Intel’s 12th generation Core K-series processors, and the Z690 flagship motherboards have gone on sale. After weeks of speculation and the subsequent leaking of its main features, it appears that the 12th generation Core non-K series and the B660 motherboards will finally go on sale. Some sources have mentioned that it might go on sale sometime early next year. It is interesting to note that the Asus TUF B660 motherboard has already been certified in South Korea.
Based on the name of the B660 motherboard, some sources had predicted that the motherboard may support DDR4 memory modules, and that seems to be the case. However, whether the B660 motherboards will support DDR5 memory modules remains to be seen. On the other hand, Intel’s B660 series of motherboards have already aced the PCIe 5.0 support so that the company could lower the manufacturing costs of the motherboards. A few sources mentioned that although Intel’s 12th generation Core desktop processors may support PCIe 5.0 for the first time, not all of the Z690 motherboards will support the interface. Intel’s upcoming H670 chipset may support PCIe 5.0, but B660 and H610 do not come with support for this interface.
The model of the Asus motherboard is TUF GAMING B660M-PLUS WIFI D4. Again, the name of the motherboard has confirmed that it will support DDR4 memory modules as the ‘D4’ in the name refers directly to DDR4.
It is also interesting to note that certain ASUS Z690 and B660 motherboards will have compatibility issues with Noctua’s LGA 1700 Alder Lake CPU coolers. Both the companies, Asus and Noctua, have collaborated with each other for quite some time now, starting with their ROG AIO coolers, and the latest of them being the GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards. However, this time around with the new Z690 motherboards that do not seem to be the case.
