Intel Arrow Lake & Z890 Chipset Details
When it comes to Intel’s Arrow Lake-S desktop processors they will initially be releasing five models across their Core Ultra 9, Core Ultra 7, and Core Ultra 5 series. While the naming has changed, the series positioning remains the same.
It is worth noting that at least currently Intel is not offering a Core Ultra 9 285KF, which would come without integrated graphics and would succeed the Core i9-14900KF.
So at the top of the product stack we have the chip we are taking a look at today, the Core Ultra 9 285K. It fully maxes out the Arrow Lake-S silicon offering 8 “Lion Cove” performance cores, and 16 “Skymont” efficiency cores. It also features 36 MB of L3 cache.
For the P-cores you are going to have a base clock of 3.70 GHz and they will boost up to 5.50 GHz (Turbo Boost), 5.60 GHz (Turbo Boost Max 3.0, across up to 4 cores), and 5.70 GHz (Thermal Velocity Boost, up to 2 cores). The E-cores have a base clock of 3.20 GHz and will boost up to 4.60 GHz.
The MSRP for the Core Ultra 9 285K is $589.
With these new processors comes a new socket, Intel’s LGA 1851. So in order to use one of these new chips you will need a new Intel Z890 motherboard. Z890 is the top-spec chipset for this generation and is currently the only one available, but expect Intel to launch more affordable chipsets as well as processors in the future.
When it comes to the Arrow Lake-S SoC you are going to get 48 platform PCIe lanes from the CPU and chipset. PCIe Gen 5 lanes have increased to 20, so you’ll have 16 lanes for your graphics card and 4 for your Gen 5 NVMe SSD. This means you can run a Gen 5 NVMe SSD without cutting into your graphics card lanes. The CPU will also give you a set of Gen 4 x4 lanes, which can be used for an M.2 slot or onboard devices like Thunderbolt 5. Talking about Thunderbolt, the processor has an integrated Thunderbolt 4 controller, so you’ll see dual 40 Gbps Type-C ports on most Z890 motherboards. You are also going to get 24 PCIe Gen 4 downstream lanes, which is an increase from Z790’s 16 Gen 4 and 8 Gen 3 lanes.
When it comes to memory the DDR5 memory controller will support up to 192 GB of dual-channel memory. This means up to 48GB per DIMM. Native JEDEC support is DDR5-6400, while Intel says DDR5-8000 is the real sweet spot for overclocking memory.
