The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K is a desktop processor with 24 cores, launched in October 2024, at an MSRP of $589. It is part of the Ultra 9 lineup, using the Arrow Lake architecture with Socket 1851. Core Ultra 9 285K has 36 MB of L3 cache and operates at 3.7 GHz by default, but can boost up to 5.7 GHz, depending on the workload. Intel is building the Core Ultra 9 285K on a 3 nm production process using 17,800 million transistors. The silicon die of the chip is not fabricated at Intel, but at the foundry of TSMC. You may freely adjust the unlocked multiplier on Core Ultra 9 285K, which simplifies overclocking greatly, as you can easily dial in any overclocking frequency.
With a TDP of 125 W, the Core Ultra 9 285K consumes a lot of power, so good cooling is definitely needed. Intel’s processor supports DDR5 memory with a dual-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 6400 MT/s, but with overclocking (and the right memory modules) you can go even higher. ECC memory is supported, too, which is an important capability for mission-critical systems, to avoid data corruption. For communication with other components in the machine, Core Ultra 9 285K uses a PCI-Express Gen 5 connection. This processor features the Arc Xe-2 Graphics 64EU integrated graphics solution.
Hardware virtualization is available on the Core Ultra 9 285K, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Additionally, IOMMU virtualization (PCI passthrough) is supported, so that guest virtual machines may directly use host hardware. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) will run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications. Besides AVX, Intel is including the newer AVX2 standard, too, but not AVX-512.