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The Intel Nova Lake series of processors will be introduced later this year, and with it, Intel's desktop series of processors will be manufactured using their 18A process, similar to what was done for the Intel Core Ultra 300 "Panther Lake" laptop series of processors.
Recently, information regarding the chipset of the processor, which is the component that powers the motherboard of a processor, has been leaked, with a large number of details about it revealed.
In terms of upcoming motherboard models, five models will be shown, including the Intel B960, Z970, Z990, Q970 and W980. Some changes have been revealed, where Intel will no longer use the H-series chipset for entry-level motherboards.
That position is taken over by the B960 series, and will move to the Z970 and Z990. The Z970 was previously seen as the most premium consumer motherboard class with built-in overclocking capabilities and the largest number of I/O. That position is now held by the Z990 motherboard, where the most noticeable difference that can be seen between the two chipset series is the number of PCIe lanes (34 vs 48) and the number of I/O ports such as USB and Thunderbolt built in.
Speaking of overclocking, the Z970 chipset will come with overclocking capabilities through the multiplier function or base speed, while the Z990 chipset will come with overclocking capabilities using the multiplier and also modifying the base speed (base clock).
The Q970 and W970 motherboard series are seen as a little more interesting. Both of these motherboards were introduced for the purpose of building business-class desktop computers (Q970) and workstations (W970). The Q970 motherboard may come with 44 PCIe lanes, but it does not have any overclocking capabilities, from the CPU to the memory (Intel XMP).
The Intel W970 motherboard is also seen to come with 48 PCIe lanes and has support for ECC (Error Correcting Code) memory and Intel XMP overclocking capabilities. Both motherboards will also come with support for Intel vPro digital security and management technology.
And yes, as expected, this motherboard socket, called LGA 1954, will not support previous processor chips such as Arrow Lake (LGA 1851) and Alder Lake (LGA 1700), but existing CPU coolers will most likely be reused.
As previously reported, Intel's Nova Lake series of processor chips is expected to be introduced in the third or fourth quarter of this year and will return Intel as a company that manufactures its own processor chips.
