Overview
- Leaked tables outline a five‑chipset 900‑series lineup for LGA1954 motherboards—Z990, Z970, W980, Q970 and B960—with DDR5‑only support and no H‑series entry boards.
- Overclocking is reportedly segmented: Z990 retains IA, BCLK and memory OC, Z970 keeps IA and memory OC without BCLK, W980/B960 allow memory OC only, and Q970 drops OC entirely.
- Power behavior is clarified by leakers: dual‑tile 52‑core K chips can exceed 700W with limits removed and at PL4 spikes, while PL2 is said to land around 250–450W (400W+ for top SKUs) and PL1 near 125–150W; TJMax offsets and disabling thermal throttling are reportedly blocked.
- The flagship Z990 is tipped for ~48 total PCIe lanes with 12 PCIe 5.0 lanes on the chipset, two TB4/USB4 ports, up to five 20Gbps USB 3.2 ports, and eight SATA 3.0 ports, while lower tiers trim I/O to match target markets.
- Architecture leaks point to up to 52 cores with large bLLC variants, an NPU around 74 TOPS, LP‑E cores that do not overclock, and compute tiles measuring ~110mm² standard or ~150mm² with bLLC (dual‑tile packages ~220mm²/~300mm²), with launch still expected later in 2026.