Intel is seemingly planning some big changes with its upcoming Nova Lake-S chips, improving memory support and PCIe lane counts. Users planning to build a machine around these CPUs could see a noticeable acceleration in memory-heavy tasks, all while getting more room for blazing-fast storage.
Hardware leaker jaykihn0 shared some insight into Intel’s next-gen platform, said to feature up to 52 cores on the consumer side. We expect these Nova Lake-S CPUs to offer 24 direct PCIe 5.0 lanes, 16 for the main expansion slot and a further eight lanes split into two for storage. Another 4 lanes connect the CPU to the chipset, from which we get eight PCIe 5.0 lanes, 16 PCIe 4.0, or a bunch of USB 3 ports.
For comparison, Arrow Lake only carries 20 PCIe 5.0 lanes, split between the main x16 slot and a single x4, with another 8 PCIe 4.0 lanes (equivalent to Nova Lake in bandwidth) linking the chipset. Summarily, the most transformative improvements here are additional storage and the abandonment of USB 2. Note that, like previous platforms, motherboard makers should be able to further split the PCIe lanes to accommodate multi-GPU setups, with the leak indicating support for up to quad-GPUs.
But that’s not all. To feed the massive number of cores on hand, Intel seems to have also improved the memory controller. According to jaykihn0, Nova Lake-S CPUs will be able to officially handle 8,000MT/s DDR5 memory by default, with overclocking potentially pushing speed beyond 10,000MT/s.
For comparison, Arrow Lake officially supports 6,400MT/s RAM, with frequencies above 9,000MT/s possible through overclocking. However, since DDR5 kit quality and the CPU silicon lottery have an effect on overclocking potential, we should focus on what most users can achieve out-of-the-box, i.e. 1,600MT/s or 25% higher RAM speed on Nova Lake-S.
That said, this speed is mainly achievable using 1DPC 1R (one single-rank module per channel). In other words, filling all four RAM slots or choosing dual-rank modules may limit the maximum achievable speed. The good news is that 1DPC 1R is perfectly fine for a dual-channel consumer system.
The only question left is whether Intel has fixed Arrow Lake’s high memory latency via Nova Lake. For those in the dark, processors including Core Ultra 9 285K have faced criticism due to their unexpectedly high memory latency. In our own review of the flagship chip, we saw values approaching 90ns where it should be closer 70ns, while others have seen more shocking results closer to 180ns.
Intel Nova Lake should arrive sometime next year, requiring a new socket and motherboard. Recent leaks have indicated that LGA1700 coolers should remain compatible with the upcoming LGA1954, but we can’t be sure until the info comes from the horse’s mouth. In any case, the consensus seems to hint at a very capable platform that could provide welcome competition to AMD’s Zen 6 CPUs.
