Intel’s Entry-Level Core Ultra 5 225 & 225F CPUs Are Now Up To 17% Cheaper In The US, Up To 27% Cheaper In EU

Intel’s budget-tier Core Ultra 5 CPUs, mainly the Ultra 5 225 & Ultra 5 225F, are seeing price discounts across major US & EU retailers.

Intel Core Ultra 5 225F and Core Ultra 5 225 CPUs See Big Price Reductions, Pricing For 10-Core Arrow Lake Falls Below $200 US But Doesn’t Offers The Same Competitive Value As Last-Gen Chips

Earlier this year, at CES 2025, Intel launched its Arrow Lake-S “Core Ultra” Non-K Desktop CPUs. These included various new models aimed at budget-tier PCs such as the Core Ultra 5 225 and Core Ultra 5 235 series. The lineup still lacks a proper Core i3 replacement such as Core Ultra 3 and while there have been reports of a Core Ultra 3 205 variant, the SKU hasn’t launched yet (and that might be the case given the reception towards Arrow Lake CPUs).

Two of the models within the Non-K Arrow Lake CPU stack have now been discounted at major retailers across US and EU. These include the Core Ultra 5 225 and the Core Ultra 5 225F. These chips were listed at $246 and $231 US, respectively, at launch. Now, you can get them for way lower.

Starting with the Intel Core Ultra 5 225, the CPU is now available $211.24 US, a price reduction of 14.1%. The Intel Core Ultra 5 225F, which only comes with a disabled iGPU, is priced at $193.79, a price reduction of 16.1%. These are only in the US market.

In EU and Korea (as per Andreas Schilling and Harukaze5719), these chips are down even further. The Intel Core Ultra 5 225F is around 230K Korean Won (Around $170 US), and in EU, you can get the Core Ultra 5 225 for around 185 Euros while the “F” variant is currently retailing for 175 Euros.

These are definitely more attractive price points than what they were selling for initially. But even then, the recent Intel Core Ultra 5 CPUs haven’t been that good of a value. As pointed out by Harukaze, the previous-gen Ryzen 5 7500F and Core i5-14400F are much better value close to $110-$120 US. Plus, the older CPUs can be used on motherboards that are relatively chip or those that users are already running while Arrow Lake requires new motherboards. So yeah, while the price cuts are nice to see, Arrow Lake-S unfortunately doesn’t seem to cut it for most budget builders.