In this special edition episode of The Full Nerd, Gordon Ung and Adam Patrick Murray interview Asus’s Juan J. Guerrero about all things motherboards, now that Intel’s 12th-gen “Alder Lake” CPUs and Z690 motherboards are here, complete with support for the cutting-edge PCIe 5.0 interface and DDR5 memory.

JJ dives deep into what makes Z690 motherboards tick, including new innovations, features, and the thorniest question of all: Why are they so expensive? The live audience also asks JJ about ATX12VO motherboards, while the crew talks about concept PCs and even gets into the DDR5 memory topology of the new motherboards. It’s deeply nerdy, deeply fascinating stuff.

This episode of the Full Nerd is brought to you by Avast’s new all-in-one solution, Avast One, which helps keep your identity and actions hidden, stops malware, phishing, and virus attacks, and helps clean up your devices. And because Avast believes essential protection should be available to everyone, a free version of Avast One still includes award-winning free AV, free VPN, free firewall, and much more.

You can witness it all in the video embedded above. You can also watch The Full Nerd special edition on YouTube (subscribe to the channel while you’re there!) or listen to it on Megaphone.fm if you prefer the audio alone. 

Speaking of audio, you can subscribe to The Full Nerd in iTunes (please leave a review if you enjoy the show). We’re also on Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or you can point your favorite podcast-savvy RSS reader to: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/IDG8935300959

If you want to wear your geekiness on your sleeve, check out our Full Nerd merch! We just rolled out some new designs so you can proudly proclaim that you’re a friend of the show, or your love of 19×10 gaming. (If you know, you know.)

Have a PC- or gaming-related question? Email [email protected] and we’ll try to answer it in the next episode. You can also join the PC-related discussions and ask us questions on The Full Nerd’s Discord server. Finally, be sure to follow PCWorld on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch to watch future episodes live and pick our brains in real time! 

Author: Gordon Mah Ung, Executive Editor

One of founding fathers of hardcore tech reporting, Gordon has been covering PCs and components since 1998.

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