New leak shows MSI MPG Z890 Carbon ahead of imminent launch
Z890 is looking promising, let's hope Intel delivers on the CPU front
Share this article...
WePC is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Prices subject to change. Learn more
Intel is set to announce its new Core Ultra CPUs next month, possibly around October 10th – according to leaks. Naturally, that means we should get a glimpse at the very least of the new Intel LGA 1851 motherboards dubbed the 800 series.
Notably, this isn’t the first time we have seen a Z890 motherboard on show, as they were officially showcased at this year’s Computex in June. However, due to the embargo, they were not able to be labeled as Z890 motherboards at the time.
With very little information on the Z890 motherboard chipset actually public, this new leak gives us a little more to go off – including layout and I/O ports.
Leak shows MSI MPG Z890 Carbon in the flesh
Here we have a few pictures of the MSI Carbon Z890, courtesy of the prolific leaker @momomo_us.
These are the only three photos we have of the Carbon so far, as it did not make an appearance at Computex. Interestingly enough, this motherboard shares a lot of similarities with the X870 version – which makes sense, they’re basically siblings. If you didn’t know better it’d be easy to mix them both up, thanks to AMD being LGA since AM5.
MSI Z890 MPG carbon
MSI X870 CARBON
MSI Z890 Carbon specifications
The two motherboards are basically identical yet again, with them both featuring three PCIe X16 slots, 2.5G and 5G networking, and WiFi 7. The main difference we can see is the position of the supplementary power connector, as we explained in an earlier article.
Release dates for both the X870 and the Z890 are closing in, it seems like AMD is going to get the jump on this one as the X870 is slated for a late September release date. It remains to be seen how popular each is going to be. If we had to guess, we would take the 9000 series’ lack of popularity as a sign that everyone is waiting for X3D, or to see what Intel has to offer.
Intel still has a bit of trust to build after the recent 14th and 13th-gen issues, but it has been suggested that the new Core Ultra CPUs will not suffer the same fate. AMD’s rocky 9000 series launch will have driven some users into the arms of Intel. Let’s just see how the Core Ultra lands.
