Intel Core Ultra 7 265K: What Real Users Actually Think

great deal

At 4k the 265k and 9800x3d might be comparable due to gpu bottlenecks but the 9800x3d is still the better cpu. Yes the 265k is significantly better for productivity workloads so if that is your main priority then you can't beat the Intel ultra chips.

This is a great deal if gaming isn't your primary use case. 265k is a good all-round processor — it just should've been $299 on release. It runs cool and efficiently — it's not fussy about what type of cooling you have, it can game (though not competitively against Ryzen), it's good (sometimes great) on productivity. IMO the product itself has been over-hated. The product is fine, the initial price was not.

I own a core ultra 7 265kf with an Rtx5070 ventus 3x. I'm pretty happy with them, 1440p gaming running smooth and cool, also is a powerful cpu, so I don't have to worry about it being weak in the near future.

Don't listen to redditors everyone here is on intel hate bandwagon to be cool.

My well tuned 265K runs like a beast. 5.5 Pcores, 5.0 Ecores, 4.1 Ring, 8600Mhz CL38. Beats any 9800X3D. You don't need a golden chip. You don't need an expensive mobo. You don't need CUDIMMs. You just need a midrange mobo that can run at 8800Mhz stable.

I bought the 265k for $229 (Micro Center deal when purchased with MB). Arrow Lake might not be the best, but that's a really good price. I'm not sad about it.

The CPU picks the frequency and then the resulting voltage, not the other way around. Undervolting will purely reduce power draw and temperatures.

If you do video editing and other productivity work, you can't beat the value of the 265k. If you're gaming at higher resolutions where the GPU will bottleneck before the CPU, then you barely have to worry about the slower gaming performance of the 265k. Its still a good gaming chip despite what reviews say, it just gets outclassed in that regard at the price point.

For the price it's hard to beat for a general purpose system. Better than the 14th Gen since there's still people having those fail.

265K benefits a lot from overclocking. 200S boost is an overclocking profile for 200 series CPUs that's covered under warranty, you just turn it on in the BIOS.

I remember getting this for $230 a while back in micro center.

Cinebench R23: 265k = 36k, 9700x = 21k. In my area both costs almost the same. What will you choose for 1440p/4k gaming and productivity?

All the price cuts, free goodies, and game bundles really pushed me over the edge to skip AM5. The 265KF went as low as $209. It's like they're practically giving them away. That's amazing for a gaming and productivity machine.

For your information, all of the issues have been fixed and its current price drop makes it an amazing value.

Current intel gen is a flop... Sometimes even worse than 12th gen for gaming... Insta-skip for me. More cores is kinda useless if they accompanied by scheduling issues and much worse latency. That socket also won't get any new gen intel cpus so kinda dead longevity-wise.

I have this CPU with an air cooler, the AK620, and it never exceeds 62 degrees Celsius.

Silly Intel, you added an extra $100.

Release price of 265k was $399 and cheapest board was $199. Nowadays CPU is $270 and you can find an alright board for significantly less. It also got some BIOS updates + Windows fixes. So you can get scores around 5-7% higher than at launch.

So I got a free game Battlefield 6 with a 265k and the mobo, ddr5 ram, nvme1tb, case and cpu aio 3 fan for 750$. Intel is the mid tier and lower tier king atm. Amd may have more legs but I'm keeping this setup over 5 years with no plan to upgrade the CPU.

I purchased the 265k a couple of days ago and I'm really surprised. It runs really well and cool. I'm using a Deepcool AK500 air cooler and up to 210w pl2 never got more than 80c. At 125w (default pl1) it runs around 55c. In terms of productivity is quite fast. It's an amazing deal for 300usd.

I got a 265kf for $209 on Amazon not that long ago. It's paired with a 5080 and 8000mhz DDR5. I have no issues with gaming performance at 1440p or 4k. Everything has been smooth and trouble free for me.

After all the updates, with OC of ring bus, memory controller and everything and with expensive CUDIMM ram, the 265K can get close to 9800X3D. The beauty of 9800X3D is it will be blazing fast without any OC and with very basic RAM. Unless you are highly skilled in art of overclocking I would not recommend the new Arrow Lake chips, they are brutally underclocked from factory.

Best value cpu under 300 for sure got excellent productivity performance, decent gaming performance for casual gamers (yeah we all know for strictly gaming amd is king).

I have had the 9700x, 7950x3d, 9800x3d, 14900k, 7800x3d. One thing that sucks is 8 cores if you plan on doing multitasking. Most people talk but don't have real experience with the hardware, when I game and use x264 as encoder for stream, my games stutter hard on 8 cores. I'm going to micro center for the deal.

I use the I7 265k daily for Lightroom, Photoshop and Premiere Pro, absolutely love it, it's a beast, together with an RTX 4070S. I have an ultrawide 5120 x 1440p monitor so needed some extra power.

Interesting for ITX where you can't just get a bigger cooler.

Great CPU! Paired with fast ddr5 and latest bios update with Auto OC make this cpu the best option for professional and gaming scenarios.

The 265k ironically performs worse in photoshop than the rest. It's under the 12600k. So it's slower than everything around its pricepoint. All amd cpus are above it too. In premiere, it's around the 9900x and 13700k. In gaming, it's below the 7600x.

I got a 265kf with 5070ti, this really is a beast at gaming. I have been running Doom Dark Ages at 4k with frame generations ultra Nightmare settings and it runs smooth. I am not sure how much more the 9800X3D can do for me than the 265kf has done.

265K is insane value as an allrounder right now. The platform is killer, even if the tuning ceiling is higher for gaming.

I have a Fractal Terra with a 265K and a Noctua 'Ghost' CPU cooler. I have already disabled the 'Turbo' on the 265K. So my CPU runs at 3.9GHz and not boosting to 5.5GHz. This keeps my temps at 46C while idle and 70C to 75C while gaming.

At a discount price the CPU is a beast, idles and runs extremely cool. I was on AMD before, the idle temps on a Ryzen 9 7900x are the same as 265k when gaming. The hate for this CPU is one sided. For ITX size systems how cool it stays is a major plus. People are sleeping on these chips.

I just picked up this deal too. Coming from the first gen ryzen 5 1600, this is a huge upgrade for me. I produce music and do some light gaming. The productivity performance is almost on par with ryzen 9 9900x, which if you exclude the memory cost, is $170 more. I don't plan on upgrading this cpu for another 5-8 years.

A tuned 265k is very competitive in the market. You won't break records but they are stable with excellent MT. If you utilize the iGPU for video editing, there's nothing better.

Good price, but given the chances of it being good for one generation before sockets change, they should skip the RAM and games and do a motherboard offering with it.

It's only 'on par' in certain titles, and loses by a lot in others. But at 40% cheaper I think you're making a good call. Most games are not cpu limited but are gpu limited. You'll be saving money and have a better cpu for non-gaming tasks.

Just upgraded my system to a 265k (from a 11600k) as Amazon have them down to £265 now. Performance in gaming is super smooth high FPS at ultra settings (4070 Super @ 2k ultra wide). Easy to keep cool too - gaming in the 40-60 range with a (noisy but cheap) air cooler.

I bought an i7 265k so far I love it. I updated from am4. I feel like the Intel platform has less quirks. If you wanna count frames and say I get 10 extra frames here or 2% more performance there, that's a never ending debate. It should come down to the pc doing what you need it to do.

Hardware unboxed did an updated review and still doesn't really recommend them — the issue is it's a dead platform so you're buying an expensive mobo and ram for a somewhat cheap CPU that gets mogged by a Ryzen 9700X.

I've got a dell act 1250 ultra 7 265kf 5080 1000w PSU. It's been nothing but amazing. You have to tune the settings a bit to get the most out of the CPU, but overall it's half the price of the AMD CPU lineup now.

I got it and a board and RAM for $500 plus 3 free games. I couldn't get anything like that for x3d and I work more than I game. It's quite a good purchase for me.

I got the core ultra 7 for about £260, and its been great. £140 cheaper than 9800x3d, 2.5x more cores, higher clock, and a decent 68mb cache. I mostly use my pc for editing, so of course I went with the ultra 7 over the 9800x3d, but its brilliant for gaming also. It's only 11 percent worse than the 285k which is almost double the price. Best price to performance of any CPU.