Tom's Hardware Verdict The Core Ultra 5 225 is too expensive to justify, falling short on all counts against the Ryzen 5 9600X for the same price. With a slight cut, however, it becomes much more compelling, as recent budget CPUs below $150 have largely dried up. Pros + Highly efficient + Solid single-threaded performance + Easy to keep cool Cons - Slower than the last-gen Ryzen 5 7600X in games - Slower than the Ryzen 5 9600X in multithreaded applications - Too expensive for the performance Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test . It’s easy to write off Intel’s original Arrow Lake range, especially now that we’ve seen Arrow Lake Refresh chips in action, both of which have earned spots among the best CPUs for gaming .…