Intel plans to launch its 14th Gen Core family in the latter half of this year. While the notebook lineup is confirmed to consist of the Meteor Lake-P chips, the desktop chips are a mystery. A while back, we reported that the Meteor Lake-S desktop stack had been canceled and replaced by Arrow Lake-S. However, in the immediate future, Intel plans to introduce the Raptor Lake-S Refresh as a stopgap.
According to WCCTech, Intel’s 14th Gen Raptor Lake-S Refresh is slated to launch sooner than expected. Motherboard and memory vendors have been intimated about the release with some even reporting early firmware for the upcoming CPUs.
ADATA showcased a new memory lineup in the form of the DDR5-6400 CKD. It will come in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB variants, offering speeds of 3200MHz or 6400MT/s. Interestingly, the memory kit mentioned support for Intel’s 14th Gen lineup which is the aforementioned Raptor Lake-S Refresh.
Apparently, Intel has already provided motherboard vendors with early BIOS updates for the 14th Gen Core processors. However, there’s no explicit mention of Raptor or Meteor Lake. Furthermore, there are two different sets of BIOS updates planned for two distinct next-gen products which I presume refer to the Raptor Lake-S Refresh and Arrow Lake-S.
As already explained in past posts, the Raptor Lake-S Refresh will be largely identical to the existing 13th Gen parts. You can expect higher frequencies and an increased power consumption but that’s mostly it. It’s worth noting that the present Raptor Lake-S chips already hit 100C under heavy load with even the best 360mm liquid coolers. So, you’ll need top-notch cooling for the upcoming factory overclocked parts.
Motherboard vendors, including ASRock, Gigabyte, and MSI have already announced refreshed variants of their Z790 offerings. These include support for WiFi 7, higher TDP CPUs (via more powerful VRMs), and higher frequency memory kits.
