In this video I’m digging into Intel’s new Granite Rapids Xeon 600 workstation platform, using the Asus Pro WS W890-SAGE as the foundation and a 64-core Xeon 696X engineering sample. It’s the sort of exotic kit you don’t just have lying around, so I had to source the CPU on loan, pair it with eight modules of brutally expensive Kingston DDR5-5600 RDIMM (128GB total), and cool the 350W-class chip with a proper Noctua workstation cooler. I also walk through what’s actually changed vs Sapphire Rapids/W790—Intel 3 process, new LGA4710-2 socket, up to 128 lanes of PCIe Gen5, FP16 support, and chipset tweaks like Wi-Fi 7 support (though this board doesn’t include Wi-Fi out of the box). On the motherboard itself, I cover the CEB layout, the heavy VRM heatsinks (including active cooling), the 12+2+2+1+2 VRM setup, and the sheer amount of power connectors and storage options (Gen5 M.2, SATA, SlimSAS). Then it’s into testing: Blender stress, Cinebench, Geekbench, HandBrake and 7-Zip, with comparisons against AMD Threadripper 9980X/9970X. The big takeaway is W890 is clearly a step forward, but this particular Xeon 696X sample behaves oddly in places (Geekbench especially), so I’m reserving final judgement on Xeon 600 until I can test a full retail CPU. The board itself lands on an 8.5/10 and is well worth buying—just don’t expect freebies like IPMI or Wi-Fi included.