We’re just a few weeks away from the expected official reveal of the next generation of Intel CPUs, the Intel Arrow Lake series, and a new leak has apparently revealed a host of details about the upcoming Core Ultra 200 chips.
Intel’s Raptor Lake desktop CPUs, such as the Intel Core i9-14900K, are based on its older architecture and manufacturing processes, and the company’s most recent Meteor Lake designs are only available for use in mobile devices. As such, Arrow Lake is a big launch for Intel that could see its desktop chips reclaim many of the top spots on our best gaming CPU guide.
The Arrow Lake leak comes via a shipping manifesto visible on a customs tracking website and spotted by X/twitter leaker Harukaze5719. The leak doesn’t reveal full product names, but rather includes several code names and other details from which we can decipher some clues.
We can assume that the “FCLGA 185” refers to LGA 1851, which is the expected new socket for these upcoming chips. Meanwhile, the “1.5G36MB” style codes reveal the expected frequency – 1.5GHz – and L3 cache levels – 36MB – of the chip. Meanwhile, the FCBGA notation in some of the other listings points towards the BGA socket used for laptop configurations of these CPUs.
As a result, we can see that this leak suggests the range of CPUs will include models with base clock speeds varying from 1.5GHz up to 3.6GHz, with L3 cache varying from 18MB up to 36MB, for the desktop parts. Meanwhile, the laptop parts vary from 2.1GHz to 2.9GHz with L3 cache levels of up to 36MB.
Quite which chips will have these speeds and cache allocations isn’t revealed by this leak. However, previous Arrow Lake core specs leaks have suggested the initial lineup of desktop CPUs will be as below, and we’d expect the base clock speeds and cache levels to rise with the higher-end chips with more cores, which we’ve reflected in this list. These are speculated specs though, so take them with a pinch of salt.
P-Cores | E-Cores | Base power | Base clock | Boost clock | L3 cache | |
Core Ultra 9 285K | 8 | 16 | 125W | 3.6GHz | 5.5GHz | 36MB |
Core Ultra 9 275 | 8 | 16 | 65W | 2.4GHz | TBC | 36MB |
Core Ultra 7 265K | 8 | 12 | 125W | 2.8GHz | TBC | 24MB |
Core Ultra 7 255 | 8 | 12 | 65W | 2.4GHz | TBC | 24MB |
Core Ultra 5 245K | 6 | 8 | 125W | 2.8GHz | TBC | 18MB |
Core Ultra 5 240F | 6 | 4 | 65W | 2.4GHz | TBC | 18MB |
The new chips are expected to be manufactured on a much newer, smaller 4nm process called Intel 20A, as compared to the 14nm process used for its current desktop processors. This should result in far lower power consumption for the same performance compared to Intel’s current 14th gen desktop CPUs, but we can’t yet tell just how good those power savings will be, or whether these chips will reach the same levels of performance or higher than the current Raptor Lake chips.
What we do currently believe, though, based on other previous leaks is that the Intel Arrow Lake release date will be in the second half of 2024, with a reveal expected at Computex 2024 in a few weeks – a launch that’s expected to coincide with the reveal of AMD’s competing Zen 5 CPUs.
Arrow Lake chips are also expected to use a new LGA 1851 socket, meaning no existing motherboards will support the new chips, so buyers will need to invest in a new motherboard too. However, it’s also expected this socket will be used for future chips all the way into 2026. The new processors will also drop DDR4 support, switching to DDR5 only.
Are you gearing up for a switch to Intel’s new chips, or is AMD’s Zen 5 range of more interest? Whichever choice you make, be sure to find the best motherboard for your needs by checking out our guide.