ASUS B660 motherboard ships early, doesn't have PCIe 5.0 support

Intel has finally launched its new 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs with the flagship Z690 chipset and various motherboards, but now someone has been accidentally sent a mid-range ASUS PRIME B660 PLUS D4 motherboard, and something interesting was discovered.

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The new ASUS PRIME B660 PLUS D4 motherboard includes the expected LGA1700 socket, which will support the new Intel 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs -- mostly the non-K series processors. If you want a new Alder Lake CPU, but didn't want to upgrade to DDR5 -- it has DDR4 memory -- but no PCIe 5.0 unfortunately.

This isn't a big deal right now, especially on a mid-range B660-based motherboard -- there are no PCIe 5.0 SSDs or PCIe 5.0 GPUs right now and won't be for many months at the very least. I wouldn't be buying some new balls-to-the-wall Gen 5-enabled SSD or GPU for a mid-range B660-based motherboard, but hey.

• Read more: ASUS Z690 motherboards announced, here's everything you need to know
• Read more: Intel's flagship Core i9-12900K costs $589, 16C/24T at up to 5.2GHz
• Read more: Intel's next-gen Alder Lake architecture: everything you need to know
• Read more: MSI's next-gen PCIe Gen5 M.2 Expander-Z card: SSDs up to 128GB/sec

Intel has multiple 600 series chipsets with the flagship Z690 controlling things at the higher-end of the spectrum, while the mid-range B660 chipset handles things on the other side of the spectrum. In the middle, we'll have the new H670 chipset which should retain its PCIe 5.0 support.

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