Intel finally ditches DDR4 support with Arrow Lake 800 series motherboards

A previous leak predicted Intel's Arrow Lake desktop chips would arrive by the end of September alongside new Z890 motherboards. Among other things, it will bring a new LGA1851 socket and a bunch of new features. A leaked document spotted by a Chiphell user (via HXL on X) highlights some and confirms the end of DDR4 memory support. Raptor Lake's official DDR5 speed was rated at 5,600 MT/s, and it'll be interesting to see how far Arrow Lake can push the envelope.

New Arrow Lake motherboards with the 800 series chipset (Z890, B860, H870, depending on the SKU) have a Thunderbolt controller baked into the CPU, paving 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 found despite showing up in an earlier leak.

Additionally, Intel 800 series chipset has a total of 20 PCIe Gen 5 lanes. 16 of these are earmarked for the GPU, leaving four for a NVMe SSD. There is a second PCIe Gen 4 lane directly connected to the CPU. Other specs include support for 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, up to 20 Gbps USB 3 ports, Wi-Fi 7 (via a PCie adapter) and 6 Gbps SATA ports. Lastly, the iGPU now supports DP2.1 and HDMI 2.1 standards.