Intel Z490 Preview – First look at the motherboards!

1. Intel Z490 - Asus Maximus XII Hero and Gigabyte Aorus Master2. Gigabyte Aorus Pro AX and Ultra3. Gigabyte Xtreme Waterforce and MSI MEG Ace4. MSI MPG Gaming Carbon and MEG Godlike5. View All Pages

MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon WiFi

Estimated Price £250

Key Features

• Form factor ATX
• CPU VRMs 12x60A
• Memory support 4800MHz (OC)
• Graphics PCI Express 2x PCI 3.0 x16 or x8/x8 with SLI and CrossFireX
• M.2 slots x2
• USB:
  • 5x USB 3.2 Gen 2
  • 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1
  • 6x USB 2.0
• Ethernet Realtek 2.5Gb
• Wi-Fi Intel 2×2 Wi-Fi 6
• ‘PCIe Gen4 Ready.'

MSI MEG Z490 Godlike

Estimated Price £700

• Key Features
• Form factor E-ATX
• CPU VRMs 16x90A
• Memory support 5000MHz (OC)
• Graphics PCI Express 2x PCI 3.0 x16 or x8/x8 with SLI and CrossFireX.
• M.2 slots x3
• USB:
  • 5x USB 3.2 Gen 2
  • 8x USB 3.2 Gen 1
  • 6x USB 2.0
• Ethernet Aquantia 10Gb+ Realtek 2.5Gb
• Wi-Fi Intel 2×2 Wi-Fi 6
• ‘PCIe Gen4 Ready.'

Closing Thoughts

Intel's latest refresh of its Coffee Lake architecture has pushed their desktop platform to a new LGA1200 socket that supports up to ten cores and 20 threads. This is clearly a long way shy of AMD's mighty 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X yet the motherboard manufacturers have gone hell-for-leather with Z490 with their choice of VRM hardware. Mid-range Z490 motherboards sport 10x50A stages while the high end models  go to the limit with 16x90A. We have not yet tested Core i9-10900K but based on the showing of these motherboards we anticipate a significant amount of power and heat. Hopefully that will be matched with a suitable level of performance.

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KitGuru Says: We will be reviewing Intel 10th Gen in the near future so hold on to your hats as it might get stormy!

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