Intel Arrow Lake leak suggests overclocking is exclusive to most expensive Z890 motherboards
A new leak has surfaced regarding Intel’s new Arrow Lake desktop processors, revealing that overclocking will only be officially supported on the highest-end (Z890) motherboards.
As noted by Video cardzSome alleged specs for Intel 800-series motherboards have surfaced on X, courtesy of @jaykihn.
Intel 800 series chipset specs. For now, but I doubt this will change before launch. No H810 sku. These specs are valid with Arrow Lake-S. Note that ARL-S may not be the only architecture on 800 series chipsets. pic.twitter.com/diZqVSjsJAJuly 3, 2024
According to the included specs table – add your own skepticism, as ever with any leak – only the Z890 platform will feature voltage and base clock adjustments for overclocking. The other chipsets – Intel’s H810, B860, Q870 and W880 – will not feature this capability, and what’s more, it’s rumored that there will be no H870 motherboards at all.
So, Arrow Lake desktop processors are supported on a total of five platforms. Traditionally, the Zx90-series motherboards are the top-end options, while the B models are the budget-oriented offerings, so it’s not entirely surprising that overclocking is locked to the premium platform – if this leak holds up. It will be a first for Intel, though.
The leaker believes that you will be able to overclock the memory on the more affordable B860 motherboards, but that you won’t be able to crank up the CPU voltages as much as you can with a Z890 board. This means that those looking to push their system to the limits will have to purchase the most expensive Intel motherboards available.
Another interesting detail is the total number of high-speed PCIe lanes. The base configuration for the H810 is 33, while the B860 supports 45 and the Q870 supports 56. However, both the server-focused W880 and Z890 are planned to support 60 high-speed PCIe lanes out of the box.
The Intel Core Ultra 200K CPU family is expected to debut in late 2024, so it will likely be three to four months before Arrow Lake hits the market. It will mark the first time Team Blue’s “disaggregated architecture” appears on the desktop, following Meteor Lake (and there’s also the upcoming Lunar Lake for laptops).
Intel’s desktop computing landscape is changing
Arrow Lake represents the most significant change for Intel since the launch of Alder Lake in 2021 (which introduced hybrid technology, meaning efficiency cores). Not only does it see an all-new socket, LGA 1851 (up from LGA 1700), but the Intel Core Ultra 200K is the first desktop processor line to feature more powerful, advanced versions of the NPU seen in Meteor Lake.
The entire computing world is embracing AI, and soon not only laptop chips (like Meteor Lake) but also desktop CPUs will have built-in acceleration for AI workloads (in the form of that NPU).
The Intel 800-series platform is more advanced than previous iterations, as you might expect, even if it lacks Thunderbolt 5 support. It remains to be seen exactly what level of overclocking capabilities will be available on the new Arrow Lake CPUs, as we can’t simply take this rumor at face value, as noted. What we do expect is that Arrow Lake processors could feature lower clock speeds than their Raptor Lake Refresh equivalents, though they will still be faster (of course – they should be) due to architectural improvements and other tuning.