Intel Nova Lake S Flagship May Reach 474W PL2

Intel's Nova Lake S desktop lineup is expected to feature up to 52 cores and a 474W power draw, requiring advanced Z990 motherboard designs.

Intel has reportedly revised the power delivery design for its dual-compute-tile Nova Lake processors, with the flagship Nova Lake S lineup expected to feature up to a 52-core configuration. This represents a significant increase over the 24-core Arrow Lake S series. These dual-tile CPUs may support a Power Level 2 (PL2) of up to 474W under heavy boost workloads, with power draw exceeding this limit during overclocking. To support these chips, Z990 175W chipset motherboards will support 44-core and 52-core configurations, with some designs featuring triple 8-pin CPU power connectors. While the Z970 chipset will not use triple EPS connectors, some Z990 boards will ship with two. Motherboard power classes range from 35W to 175W, and CPUs on boards rated lower than their PL1 will default to lower performance.