When will Arrow Lake hit store shelves?
When we covered the models and specs of the Intel Core Ultra 200 (Arrow Lake) desktop CPUs leaked recently, we reported the processors will be released on October 10. However, we have to correct this a bit. While the information wasn’t entirely untrue, it was related to the official unveiling or announcement, not the actual sales start, it turns out. Actual store availability of Arrow lake will come slightly later.
Chinese or Taiwanese sources on the Board Channels forum, where leaks from motherboard and other hardware manufacturers often appears, have now provided more accurate information on when Arrow Lake processors will actually be available for purchase.
According to Board Channels, on October 10, Intel will hold an event where the Arrow Lake generation of processors will be officially announced and unveiled – or more specifically, the 125W enthusiast desktop line, the Core Ultra 200K, will be announced.
At this event, Intel will confirm the processor specifications, probably announce their prices and disclose information about various new features and architectural innovations they pack. At the same time, the LGA 1851 platform for these processors will be unveiled, but the selection will be limited only to the Z890 chipset and boards based on it for the moment. This is related to the fact that only 125W processors unlocked for overclocking enthusiasts will be released in this first phase. We have already published their specs, you can see them in this table:
| Model | Cores P+E/threads |
P-Core Base |
P-Core Boost |
E-Core Base |
E-Core Boost |
GPU shaders | GPU clock speed | TDP / PL1 | Node |
| Core Ultra 9 285K | 8+16/24 | 3,7 GHz | 5,7 GHz | 3,2 GHz | 4,6 GHz | 512 | 2,00 GHz | 125 W | TSMC 3nm |
| Core Ultra 7 265K | 8+12/20 | 3,9 GHz | 5,5 GHz | 3,3 GHz | 4,6 GHz | 512 | 2,00 GHz | 125 W | TSMC 3nm |
| Core Ultra 7 265KF | 8+12/20 | 3,9 GHz | 5,5 GHz | 3,3 GHz | 4,6 GHz | – | – | 125 W | TSMC 3nm |
| Core Ultra 5 245K | 6+8/14 | 3,6 GHz | 5,2 GHz | 4,2 GHz | 4,6 GHz | 512 | 1,90 GHz | 125 W | TSMC 3nm |
| Core Ultra 5 245KF | 6+8/14 | 3,6 GHz | 5,2 GHz | 4,2 GHz | 4,6 GHz | – | – | 125 W | TSMC 3nm |
Read more: Intel Arrow Lake CPUs launch date and specifications revealed
The big day will be on October 17
But the really important date when the processors will go on sale will be a week later. According to Board Channels, sales will begin on October 17, which will be Thursday. In our neck of the woods (the CET timezone), the sales kick-off should probably be at 15:00, although our etailers are not always ready to actually start taking and processing orders immediately. The processors and Z890 boards should start selling at the same time.
A broader lineup of processors with mainstream 65W and 35W processor models (but these numbers are pretty much just names, in reality the processor power consumption can easily be multiple times higher, up to 182W for the “65W” and up to 112W for the “35W”) will start selling in 2025. Their turn will probably come in January during CES 2025. The same goes for cheaper boards with the B860 and H810 chipsets.
What Board Channels hasn’t clarified yet is the review embargo lift date. The day reviews hit the internet could theoretically be anytime between that reveal on the tenth and the hard launch with physical availability on the seventeenth. Manufacturers sometimes leave a longer time between reviews and release, sometimes they set the NDA lift so that they come out right on the day and hour when sales start. These days, companies are sometimes more accommodating and allow reviews to come out 24 hours earlier, so that those who are thinking of buying have some time to study the reviews and don’t have to rush to order without sufficient time to inform themselves properly, fearing that the first units will run out right away and then the new CPUs won’t be available again for a long time (or that the the next batches will be priced much higher, as was often the case with graphics cards in the days of the crypto plagues). We have no idea yet which review publication scenario will Intel choose for the Arrow Lake release.
Sources: VideoCardz, Board Channels
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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