If your main interest lies in desktops PCs, and you are optimistically, perhaps impatiently, awaiting Intel's Alder Lake CPUs, the good news seems to be that you will get first dibs, later this year. According to Igor's Lab, Intel's alluring hybrid 12-gen Core processors, built on the Intel 7 node, will come to performance desktop first, "in the form of the K and KF" SKUs, along with matching Z690 chipset motherboards.
Igor's sources suggest that the enthusiast Alder Lake-S SKUs will debut between the dates of 25th October and 19th November. The first date is close to the date of the Intel InnovatiON (Intel ON) event, which runs from 27th October for two days. In addition to Igor's sources circling these dates, it was noticed by a HEXUS reader that CEO Pat Gelsinger teasingly described the upcoming San Francisco/live-streamed event – as "fully hybrid". As with any good tease, the subject wasn't clear-cut – was he referring to the show format, or the first hybrid processors for mainstream desktops / laptops?
Some other tips regarding what to expect and what not to expect are summarised as follows:
- Intel's Z690 chipset is expected to support both DDR4 and DDR5 memory,
- Motherboard makers won't be implementing Intel's ATX12VO power standard at this time,
- Manufacturers won't be rolling out ATX12VO PSUs yet, either,
- PCIe Gen5 third-party vendors are probably not going to have SSDs or graphics cards ready, so the faster I/O supported won't be that useful to start with.
If your tastes are more mainstream, you will be able to assess the success of Alder Lake-S for enthusiasts, before the bulk of desktop and laptop processors are expected to launch at CES 2022. The Las Vegas show in January is also expected to be where the H670, B660 as well as H610 chipsets become official, so we should see mainstream desktop motherboards launched around this time too.
Intel NUC 11 Extreme 'Beast Canyon' announced.
A week ago, HEXUS reported upon the first Intel NUC 11 Extreme 'Beast Canyon' PCs going up for pre-order. Now Intel has made these compact PCs official with a release on the Intel news blog, and a video below.
Intel has also just announced five new Xeon W-3300 processors aiming at tasks undertaken by advanced workstation professionals, such as next-gen applications with heavily threaded, input/output-intensive workloads.
