No Intel Core Ultra 300 gaming CPU lineup coming for desktop PCs, says leak

The Intel Nova Lake rumors are stacking up quickly now, and the latest leak appears to reveal that Intel will be skipping the Core Ultra 300 naming convention entirely on the desktop, and instead jump straight to Intel Core Ultra 400 branding for its next-gen Nova Lake gaming CPU range. This would also mean that rumored Intel Arrow Lake Refresh CPUs will be sticking to the existing Core Ultra 200 naming scheme used by Intel’s current chips.

This wouldn’t be the first time Intel has skipped a whole numbering system on the desktop. The whole Core Ultra 100 series, based on the Meteor Lake architecture, also skipped the desktop and only appeared in mobile CPUs. Intel’s existing Core Ultra 200 CPUs, as we found in our Core Ultra 7 265K review, struggle to compete with AMD in our guide to buying the best gaming CPU, and Intel may want to use its branding to represent a clean break between its new CPUs and its existing chips.