Nestled among the many cool components on display in Gigabyte’s Computex booth, the very first Intel Z990 motherboard was hiding right under our noses. At a glance, you could very easily mistake this board for a flagship Z890 model, but looking closer reveals a few curious details about the upcoming LGA1954 platform.
The sharp-eyed folks at PCWorld spotted this motherboard among Gigabyte’s lineup, covered in obfuscating tape and other materials that the firm insisted stayed on. However, further inspection revealed the company did leave ‘Z99Pro’ clearly printed in the open next to the backside of the socket, and has since confirmed that this board is indeed an Intel Z990 model.
While we don’t yet know the name of this exact motherboard, there are still plenty of exciting details to unpick about this unnamed high-end board. For instance, there are two PCIe Gen 5 x4 M.2 slots resting underneath the large heatsink above the primary PCIe x16 slot.
Lifting the larger heatsink block, there are another four M.2 slots ready and waiting to house storage. We know that at least one of them runs at PCIe Gen 5 x4 speed, making for at least three in total, but there are no visible indicators for the other slots.
Moving upwards, there are three EPS 8-pin CPU power connectors on the motherboard. While two of these ports are commonplace across AM5 and LGA1854 boards, the presence of this many is unusual. Hopefully, this isn’t an indication that Nova Lake CPUs will be far more power-hungry than their Arrow Lake predecessors, such as the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, but it’s impossible to say for sure until Intel shares more details.
Round back, there’s a welcome assortment of I/O options. The motherboard sports two LAN ports, eight USB-A inputs, and four USB-C connections (possibly Thunderbolt 4 and 5). We’ve seen some Thunderbolt 5 ports materialise on some Z890 boards, but we’d expect this standard to be more common on Z990, particularly among flagship models.
Less pertinent to Z990 but nonetheless noteworthy is the inclusion of a magnetic fan above the DRAM slots. We’ve seen DDR5 memory with active cooling at Computex, in a bid to reduce temperatures, but Gigabyte is seemingly toying with the idea of attaching blowers to the board instead.
Intel has previously stated that we should expect the Nova Lake launch window to fall in 2026, and the presence of motherboards such as this one suggests the release could be relatively near. For the moment, though, the company’s focus is on its Arc G3 handheld platform, launching imminently in systems including the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+.
For more processor talk, check out our picks of the best CPUs on the market today.
