Intel cuts price of Core Ultra 9 285K for Black Friday by nearly a third – Arrow Lake flagship available at lowest-ever price of $429 on Amazon

Intel has reduced pricing for its current-generation flagship desktop processor under the Arrow Lake-S lineup ahead of Black Friday. The 24-core Core Ultra 9 285K is down to its lowest price ever of $429.99 on Amazon, down from its original launch price of $599, which essentially saves you around 28% on this monstrous CPU.

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The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K is built on TSMC's N3B (3nm) fabrication process with a hybrid core design featuring high-performance “Lion Cove” P-cores and efficient “Skymont” E-cores. It also supports DDR5-6400 CUDIMM memory and DDR5-5600 for standard UDIMMs and PCIe 5.0 connectivity.

With a total of 24 cores, 8 P-cores and 16 E-cores, the processor comes with 24 threads and 36 MB of L3 cache. The CPU offers a boost clock of 4.6 GHz on the E-cores and 5.7 GHz on P-cores. In terms of power consumption, the processor has a base TDP of 125 watts and a maximum turbo power rating of 250 watts, although there is also a PL2 “Extreme” power rating of 295 watts that can be accessed depending on the conditions.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

In our testing, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K managed to deliver reliable performance all across the board. It may not be the best CPU for gaming, but Intel still leads when it comes to productivity benchmarks. The 285K is also noticeably more efficient in low-power tasks like YouTube playback thanks to its hybrid design, which relies on its E-cores while idling.

Additionally, you get a more advanced, officially supported overclocking toolkit, giving experienced users more tuning flexibility when compared to AMD. Plus, it is important to note that the Core Ultra 9 285K is selling cheaper than, say, the 9950X or the 9800X3D, especially with the latest price drop 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, Best Wi-Fi Routers, or CPU Deals pages.