Intel is clearly gearing up for its forthcoming Nova Lake launch, as we’re now seeing the first signs of Z990 motherboards in shipping records. A number of ASRock PCBs with “Z990” in their model names are listed in customs records as being shipped from Taiwan and Vietnam in July 2027, giving us an insight into what’s coming.
At least five boards are listed in shipping records at NBD, covering several market segments. One of them is the ASRock Z990 Challenger WiFi, a brand that the company only used for Intel’s budget B860 chipset in its LGA1851 motherboard range.
This time, however, it looks as though a Z990 Challenger board is coming, hopefully with a budget-friendly price. Likewise, the Z990 Pro RS WiFi looks set to offer a low-cost Nova Lake motherboard, given ASRock’s previous use of this brand.
There’s also an ASRock Z990 Steel Legend WiFi in the listings, covering the mid-range sector. Meanwhile, a pair of Taichi boards appear, which are likely to have premium prices. These are the ASRock Z990 Taichi White and Z990 Taichi Creator.
Intel is rumoured to be releasing two top-end Nova Lake chipsets when it launches its LGA1954 platform. Z990 is expected to act as the flagship, with Z970 providing a cheaper point of entry that still allows multiplier overclocking, but doesn’t let you adjust your base clock. Z970 boards are also expected to offer fewer USB ports than Z990 models.
This isn’t the first sign we’ve seen of Nova Lake motherboards in the wild either. It turns out that a Gigabyte Z990 motherboard was even on display at Computex this year.
Nova Lake is rumoured to be to bringing Intel’s first CPUs with bLLC (big last level cache) to directly take on AMD’s X3D CPUs, while also offering up to 52 cores in a single chip. The company has also announced that Nova Lake will launch on desktop first, prioritising consumers over the server business.
The latest rumours point to Intel launching Nova Lake in early 2027, but with that 52-core CPU not arriving until later in the year. All of this is very much in rumour territory at the moment, though, and we won’t know for sure until Intel reveals all. In the meantime, check out our guide to buying the best CPU for your needs.
