Intel’s Arrow Lake desktop processors go on sale later today, officially at any rate – but the CPUs are already available to buy, though we most certainly wouldn’t recommend doing so.
VideoCardz spotted that someone on eBay in the UK is selling the Core Ultra 7 265K (which is the Core i7 equivalent, for those still not used to Intel’s new naming scheme). It’s exorbitantly priced at £450, although the ability to make an offer is present – and given that the retail price in the UK for the 265K is £380, you’d be pretty daft to pay a £70 premium at this point.
In the US, the Core Ultra 7 265K is also up on eBay with a couple of listings, though unlike the UK, these chips are just supplied in a plastic clamshell (the UK listing is at least the full boxed product).
That said, one of the US listings is at $340, so it’s at least cheaper than the $410 we can see the Core Ultra 7 265K is priced at Newegg. Officially, it’s still on pre-order at US (and UK) retailers, but that will change later today Thursday October 24, when the ‘go’ button is hit to make sales live.
Whatever you do, don’t buy these chips (or any others listed prerelease in this manner) – even when one may appear to be a bit of a bargain.
Analysis: Steer well clear
As noted, these Core Ultra 7 265K processors are mostly at silly high prices anyway, although one might tempt you with that $340 asking price which is a fair bit less than you can get it at an official retailer. But note that the eBayer in question only has a couple of bits of feedback, and so you’re buying from a completely unknown source, as opposed to a proper retail channel where you’ll get full support and aftersales backup.
Even if the chip you buy on eBay does turn out to work, who knows whether it’s older sample silicon that might have been put through the mill in some way, and so could more likely manifest problems in the longer run. Issues you doubtless won’t be covered for in any way, shape or form.
And that’s not even considering that it isn’t, of course, even legal to be selling these chips in this way.
At this point, the temptation to get a next-gen chip early is pretty meaningless anyway – the full retail release is literally about to come about later on today. Just don’t let any low pricing fool you, either. And besides, you’ll need a compatible motherboard – Arrow Lake uses an entirely new CPU socket – and these listings are not offering that rather vital piece of hardware to go with the processor anyway.
In short, don’t waste your time – or money – in case you were in any doubt.
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