A previous leak predicted that Intel’s Arrow Lake desktop chips would arrive by the end of September alongside the new Z890 motherboards. Among other things, they’ll bring a new LGA1851 socket and a slew of new features. A leaked document spotted by a Chiphell user (via HXL on X) highlights some of these and confirms the end of DDR4 memory support. Raptor Lake’s official DDR5 speed was 5,600 MT/s, and it’ll be interesting to see how far Arrow Lake can push the envelope.
The new Arrow Lake motherboards with the 800-series chipset (Z890, B860, H870, depending on the SKU) integrate a Thunderbolt controller into the processor, paving the way for high-end motherboards with a fully functional Thunderbolt 4.0 port. This will allow users to power up to four displays. Interestingly, Thunderbolt 5.0 is nowhere to be seen, despite having been leaked earlier.
Additionally, Intel’s 800 series chipset has a total of 20 PCIe Gen 5 lanes. 16 of these are for the GPU, leaving four for an NVMe SSD. A second PCIe Gen 4 lane is directly connected to the CPU. Other specs include support for 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3 ports up to 20 Gbps, Wi-Fi 7 (via a PCie adapter), and SATA 6 Gbps ports. Finally, the iGPU now supports DP2.1 and HDMI 2.1.
