Recently a tweet from La Frite David has drawn a lot of attention on the internet. In his tweet, he posted a picture of a motherboard at an early development stage and tagged it as Z690.
Z690 pic.twitter.com/vCf6zlKxG7
— La Frite David 🇫🇷 (@davideneco25320) July 30, 2021
The reference image in the tweet shows an eATX motherboard in its early form without any heatsink or CPU mounting bracket. However, there is no information on the origin of the manufacture. But it seems the showcased motherboard might be the latest Intel Z690 featuring LGA 1700 socket supported by Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs.
In the picture, we can see clearly the lack of heatsinks, CPU mounting socket, IO ports, etc. But the interesting part is the CPU socket. It is not a square one like it used to be. And we also heard previously about the change of design of the Alder Lake CPU that is no longer square-shaped.
The Alder Lake desktop CPUs will feature a 37.5×45.0mm package along with the latest ‘V0′ socket aka the LGA 1700. The new socket will also change the mounting position 78x78mm grid. This might be a bad event for all those CPU coolers’ OEM.
There are two main facts that will be affected by this design change. The first being the fact that all CPU coolers will need to check the mounting options. And secondly, due to the change of design in the CPU socket, all CPU cooler manufacturers will need to ship mounting brackets supporting the LGA 1700 along with their products.
In terms of VRM, the Z690 will feature 20+3 VRM delivery and the MSRP will be quite on the higher side as it will be a high-end one. The reference design features a dual 8-pin connector along with the option for at least 3 M.2 slots. However, in the picture, we can only see a PCIe x16 slot but there are no details available about their generation.
In terms of availability, it is uncertain when the Z690 will hit the market. But it can be expected to see them by Q4 of 2021. We are also waiting for the release of Intel’s Alder Lake series by the end of coming October.
