Rumor: Intel Arrow Lake Refresh will only include K and KF SKUs

Intel’s Arrow Lake Refresh has been in the news for quite some time now, and while it most likely exists, contrary to past leaks, it may not be what people hoped for. Dubbed Intel Core Ultra 300, the refreshed CPUs will not bring any significant performance improvements over the Core Ultra 200 SKUs, and now, a new leak suggests the lineup will only include K and KF variants. This means a slew of Core Ultra 9, Ultra 7, and Ultra 5 CPUs will not be refreshed for the 300 series. 

The Arrow Lake series, which is the Core Ultra 200 lineup, includes Core Ultra 9 285, Ultra 7 265, Ultra 7 265, Ultra 5 245, Ultra 5 235, Ultra 5 225, and Ultra 5 225F, along with the K and KF SKUs, Ultra 9 285K, Ultra7 265K, Ultra 7 265KF, Ultra 5 245K, and Ultra 5 245KF. According to a post on X by ‘Jaykihn’, only the K and KF SKUs will be refreshed for the Intel Core Ultra 300 Arrow Lake Refresh series. 

The refresh means these select SKUs will get some performance improvements compared to the current-gen counterparts. The K and KF (no iGPU) variants are the more performant 125W chips that are unlocked for overclocking, which could be why Intel has decided to focus on these exclusively. 

However, Intel seems to have different plans for the other SKUs, as the leaker also mentions there will be BIOS presets for performance profiles that users can choose to enable for some performance gains. This will not affect the warranty of these CPUs. These performance profiles are said to be similar to Intel Performance Optimization or IPO, which is meant for increasing clock speeds, memory overclocking, and power limits. 

There is no release date for the Arrow Lake Refresh or for what is supposed to be the true successor to Arrow Lake, the Nova Lake SKUs dubbed Intel Core Ultra 400.