Computex 2025 came and went without any mention of an Arrow Lake Refresh from Intel. In spite of an official word from Team Blue, rumours surrounding the prospective processor launch continue to mount. Now, yet another leak indicates that “new” CPUs from the company are en route, perhaps even imminently.
X user momomo_us shared a block diagram of a Socket LGA1851 motherboard running the W880 chipset, sibling to Z890 and B860, which contains an explicit reference to ‘Arrow Lake S Refresh’. The leaker didn’t disclose the origin of the image, but it likely comes from an internal document from Intel itself or one of its board partners.
— 188号 (@momomo_us) May 30, 2025
If legitimate, this diagram further cements that Intel is designing more processors using its current architecture. Curiously, both Arrow Lake S and Arrow Lake S Refresh fall under the same Core Ultra ‘Series 2’ banner. This echoes prior leaks that the new chips won’t follow in the footsteps of prior refreshes, namely Raptor Lake Refresh (14th Gen Core), and fall under their own generation.
Given that previous reports suggest Arrow Lake Refresh will focus solely on AI improvements, slotting these new processors into the existing generation seems sensible. That’s not forgetting that there may not be enough CPU to form a new family anyway, as Intel apparently only aims to craft K and KF SKUs.
Of course, appearing on a W880 diagram rules any doubts of compatibility with existing LGA1851 motherboards. By the same token, though, there’ll be no 900 Series chipsets to bulk up the feature set of Arrow Lake Refresh however slightly.
It’s unclear how Team Blue plans to launch Arrow Lake Refresh. From the leaks and rumours we have to hand thus far, it’s shaping up to be an inarguably unexciting launch. I’ve little faith that these processors can turn the tide for Core Ultra 200S’ dire sales, even if Intel adjusts prices like it has with Core Ultra 7 265K.
For the foreseeable future, Core Ultra 9 285K will remain Intel’s champion. The company is currently working on Nova Lake S CPUs, but they won’t arrive until 2026 at the earliest. It’s unclear whether AMD will hit the market with a new architecture first via Zen 6, but Intel has a mountain to climb to plug the gap against current generation darlings such as Ryzen 7 9800X3D and prepare for future AM5 SKUs.
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