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At PC Labs this week, showing up alongside Intel’s Core Ultra 200S “Arrow Lake” silicon—its new generation of desktop CPUs—was an elaborate “care package” from Asus related to the launch. With the chips going on sale Oct. 24, so do compatible motherboards, some new supporting cooling gear, and a special new type of memory.
We break it all down in the video above, but here’s a snapshot below of the highlights of the actual hardware we got, and plenty of talk about what it all means for the future of the desktop according to Intel. (Also see our review of the Core Ultra 9 285K, Intel's Arrow Lake flagship chip, and the very latest version of the Falcon Northwest Talon, our first Arrow Lake desktop review.)
(Credit: Weston Almond)Yeah, We Need Another Hero: Here Comes the ROG Maximus Z890 Hero
...with apologies to Tina Turner. Asus’ ROG Maximus motherboard line has long been its flagship family for both Intel and AMD processors. In the box, we received its ROG Maximus Z890 Hero, a step down from its Maximus Extreme tippy-top flagship. The Hero now incorporates a host of AI-based features both for PC building help (enabling chat-based queries via a custom LLM) and for optimizing and tweaking your DDR5 memory and Arrow Lake CPU automatically.
(Credit: Weston Almond)The Hero board, though, is also all about creature comforts. Asus is giving users six (count ‘em) M.2 slots on this board, three supporting PCI Express 5.0. The primary, CPU-direct PCIe 5.0 slot is under a large heatsink loaded with ease-of-use features. You flip up a latch to release and lift off the heatsink, and under that, a slider lets you drop in an M.2 drive of any length and simply slide over a retainer to engage it. No more M.2 micro-screws! (The other slots don’t have the same mechanism but do employ swiveling fasteners that banish the terrible tiny screws, too.)
(Credit: Weston Almond)Q-Release is another welcome easy-install feature. Rather, it’s an easy uninstall, letting you remove your graphics card from the main PCIe slot in a single motion—no levers or release buttons required. Try extracting the card by pulling from anywhere but the right spot, and it stays put. But yank in the right place, and out it pops. Check out the video for the wrist action required.
The board, being a Hero-level model, is also equipped with copious power stages for overclockers’ power delivery needs and an impressive bank of connectivity, including Thunderbolt 4 support and 11 USBs. Much more above in the video.
Cooler Compatibility: The ROG Ryujin III 360 ARGB Extreme
As has been reported elsewhere, Arrow Lake employs a new CPU socket, LGA1851, and this board, like other Z890 boards, is compatible with both existing LGA1700-compatible coolers (used by the most recent preceding Intel desktop CPU generations) and other coolers that are optimized for LGA1851. The Ryujin cooler included in our kit is optimized for LGA1851 but works with a host of earlier sockets, too.
One of the concerns that arose around LGA1700 in its time was, in isolated cases, some slight flexing of the CPU socket (and the Raptor Lake/Alder Lake chips themselves) could occur under the pressure of some coolers. This could lead to less-than-perfect contact between the CPU cooler’s cold plate and the chip’s heat spreader. (Result: Less-effective cooling.) The new socket and related coolers should address the rigidity issue.
(Credit: Weston Almond)The other issue with Arrow Lake is that due to the processors' new chiplet design, the CPUs themselves now have different hotspots than earlier generations, despite the same exterior footprint and general appearance. Socket LGA1851-optimized coolers like the Ryujin take into account this difference and factor it into the cold plate design and more. So, while you’re welcome to use an existing LGA1700 cooler, Intel anticipates “a few degrees of upside” with an Arrow Lake-specific cooler.
This new Ryujin itself is indeed a deluxe cooler, with three 120mm fans in a 360mm design. Atop the cooler head is a bit of pure bling, a 3.5-inch LCD screen that you can program with GIFs, video, or images to jazz up that last frontier inside your transparent case. It touts an “AI modeled” cold plate to account for the updated Arrow Lake chip design, and a metal backplate to limit flex and damage during installation. Asus also includes one year of AIDA64 for diagnostics, testing, and monitoring.
CU Later: A CU-DIMM Kit From Kingston
One of the big new platform aspects of Arrow Lake is its compatibility with CU-DIMM memory modules. They are not required (you can also use regular DDR5 DIMMs), but they will be of interest to extreme overclockers and memory tweakers trying to hit higher-than-stock speeds on their sticks. To that end, Asus included a Kingston Fury CU-DIMM kit in the box.
CU-DIMMs are equipped with an on-module clock generator, which stabilizes the signal between the NANDs on the modules and the board. At high memory speeds, this is an aid for inching up memory speeds according to the specific board and specific modules you have on hand. (The Hero board, as mentioned, can also profile the memory you have, using a feature called DIMM Fit, to get the memory settings close to maximum potential for you. You can then tweak from that starting point.)
(Credit: Weston Almond)CU-DIMMs can achieve higher memory speeds than ordinary DIMMs under the right circumstances. However, the peak supported speeds can lie on a matrix of values that differs according to how many slots the board has overall (unused, empty slots can introduce a smidgen of latency), how many you are actually filling with modules, and the specific CU-DIMMs and board in play. We’ll be interested to play with the settings after we get past the initial round of testing with Arrow Lake at stock.
More Arrow Lake Coming Soon
Again, check out the video up top for more about this initial kit. (We’ll have a review of the Hero board in the coming weeks.) Also, stay tuned to PCMag as we roll out our first reviews of other Intel Z890 motherboards, as well as more Arrow Lake chips, starting with the Core Ultra 5 245K.