The costs for Asus’ new lineup of Intel Arrow Lake gaming motherboards have simply leaked, with the top-end ROG Maximus fashions apparently demanding excessive premiums. In truth, the top-end Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Excessive seems to have a worth of properly over $1,000, which might purchase you an entire gaming PC, full with an honest CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti GPU proper now.
The brand new lineup of Intel Arrow Lake CPUs is ready to make use of the brand new LGA1851 socket, requiring you to purchase a brand new motherboard, with the brand new Z890 chipset sitting on the prime quality. It’s possible that this new lineup will embody a few of the best gaming motherboard designs you should purchase, nevertheless it seems as if you’re going to need to shell out a big stack of money for the flagship Asus fashions.
This newest leak was flagged up by common tech leaker momomo_us, who shared some screenshots from a retailer exhibiting a number of Z890 motherboards with listed costs in a post on X (previously Twitter). In these screenshots, the costs have been listed in GBP ex VAT, however they arrive from US retailer HSSL, and we’ve checked the costs in {dollars} ourselves, as proven within the screenshot under.
If these figures are genuinely consultant of the costs of those motherboards at launch, then the brand new Asus ROG Maximus boards look set to be extraordinarily costly. Let’s begin with the Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Excessive, which HSSL lists at an enormous worth of $1,111.87. That is more likely to be a really fancy board, although, if it’s something like its predecessor. The ROG Maximus Z790 Excessive comes with a matric LED show within the shroud protecting the rear I/O panel, for instance, in addition to an OLED display screen embedded in one of many M.2 SSD heatsinks.
The opposite boards within the vary aren’t as costly, however they nonetheless demand a hefty premium. Even the Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Hero is available in at $780.66, and that is normally the extra cheap mannequin within the Maximus lineup. The positioning additionally lists the brand new Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Apex at a worth of $812.29. Even the most affordable ROG Strix board, the Z890-A Gaming WiFi, is listed at a worth of $445.04.
Fortunately, there are some extra reasonably priced fashions coming from Asus by the seems of it. With HSSL itemizing a worth of $256.50 for the Asus Prime Z890M-Plus WiFi, though that’s nonetheless an enormous chunk of money for what’s more likely to be an mATX board with a stripped-down characteristic set.
Principally, if these costs maintain up, it’s going to price a good bit of cash if you wish to improve to one of many new best gaming CPU choices from Intel once they launch. What’s extra, there are additionally rumors that the Arrow Lake refresh is canceled, doubtlessly which means the brand new Intel LGA1851 socket will solely be round for one CPU era, just like the LGA1200 socket Intel used for its Eleventh-gen Rocket Lake CPUs.
If that’s the case, then you could possibly find yourself spending some huge cash on a brand new motherboard that you just received’t be capable of improve with a next-gen CPU at a later date. Comparatively, Intel’s LGA1700 socket has lasted via three generations of processors.
In the event you’re considering of placing collectively a brand new rig within the close to future, then check out our full information on the way to build a gaming PC, the place we run you thru each step of the method, together with putting in a CPU in your motherboard.