Asus leaks two PRIME Z490 motherboards ahead of launch

We shouldn’t have to wait too much longer for Intel to launch its 10^th generation desktop Core CPU line up and it seems as though motherboard manufacturers are putting the final touches on product pages ready for the big launch.

Rumours have been circulating for a while that Intel will launch its 10^th generation Comet Lake-S desktop processors sometime this month, whether that has been pushed back due to the COVID-19 pandemic we will have to see. However, if the Asus product pages are anything to go by, it looks like the release could be edging closer since the motherboard manufacturer leaked a couple of its own upcoming motherboards for the new Intel desktop platform this week.

It appears Asus inadvertently posted images on its product pages of a couple of its own impending LGA1200 Z490 motherboards. The Asus Z490 Prime motherboard page was spotted by the guys over at VideoCardz, but Asus quickly removed the page not long afterwards. The apparent slip up seems like an accidental mishap at Asus since the page link should have directed us to the current crop of Z390 Prime boards and not Z490.

The two boards that were leaked by Asus include the PRIME Z490-P, a standard ATX size cost-effective motherboard aimed at the lower end of the market. This could be Asus budget Z490 offering with minimal VRM cooling and a lack of premium features like an I/O shroud, M.2 heat spreaders and such like.

The other Asus PRIME Z490-A leaked motherboard seems to be a more premium offering with larger VRM cooling, built-in I/O shroud, shield plate and multiple M.2 drive heat spreaders. As we can see from the images, the Z490-P has just two PCIe x16 slots, whereas the Z490-A has four as well as three x1 slots. Both boards seem to lack any Wi-Fi and have single ethernet ports, while the PRIME Z490-A also seems to have RGB lighting onboard too.

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KitGuru says: We are looking forward to seeing how much improvement 10^th generation Comet Lake-S processors offer in gaming compared to the previous generation. Are any of you guys thinking of upgrading to Comet Lake-S when it launches?

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