Intel's 12th generation Alder Lake family made its mark on the PC market last month and ranks among the best gaming CPUs on the market. So naturally, there are plenty of high-end Z690 motherboards on the market to accommodate the new chips, but one unreleased board, the MSI MEG Z690 Godlike, continues to garner a lot of attention. Thanks to Twitter leaker @9550pro, we have new images of the MEG Z690 Godlike in the real world, and it looks fantastic.
The first image gives us a top-down look at the motherboard, including its massive 3.5-inch touch display near the DDR5 DIMM slots (it's still covered in the factory protective tape/film). The MEG Z690 Godlike dwarfs other Z690 motherboards with dimensions of 305 x 310 mm, according to Videocardz. That immense size allowed MSI to throw in everything but the kitchen sink for features. We're expecting six M.2 slots along with dual LAN ports (10 GbE and 2.5 GbE), eight USB 3.2 Gen 2 (Type-A) ports and two USB 3.2 Gen 2 (Type-C) ports. It's also reported that the motherboard employs a 22-phase power design for Alder Lake processors.
The second image shows the retail box for the MEG Z690 Godlike and the additional included accessories. This SKU comes with a MEG CoreLiquid S360 CPU cooler and 32GB of Kingston Fury DDR5-6000 memory according to the box. In addition, rumors suggest that the motherboard will ship with MSI's PCI-Express Card that plugs into a full-size PCIe slot to support upcoming PCIe 5.0 SSDs.
The existing MEG Z590 Godlike is already an expensive proposition for gamers at $899, so we can only imagine that the MEG Z690 Godlike will meet or surpass the $999 threshold. And the SKU with the bundled CPU cooler and DDR5 modules will no doubt push the boundaries regarding pricing for high-end Z690 motherboards by tacking on another $500 or more.
At this time, MSI has not provided an official release date for the MEG Z690 Godlike. However, with CES 2022 fast approaching, we'll hopefully learn some concrete details like pricing and availability.
