Intel's Plus CPUs Make Budget Gaming Builds Make Sense Again

Level1Techs' Wendell just built two Intel systems—one with the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus at $200, one with the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus with two extra performance cores—and ran them through identical gaming benchmarks. The performance difference? Margin of error.

This is the story Intel should have led with when Arrow Lake launched. Instead, we got expensive chips that couldn't justify their price against AMD's offerings. The Plus series feels like a correction—not just in performance, but in what Intel thinks budget gaming should cost.

The Gaming Performance Nobody Expected

Wendell paired both CPUs with AMD's RX 9070 XT and tested them across Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail. At 4K, the results were essentially identical. At 1440p, maybe the Core Ultra 7 pulled slightly ahead in newer titles—but we're talking run-to-run variance, not meaningful differences.

"This is going to be a theme throughout this," Wendell notes while reviewing the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmarks. "Our 1% lows were slightly worse, but this is just margin of error."

The Core Ultra 5 hit 246 fps in Final Fantasy Dawntrail at 1080p max settings. The Core Ultra 7? 246 fps. At 1440p: 180 fps versus 183 fps. This isn't "close enough"—this isstatistically indistinguishable for anyone actually playing games.

The only scenario where the extra cores matter: if you're running background tasks while gaming, or doing productivity work. For pure gaming? The $200 chip delivers the same experience as its more expensive sibling.

Motherboard Politics: B860 vs Z890

The motherboard choice reveals something interesting about how Intel has structured this platform. Wendell tested the Core Ultra 5 with ASRock's B860 Challenger—a budget board with a 10+1+1 power phase design. The Core Ultra 7 got the Z890 Phantom Gaming Nova with more phases, more features, 5 gigabit LAN.

Both boards handled their respective CPUs without breaking a sweat. The B860 can even run the Core Ultra 7 if you want to spend an extra $100 on CPU but save money on the motherboard. "You can use the Core Ultra 7 on this motherboard, no problem at all," Wendell confirms.

But here's where it gets weird: these CPUs have a 125W TDP that hasn't changed from the non-Plus versions. Yet they can actually consume 250W under sustained load. Some motherboards can only deliver 125-150W, while others handle the full 250W.

"If you use higher-end cooling, you will get a better result from sustained benchmarks," Wendell explains. "It doesn't make a huge difference typically in gaming workloads because the gaming workload is kind of bursty."

This matters for rendering or other continuous workloads. For gaming? The burstiness means even budget cooling keeps up. Wendell's Core Ultra 5 build with a 360mm AIO stayed under 70°C while using only 150W peak. "That is a fantastic result," he notes—and suggests a tower cooler would work fine too, saving even more money.

The Real Differentiator: PCB Quality and Memory Support

Something unexpected emerged during testing: the ASRock B860 Challenger, a budget board with a six-layer PCB, handled DDR5-7600 memory flawlessly. "Why is that such a challenge on other platforms?" Wendell asks. "That doesn't make sense."

It's a valid question. Memory stability at higher speeds typically requires expensive board designs. Yet here's a budget Intel board making it look easy while other platforms struggle.

Four-DIMM support is more challenging—the B860 doesn't handle it as well as the Z890 boards. But you can run 128GB with two DIMMs, and 96GB is straightforward. In what Wendell calls "the winter of our discontent" for RAM prices, nobody's buying that much memory anyway.

Corporate Sponsorship, But Make It Useful

Wendell discloses that ASRock sponsored the video, then immediately follows with: "but this was my idea because the Intel CPUs are actually really good this time around." It's the kind of transparency that matters in hardware coverage—yes, there's a sponsor, but the creator chose this project because the hardware is worth building around.

The ASRock boards do offer some clever features. The Z890 Phantom Gaming Nova includes a breakout board that adds four M.2 slots using just one PCIe lane. It's not a performance play—bandwidth bottleneck means you're not getting full M.2 speeds—but it's perfect for recycling old 256GB or 512GB drives for bulk storage. Still faster than mechanical drives, basically free storage capacity.

What Nobody Tells You About New Platform Builds

Wendell includes a critical troubleshooting note: if your new build gives you a black screen on first boot, you probably don't have a hardware problem—you need a BIOS update. The boards have flashback buttons that let you update from USB even when the system won't POST.

"The way that Intel has engineered the plus CPUs, that probably won't even happen with these CPUs," he adds. "Like even on an older BIOS, it should at least post." But if it doesn't, there's a fix, and it doesn't mean you got bad hardware.

This is the kind of practical knowledge that separates builders who've actually assembled dozens of systems from those who've read spec sheets.

The Labor Economics of Value Gaming

The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus at $200 represents something increasingly rare: a genuinely good deal in PC hardware. Pair it with the B860 Challenger motherboard, adequate cooling (not expensive overkill), and you have a foundation for a gaming system that performs identically to builds costing significantly more.

The question isn't whether Intel's Plus chips are competitive—they clearly are. The question is whether this pricing represents Intel actually trying to win back market share, or whether component prices everywhere else are just so inflated that $200 looks like a bargain.

Wendell's builds demonstrate that you can still put together a quiet, capable gaming system without spending absurd money on the CPU. The RX 9070 XT at 95 fps in Final Fantasy Dawntrail at 4K, the whisper-quiet operation, the solid thermals—it all works.

Whether Intel keeps this pricing when supply constraints ease and RAM prices normalize will tell us if this is strategy or opportunism.

—Dev Kapoor