Intel Z690 chipset diagram confirms DDR4/DDR5 support

VideoCardz came across a new photo of the Intel Alder Lake-S as well as a chipset diagram of the Z690.

There's confirmation that the Z690 will will support up to 12x PCIe Gen4 lanes and up to 16x PCIe Gen3 lanes. Then there wil be 1x16 + 2x8 PCIe Gen5 lanes that will be attached directly to the Alder Lake-S CPU. The chipset supports both DDR4-3200 and DDR5-4800, so motherboard makers will have the option to support either.

The Z690 chipset diagram confirms that 1×16 + 2×8 lanes of PCIe Gen5 will be attached directly to the CPU, whereas the chipset will support up to 12x PCIe Gen4 lanes and up to 16x PCIe Gen3 lanes. That’s a major upgrade over Rocket Lake, which only introduced PCIe Gen4 support after a long year of being exclusive to AMD Ryzen CPUs. Such PCI Express configuration means that the CPU will support up to four PCIe Gen4 NVMe drives without using 16 PCIe Gen5 lanes which may be used by discrete GPU exclusively.

According to the rumor mill, the first Z690-based motherboards will launch on November 17th.