The Intel Core Ultra 7 Processor 270K Plus is Intel’s mid-to-high-tier desktop CPU in the current Core Ultra 200S Plus series, the Arrow Lake Refresh generation that replaces the original Core Ultra 200S chips Intel launched the year before. The 270K Plus packs 24 cores split between 8 performance cores and 16 efficient cores, runs at up to 5.5 GHz on its highest-clocked P-cores, and ships with 36 MB of L3 cache and 40 MB of L2 cache to handle large working sets in memory. The chip drops into LGA 1851 motherboards with Intel 800 series chipsets and supports DDR5 RAM and PCIe 5.0 storage and graphics cards.
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The 270K Plus’s performance is achieved through a hybrid design that uses powerful P-cores for single-threaded applications like games, while also providing small E-cores for background activity, multi-threaded workloads, and the usual batch of open browser tabs. Overall, this results in a chip capable of producing nearly equivalent gaming frame-rate performance to Intel’s high-end Core i9 285K processor at a fraction of its price.
The 8 P-cores boost to 5.5 GHz on Intel’s highest-frequency core through Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0. The 16 E-cores can independently boost to 4.7 GHz. For creative workloads like video editing in DaVinci Resolve, 3D rendering in Blender, and code compilation in Visual Studio, the total core count and threading let the 270K Plus chew through projects faster than the previous-generation Core Ultra 7 265K, which had 4 fewer E-cores.
You also get Intel Arc graphics built directly into the processor with 4 Xe cores and 64 execution units. That’s not enough for serious gaming on its own, but it’s plenty for productivity work, video playback, and as a backup if a discrete GPU fails in a system. Native Thunderbolt 5 and Wi-Fi 7 are both built into the platform when paired with an 800-series motherboard.
Power draw runs at 125W base TDP, with a maximum turbo power of 250W under heavy all-core load. The 3nm manufacturing process the 270K Plus uses delivers measurably better energy efficiency than the previous-generation 14th-gen Intel Core lineup, with similar performance at lower wattages on equivalent workloads.
The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is currently $265 on Amazon, $92 off the $357 price. The savings put a 24-core current-generation Intel desktop chip below the typical price barrier for high-end processors. Worth noting that the 270K Plus requires an LGA 1851 motherboard with an 800-series chipset and DDR5 RAM, neither of which carries over from older Intel builds.