The Alder Lake-S processors were released by Intel in early November, headlined by the powerful Core i9-12900K, and quickly established supremacy in gaming and multi-threaded benchmarks. Not surprisingly, they immediately rose to the top of our list of the best CPUs for gaming.
Currently, Alder Lake CPUs can only be used with expensive Z690 motherboards, but a tweet from chi11eddog (via WCCFTech) claims that MSI is planning to release at least 10 B660-based motherboards aimed at more general gamers.
We should take these claims with a grain of salt, but here’s what MSI purportedly has in the B660 pipeline, along with anticipated MSRPs for the motherboards:
Alleged MSI B660 Motherboards
| Motherboard | Price |
| MAG B660 Tomahawk WiFi | $259 |
| MAG B660M Mortar WiFi | $239 |
| MAG B660M Mortar | $219 |
| MAG B660M Bazooka | $199 |
| PRO B660-A | $209 |
| PRO B660M-A- WiFi | $209 |
| PRO B660M-A | $189 |
| PRO B660M-G | $139 |
| PRO B660M-B | $129 |
| PRO B660M-E | $119 |
With an MSRP of $119, the Pro B660M-E appears to be your best chance for a bargain-basement motherboard for Alder Lake. Prices soon rise from $209 for the Pro B660-A to $259 for the flagship MAG B660 Tomahawk WiFi.
All of the motherboards listed above, according to chi11eddog, support DDR5 memory. According to the leaker, DDR4 equivalents were nowhere to be located. MSI sells Z690 motherboards with either DDR4 (as in the Z690 Tomahawk WiFi DDR4) or DDR5 support, therefore DDR5-only support is unusual. So it seems to reason that MSI’s B660 motherboards, which are aimed at more budget-conscious clients, will include DDR4 models.
After all, DDR4 support would allow MSI’s B660 motherboards to be even more affordable while still allowing users to use their existing modules. Unfortunately, because of the additional prices for the modules, an all-DDR5 plan places undue pricing pressure on ordinary customers.
It’s also worth noting that only two of the 10 leaked motherboards are regular ATX motherboards; the rest are microATX. But, then again, this is only a rumour at this moment, so have your salt shaker nearby.
The B660 chipset, Alder Lake-S “non-K” desktop CPUs, and the next Alder Lake-P mobile processor family are all expected to be discussed at Intel’s CES 2022 presentation on January 4th. Furthermore, we should learn more about the highly anticipated Intel Arc line of discrete graphics cards at CES 2022.
