an offer running that lets you pick up a free copy of Battlefield 6, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Dying Light: The Beast, or Civilization 7.

Of course, if you're upgrading from a gaming PC that uses DDR4 RAM, then you'll probably know that memory prices right now are truly horrific. There's nothing we can do about this, other than not upgrade at all, but since both AMD and Intel now use DDR5, you're cornered either way.

At least with this Core Ultra 7 265K deal, you're saving money on the chip itself and spending nothing on the cooler, which will help take some of the sting out of the necessary RAM purchase.

👉Check out all of Newegg's Black Friday CPU deals👈

Best CPU for gaming 2025

1. Best overall:
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

2. Best budget:
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X

3. Best mid-range:
AMD Ryzen 7 9700X

4. Best high-end:
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

5. Best AM4 upgrade:
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D

6. Best CPU graphics:
AMD Ryzen 7 8700G

👉Check out our full CPU guide👈