Wednesday 4th June 2008

Computex 2008: Intel Nehalem next-gen CPU socket pictured

Posted at: 12:12pm 4th June 2008 by Clive Webster in Taipei

We've grabbed a sneak picture of the successor to LGA775, designed for Intel's upcoming new Nehalem CPUs, plus info on loads of motherboards sporting the new socket.

Last night at Computex we saw an Intel Nehalem system whirling through video encoding, but we weren't allowed to look inside the case at the actual Nehalem hardware. Today we found another working Nehalem system and managed to persuade Intel to let us see the CPU socket that will replace LGA775.

To say that the new socket looks weird is an understatement, but Intel was tight-lipped as to exactly why it has such an odd layout. What we do know is that the Nehalem socket will have many more pins than the 775 of LGA775. The extra pins aren't only to provide the bandwidth to feed the "eight processing threads" of a Nehalem CPU, but also to provide the CPU-to-motherboard communication for Nehalem's onboard triple-channel DDR3 memory controller.

Intel hasn't confirmed how many pins the new socket will have, but you can see 'Socket 1366' written next to the CPU socket of the Gigabyte X58 motherboard (click on a picture below to load the slideshow). The new CPU socket also differs from LGA775 in being bolted through the motherboard, rather than simply being soldered on. The new socket has the same corner holes as LGA775, so we suspect Nehalem coolers will still have the push-pin attachments of LGA775 coolers. There's no guarantee that LGA775 coolers will fit LGA1366.

The Nehalem socket we pictured was on one of many Intel X58 motherboards on show - X58 will be the first chipset to support Nehalem. We also saw some dual-processor Nehalem motherboards with a huge amount of memory sockets - one SuperMicro board had 12 DIMM sockets. That we saw so many boards from so many manufacturers indicates that Nehalem can't be far away.

More images for this article:

An Intel Nehalem PC, fully operational

The Intel Nehalem PC playing Assassin's Creed

A Nehalem system up close

Nehalem heatsink

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Comments

What an awful way this site chooses to make you view extra images

You have to view each image plus an ad in a pop up box. Fair enough but you also have to scroll down from the ad to see every freaking image. Who thought of that? Are you trying to make me wear my scroll finger out?

Comment by Dek_001 at 12:04am 11th June 2008

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Unless

This new socket and cpus, with triple channel memory radically, and i mean really, boost the performance of your pc far past anything we could have imagined, im going to stick with p45 and just get 8gb of ram instead with the next nvidia card... :)

Comment by Lightning_Pete at 8:55am 5th June 2008

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"We're fairly sure this isn't the Intel reference cooler for Nehalem"

It looks almost exactly like intels current reference cooler, just slightly larger with a different fan grill. I think its very likely that it will be Nehalems reference cooler

Comment by Cogwulf at 6:54pm 4th June 2008

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it looks like the heatsink is actually overlapping the socket

but its only intel who've put the RAM there, and the other manufacturers have stuck with the traditional location

Comment by Cogwulf at 6:40pm 4th June 2008

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4 Ram Sticks

You stick another stick of Ram to make 4GB and it looks to be very close to the HSF, and then a Ram cooler, that's going to be warm at the very least, at the very worst, rub or vibrate against each other anyway.

Comment by Gz_pitbull465ac8 at 5:56pm 4th June 2008

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Clued up

http://www.intel.com/technology/architecture-silicon/next-gen/index.htm if you haven't been here yet

Comment by stewartbaker206 at 5:21pm 4th June 2008

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I think I might just wait a bit before building a new computer lol

Comment by Zac3200 at 5:01pm 4th June 2008

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I Like it!

I want release dates, CPC lab tests and inside leg measurements off all the sexy chicks on the trade stands at Computex! Hang on, I think I need to go to another website for that. Wink! Wink! Say no more!