ASUS PRIME B860M-K Intel motherboard & Ultra 5 245K CPU combo with Shin-Etsu X-23-7868-2D thermal grease

Combo contents

This bundle pairs an ASUS PRIME B860M-K motherboard with an Intel Ultra 5 245K processor and a tube of Shin-Etsu X-23-7868-2D thermal grease. The board uses the LGA 1851 socket and is built around the Intel B860 chipset in a micro-ATX layout. The CPU is a 125 W Arrow Lake part manufactured on TSMC N3B with 24 MB L3 and 26 MB L2 cache. The included grease has a thermal conductivity of 6.2 W/m·k and a suggested replacement cycle of two years.

Upgrade context

The combination replaces a system based on an older LGA 1700 platform running 12th- to 14th-generation Intel Core or Core Ultra Series 2 processors. Moving to LGA 1851 brings the newer Arrow Lake architecture and the DDR5-7600+ memory optimisation offered by ASUS Enhanced Memory Profile III. The jump is worthwhile when the workload benefits from the updated core design, higher memory speeds and the dual M.2 arrangement with one PCIe 5.0 x4 slot at 128 Gbps and one PCIe 4.0 x4 slot at 64 Gbps.

Interface limits

The board provides a PCIe 5.0 x16 SafeSlot Core+ for graphics and the two M.2 slots described above. Rear I/O includes a USB 10 Gbps Type-A port and a 2.5 Gb Ethernet jack, while a front-panel USB 5 Gbps Type-C header is available internally. Storage connects through SATA 6 Gbps ports. Memory support tops out at DDR5-7600+(OC) via AEMP III. The thermal grease viscosity is rated at 100 Pa·s with a thermal resistance of 0.07 °C·cm²/W, and the paste is grey in colour.