Intel Alder Lake-S CPU Confirms New LGA-1700 Socket

With Rocket Lake-S set to release in early 2021, we already have pretty firm confirmation that Intel will be sticking (somewhat surprisingly some may think) with their current Comet Lake-S LGA-1200 motherboard socket platform. A new Intel CPU that doesn’t need a fresh motherboard? – What heresy is this?!

Well, in regards to their 12th-gen Alder Lake-S designs, however, in a report via Videocardz, an image has leaked online that all but confirms that Intel’s 12th-gen processors will be moving to a new and certainly unusual LGA-1700 socket design.

Intel Alder Lake-S

Based on the image below, what is patently evident is that compared to many prior CPU designs, the Alder Lake-S chipset is going to be notably larger. While specific details are not yet known (or confirmed) surrounding this CPU, a lot of speculation is pointing towards the following features:

• A new design featuring separate ‘high performance’ and ‘high efficiency’ cores to specifically optimize applications
• This may be the first CPU to introduce DDR5 memory support

What Does the Future Hold?

Although we again enter the realms of theory and speculation, it is believed that Intel plans to stick with the LGA-1700 socket for at least three CPU generations. In other words, similar to AMD, they may be looking to keep older motherboards more relevant as newer processors are released, and given that I have a B350 motherboard that I’ve used for Ryzen Gen 1, 2, and 3, it does make more than a little sense from a marketing standpoint. Put simply, people are no longer ‘over a barrel’ to get Intel’s new processors and motherboards to achieve the ‘best’ performance and as such, Intel making their socket designs relevant for longer does make sense.

With more news expected in early to mid-2021, however, at the time of writing, we suspect that Alder Lake-S may finally represent Intel’s true (and long overdue) response to AMD Ryzen. And it only took them 3 years to do it!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!