MAXSUN and DIY-APE revealed a collaborative motherboard model last November, as noticed by members of the TPU community—the H770YTX D5 WIFI Terminator board attracted attention due to its unusually wide (for the ITX class) dimensions. The Terminator's "YTX" form factor—245 × 175 mm—provides some extra room for backside power connectors, additional storage connectors and M.2 storage slots. A past weekend ITHome report has revealed that MAXSUN's fairly compact mid-range part is launching today via a JD.com store listing—release date pricing is 899 RMB (~$126).

The spec sheet matches previously released information—ITHome stated: "(MAXSUN's) Terminator H770 YTX motherboard uses 8+1+1 phase power supply, supports (Intel's) 12th, 13th, and 14th generation Core processors, PL2 can reach 253 W performance release, and also supports dual-channel DDR5 8000 memory. This motherboard has rich interfaces, with three Type-C interfaces at the front and rear. The PCIe 5.0 slot supports 8+8 split, provides four M.2 slots, SFF-8654 interfaces, and supports four SATA hard drives. It is equipped with Realtek Sound card and network card." They note that MAXSUN has another YTX form factor board in its back catalog—the H610 KING was an early 2023 release, in collaboration with partner brand DIY-APE.

January 3, 2023, on the sidelines of the International CES, Intel could launch dozens upon dozens of 13th Gen Core processor SKUs spanning every conceivable client PC platform. The event is expected to bring "Raptor Lake" to the mobile platform, with announcements spanning the ultra-portable "Raptor Lake-U," the thin-and-light performance "Raptor Lake-P," the mainstream mobile "Raptor Lake-H," and the enthusiast mobile "Raptor Lake-HX." This would cover almost every mobile device segment, including 7-9 W U-segment, to the 15-28 W P-segment, the 35-45 W H-segment, and the >55 W HX-segment, with several SKUs per segment across the four brand extensions (Core i3 thru Core i9).

For the desktop platform, Intel is expected to announce its new Core i9-13900KS "Raptor Lake-S" flagship, the world's first 6 GHz processor, besides a large number of 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake-S" non-K SKUs in the 65 W TDP class, forming the bulk of the company's desktop processor lineup. Besides these, the company will also announce the more affordable Intel H770 and B760 desktop motherboard chipsets, bringing down platform costs (the 13th Gen Core processors are already supported on inexpensive motherboards based on the B660 and H670 chipsets via a BIOS update). Lastly, the company could announce "Raptor Lake" processors for the workstation segment, possibly compatible with the W780 chipset, and supporting ECC DDR5 memory, among other features relevant to the commercial desktop and workstation segments.

A post on Chinese forum Bilibili has revealed more exact details with regards to when Intel's Raptor Lake series of processors will launch and if nothing changes between now and then, the K and KF SKU's should be announced as previously thought, at the Intel Innovation '22 event that kicks off on the 27th of September. Retail availability, alongside Z790 motherboards should be about a month later, starting the week of the 17th of October. We've confirmed these dates with our own sources, but as always with early information, these things can change.

The rest of the Raptor Lake family of CPUs, as well as the H770 and B760 chipsets are expected to launch at CES 2023 in January and the poster on Bilibili claims that retail sales should be sometime in the second half of January. We've not been able to confirm the latter information here. As per older rumours, Intel is expected to change the PCIe lane allocation for the Z790 chipset compared to Z690 and based on the information posted, Z790 will have 20 PCIe 4.0 and eight PCIe 3.0 lanes, vs. 12 PCIe 4.0 and 16 PCIe 3.0 for the Z690 chipset. Raptor Lake is also said to get native support for faster DDR5 5600 memory, rather than just 4800 MHz DDR5 for Alder Lake. There are apparently no changes to the CPU PCIe lanes and DDR4 support is still here, but once again, no changes have been made to the DDR4 memory controller.

Although Intel's 13th generation of Core CPUs—codenamed Raptor Lake—aren't expected to launch until sometime in September or October this year, details of some of ASRock's motherboards for the new CPUs have leaked. ASRock is preparing to launch at least nine Z790 and three H770 motherboards, of which at least four will have support for DDR4 memory, according to VideoCardz. The list is missing a flagship Aqua model, but contains Taichi, Pro RS, Phantom Gaming Lightning and Riptide models, as well as a Steel Legend H770 boards and a couple of -C models, which are likely budget boards, despite being based on the Z790 chipset.

There will be a microATX Phantom Gaming Lighting board with DDR4 and a Phantom Gaming Riptide model with DDR5 support. So far no other features have been reported and from our understanding, the Z790 won't differ hugely from the Z690 chipset. The extra PCIe lanes from the 13th gen Core CPUs are expected to support PCIe 5.0 this time around, which will allow for faster NVMe based M.2 drives to be used. Intel is not planning on integrating Thunderbolt 4 support in these CPUs based on available information.