Intel's 14th-Gen Raptor Lake Refresh processors are on sale during Prime Big Deals Day, with several popular chips reaching their lowest prices ever. The discounts arrive as DDR5 prices continue to push up the cost of building a PC, a situation that has kept the Raptor Lake platform relevant. The chips support both DDR4 and DDR5, provided the motherboard is compatible, which makes them an easier upgrade path for users who have not yet moved to DDR5 memory. Tom's Hardware notes that sticking with DDR4 costs about 13% of gaming performance.
Intel's Robert Hallock previously told Tom's Hardware Premium that Raptor Lake is a core part of Intel's strategy for years to come, which signaled stabilizing prices and inventory. The current discounts may be evidence of that stabilization. Raptor Lake Refresh chips remain Intel's fastest gaming processors, with the Core i9-14900K outperforming the newer Core Ultra 7 270K Plus in Tom's Hardware's CPU benchmark hierarchy. Newer Arrow Lake CPUs are faster in applications, but Raptor Lake Refresh still holds some of the best gaming performance for Intel.
The Core i9-14900KF, an unlocked 24-core processor with eight performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, is down to $369.99, its lowest price ever and below last year's low of around $391. The Core i9-14900K is also on sale for $400. The only difference between the two is the integrated graphics. Tom's Hardware calls the Core i9-14900KF Intel's fastest gaming CPU in its test suite, with single-core boosts up to 6 GHz, and a strong productivity chip as well. Buyers of the 14900K or any chip in the lineup should use the latest BIOS for their motherboard to apply Intel's Raptor Lake degradation mitigations.
The Core i7-14700KF, the same as the 14700K without integrated graphics, is at an all-time low of $279.99 and carries an $80 discount using code FTTF7678 at checkout. The Core i7-14700K is on sale for $299.99. Tom's Hardware describes this tier as the sweet spot of the Raptor Lake Refresh range for gaming, offering 97% of the gaming performance of the Core i9-14900K for around $80 less. The 14700K has 20 total cores but the same eight performance cores as the Core i9, plus 12 efficiency cores for heavily-threaded workloads.
The Core i5-14600KF is not on sale, though its $239.99 price is better than recent months. The Core i5-14400F is discounted, a chip that rarely sees discounts. It is a 10-core processor with six performance cores and four efficiency cores, clocks up to 4.7 GHz, and fits LGA 1700 motherboards with DDR4 or DDR6 support. It has dropped as low as $130 before, and after last year's holiday rush it hovered around $200 for most of 2026. Tom's Hardware calls it a good alternative to the 14600K for gaming, since it shares the same six performance cores but halves the efficiency cores to four, limiting multi-threaded performance.
Whether these price drops reflect stabilizing Raptor Lake Refresh inventory or a clearance sale remains to be seen. For now, Tom's Hardware says these are some of the best prices seen on Raptor Lake Refresh chips.
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