Rumor: Intel next-gen CPU series "Nova Lake-S" to require new LGA-1954 socket

If this rumor is true, it's really bad news for users of the LGA-1851 platform. Intel launched its 800-series motherboards only in Q3 2024, and it seems that they may support only one generation of processors. Reviewers asked Intel multiple times whether the platform would receive future updates, but Intel remained unresponsive. Later, we learned that Intel might be planning an update in the form of Arrow Lake Refresh, but this is not expected to be a major performance upgrade.

It turns out Intel might never have planned to bring Nova Lake-S, the successor to Arrow Lake-S, to the same LGA-1851 socket. The recent leak from NBD (shipping manifest data) shows that Intel is now testing Nova Lake-S (NVL-S) on the LGA-1954 platform. Needless to say, this means the 800-series motherboards will support only one generation of processors (Arrow Lake).