Intel offers no answer about Socket 2084

VR World spoke to Intel about the extra pins found on Socket 2084, a special socket used by ASUS and Gigabyte for a number of X99 motherboards. This socket has a number of extra pins, which ASUS claims are used to increase overclocking performance and stability.

The exact purpose of the extra pins remains unknown, some industry sources claim ASUS' is lying and that these pins are merely used for CPU debugging. The truth will remain shrouded a bit longer though as Intel says it's investigating the issue and won't have an answer for some time.

Lisa Graff, Intel’s boss of its desktop group, said in an interview with VR World that Intel was investigating the issue and won’t have an answer for some time.

“We understand that Asus has done some different things — and we understand that some of our customers will do different things with their boards — and beyond that at this point there’s nothing much we can say except talk to Asus about it,” she said.

Considering the number of reports of burned or otherwise dead Haswell-E chips that have appeared in the press shortly after the launch of X99, one might conclude that this was the cause. Graff doesn’t think this is the case and says that Intel won’t have an answer until it completes its own investigation.