Friday, April 17th 2020
ASUS Leaks PRIME Z490-P and Z490-A Motherboards for Intel's 10th Gen
ASUS has inadvertently leaked images of their upcoming PRIME Z490-P and Z490-A motherboards, which will accompany the introduction of Intel's 10th Gen "Ice Lake" CPUs. As is usual with Intel, the new generation CPU release will be met with a new chipset launch, of which ASUS apparently has finalized designs: the company has uploaded Z490 pictures on their current Z390 PRIME webpage.
Like with previous ASUS designs, the PRIME Z490-P seems to target budget-conscious users, with a reduced feature set including a no-frills VRM heatsink design (which means the VRM itself isn't a top-tier one) and a pretty basic on-board sound processor. The motherboard still packs 2x M.2 slots and 2x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots, though the rest of the expansion slots are of the 1x kind (4x slots in total). The Z490-A, though, boasts of a more premium construction, with oversized heatsinks (including for at least one of the M.2 slots) and 3x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots alongside 3x Pcie 3.0 1x slots. The sound processing subsystem has also been clearly beefed up in comparison.
Sources:
ASUS, via Videocardz
Like with previous ASUS designs, the PRIME Z490-P seems to target budget-conscious users, with a reduced feature set including a no-frills VRM heatsink design (which means the VRM itself isn't a top-tier one) and a pretty basic on-board sound processor. The motherboard still packs 2x M.2 slots and 2x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots, though the rest of the expansion slots are of the 1x kind (4x slots in total). The Z490-A, though, boasts of a more premium construction, with oversized heatsinks (including for at least one of the M.2 slots) and 3x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots alongside 3x Pcie 3.0 1x slots. The sound processing subsystem has also been clearly beefed up in comparison.
52 Comments on ASUS Leaks PRIME Z490-P and Z490-A Motherboards for Intel's 10th Gen
Too bad the heat sinks are still mostly metal blobs instead of proper fins.
If it were up to me, they should make a no nonsense affordable SSI-EEB motherboard without any RGB-sh*t, Wifi, etc., just loads of expansion, good cooling and a spacious layout.
I agree though. Seems a waste of space. I'd rather have more USB, more of anything else. There's always that one guy still clinging to his mechanical keyboard from 1987 though.
And that aside, this is a budget product. It will be a bit barebones..That seems unlikely, since USB devices have defined class codes in their descriptors.
www.usb.org/defined-class-codes
USB is just a bus, which can be used for many protocols, including USB HID, which is the default for input devices. Standard USB HID is limited to 6-key rollover, and may have latencies up to 10ms if I remember the spec sheet correctly. Some gaming keyboards have additional protocols which may support N-key rollover and faster polling rates, but these requires drivers in order to work. E.g. CM Masterkeys runs N-key rollover fine in Windows, but was limited 6-key rollover in Ubuntu last time I tried. I haven't found an universal solution to this problem yet. But if you know specific keyboards which are confirmed to be fully supported across platforms, let me know.
The TB header is for connecting what I seem to remember is an SPI cable from the PCIe based Thunderbolt add-in card Asus makes. You still need an external DP input as well, at least if you want the display signal over TB.
www.asus.com/Motherboard-Accessories/ThunderboltEX-3/
Three Sides LIve
So maybe Asus is running out of topological real estate for power stages and they will use the north bridge/Apex nameplate area for the new Maximus XII Apex 2-dimm superboard, and fill it up with sweet VRM goodness. To run the 10-core K-suffix CML beast processor.
LGA1200 socket surrounded on three sides by power stages. Woooooo :clap:
Ok, I speculate way too much, just go ahead and say it. :D
heardread that here regarding LGA1200. Care to elaborate why you think that'd be possible even if pin arrangement were to be nearly the same?MSI Z490 Godlike photos just (leaked) showed up. Also, an early and most likely arbitrary price list - just covered in salt. lol :rolleyes:
Here it is, for what it's worth. lol
€960? The only godlike thing about it is probably the price lol