ASRock proudly announces its new Z790I Lightning WiFi and B760I Lightning WiFi Mini-ITX motherboards. Equipped with a robust 14+1+1 power phase design and an optimized memory layout, these motherboards fully unleash the powerful performance of Intel Core 14th Gen K-series processors. Offering top-tier memory overclocking capabilities for supporting DDR5 8600+ memory modules, they present an excellent choice for gamers and mini-PC enthusiasts seeking the ultimate overclocking performance. The Z790I Lightning WiFi has achieved four overclocking world records on HWBOT.org with the Intel Core i9-14900KS processor. Additionally, the B760I Lightning WiFi received the "Best Motherboard" award at CES 2024 from Tom's Hardware, emphasizing its exceptional design and overclocking capabilities.

ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi and B760I Lightning WiFi motherboards feature a 14+1+1 Phase 110 A SPS Dr.MOS VRM, outperforming competing ITX offerings. ASRock has custom-designed a composite cooling solution for these boards, including enlarged aluminium heatsinks, heat-pipe, and a MOS fan, delivering robust cooling performance to enhance overclocking capabilities. This superior cooling ensures the processors perform at their peak.

At CES, AMD didn't give away too many technical details of its upcoming Ryzen 8000G-series APUs, but details are starting to trickle out and it's not all good news. As has been known for some time, AMD is using two different chips to make the Ryzen 8000G APUs and they're known as the Phoenix 1 and Phoenix 2, where the Phoenix 2 parts feature Zen 4c cores, which are not present in the Phoenix 1 APUs. This in and of itself shouldn't be a huge issue, although the Zen 4c CPU cores can be slightly slower in some tasks based on testing of AMD's EPYC server parts.

However, PCGamesN noticed that Gigabyte has posted the full specs for the B650E Aorus Elite X AX Ice motherboard and it looks like there's a much bigger difference between the Phoenix 1 and Phoenix 2 based APUs. Namely, the Phoenix 2 APUs have fewer PCIe lanes and as such are limited to two PCIe 4.0 lanes for the secondary NVMe slot. As if this wasn't bad enough, the Phoenix 2 APUs only have four PCIe 4.0 lanes for add-in GPUs, whereas the Phoenix 1 APUs have eight. This is very likely to lead to reduced performance if a higher-end GPU is used with such an APU. Note that this will vary depending on the motherboard design, but many B650/B650E boards feature a similar design with regards to the PCIe lanes coming from the CPU socket. Luckily, it's easy to avoid this issue, as the Ryzen 5 8600G and the Ryzen 7 8700G are both Phoenix 1 designs, whereas the Ryzen 5 8500G is the only Phoenix 2 design available in retail, as the Ryzen 3 8300G is an OEM only part.

Four of Intel's latest 8th generation Core "Coffee Lake" processors that are part of the company's second wave of products for the LGA1151 (300-series) platform, surfaced on Newegg. These include the Core i5-8500 (model: BX80684I58500), the Core i5-8600 non-K (BX80684I58600), the Celeron G4920 (BX80684G4920), and the G4900. The Core i5-8500 and i5-8600 fill the price-performance gap between the i5-8400 and the i5-8600K; while the G4900 could be the cheapest processor you can buy on this platform. The i5-8500 is listed at USD $215.99, the i5-8600 at $239.99, the G4920 at $65.99, and the G4900 at $54.99. The product pages don't include specs yet, but at the time of this writing, both the i5-8500 and the G4920 can be added to cart. Intel is planning to expand its 8th generation Core, Pentium, and Celeron processor families before the end of Q1-2018, along with motherboards based on the more cost-effective B360 Express and H310 Express chipsets.

Intel's 8th gen, Coffee Lake-architecture CPUs will soon see new additions to the lineup, if leaked retail dates are correct. While Intel's six-core processors have earned themselves a respectable position in the CPU market - even if outgunned, core-wise, by AMD's Ryzen - the company is in dire need of shoring up its lower-pricing offerings so as to better compete with AMD's full available line-up, which currently offers users many more choices in both platform pricing, features, and processor specs. The date seems to be a make-up gift from the blue giant: it's expected these processors will hit retail on February 14th.