Intel Core Ultra 200 “non-K” supports slower DDR5 memory, according to AsRock list

AsRock is one of the first companies to mention the “non-K” line of Intel Core Ultra 200 processors, also known as Arrow Lake. A listing on the motherboard maker’s official website reveals that Intel’s more affordable new-generation CPUs can operate with slower DDR5 memory.

Information can be found in the QVL lists for the Taichi Z890 board. QVL stands for “Qualified Vendor List”, serving to show which products have been tested and approved as compatible with the AsRock motherboard. We can see below that in the “non-K” Intel Core Ultra 200 line, the maximum memory speed is 7200MT/s.

Meanwhile, most new Z890 boards support over 9000MT/s on the Intel Core Ultra 200K series. In AsRock’s own QVL, these CPUs appear supporting up to 9066MT/s for DDR5 modules.

Unfortunately we do not have details explaining the reason for this difference. In fact, it is most likely that AsRock would not even be allowed to release this list at the moment, since Intel has not yet officially announced the “non-K” models of its new processors. Arrow Lake debuted last week with only the Core Ultra 200K series SKUs.

Will Intel put speed limits directly on CPUs?

The most curious thing about AsRock’s listing is that we are looking at the QVL for a Z890 motherboard model. It is not uncommon for mobo manufacturers to limit the memory speed in their entry options, but this Taichi has a Z890 chipset, which supports faster memories with Core Ultra 200K.

More about Arrow Lake-S:

Thus, the impression remains that perhaps the limitation lies in the “non-K” processors themselves. But we will only have confirmation of this when Intel makes its official announcement. It is worth mentioning that the company said that they will support overclocking, but 7200MT/s is already considered overclocking over the JEDEC standard, which is 6400MT/s.

As this listing happens very prematurely, it is possible that there are errors or that the memory sampling is still very limited. Let’s see if other mobo manufacturers also update their QVL soon.

Fonte: VideoCardz