The upcoming Nova Lake-S lineup of Intel desktop CPUs has been the subject of strong rumors for a while, and one of them concerned the socket itself. Intel is moving away from LGA1851 and will have a brand-new socket for its upcoming Core Ultra 400 series processors, namely LGA1954.
We already know about LGA1954 as its records appeared in shipping manifests months ago, and we even know what the socket looks like. Nova Lake-S will debut on this new socket, and Intel has now officially confirmed this, though not in the usual way. Intel has just published an internal test tool on its website that connects the LGA1954 socket to Nova Lake-S processors.
This listing is for validation hardware and provides some engineering and technical enablement equipment. Nevertheless, the important part is that this is the first time Intel itself has mentioned Nova Lake-S alongside LGA1954 in any sort of official capacity. This is confirmation that Nova Lake-S will indeed launch alongside the LGA1954 socket and Intel 900-series motherboards.
Nova Lake is currently expected to launch in Q1 2027.
