Wednesday, April 22nd 2020
GIGABYTE AORUS Z490 Motherboard Lineup Leaked, PCIe Gen 4 Readiness Included
Here are some of the first pictures of GIGABYTE's AORUS Gaming series socket LGA1200 motherboard lineup based on Intel Z490 chipset. The biggest feature with some of these boards is forwards-compatibility for PCI-Express gen 4.0 on 11th generation Core "Rocket Lake" processors. These boards will not run PCIe gen 4.0 with a "Comet Lake" processor in place, but rather feature all the physical and electrical preparation to enable PCIe gen 4.0 when processors with gen 4.0 root-complexes do come out on this socket. These include slots that meet gen 4.0 requirements, gen 4.0-rated re-drivers, lane switches, M.2 NVMe slots, and other PCB-level enhancements to support PCIe gen 4.0 signal integrity.
GIGABYTE's Z490 motherboard lineup is vast, with 14 SKUs, from which 8 are in the coveted AORUS Gaming series. The Z490 Xtreme WaterForce leads the pack, with its included CPU+VRM monoblock, followed by its air-cooled twin, the Z490 Xtreme. The AORUS Z490 Master is next in line, with a firm footing in the enthusiast segment, thanks to its elaborate CPU VRM solutions, and PCB heatsink assembly. This board is closely followed by the AORUS Z490 Ultra, with a similar appearance to Master, but a toned down CPU VRM solution. The AORUS Z490 PRO series sits in the middle of this lineup, with a fairly well-endowed feature set. The AORUS Z490 Elite is where the lineup begins. There are several other models from GIGABYTE's Gaming and Ultra Durable families, listed int he feature-set slide below.
Source:
VideoCardz
GIGABYTE's Z490 motherboard lineup is vast, with 14 SKUs, from which 8 are in the coveted AORUS Gaming series. The Z490 Xtreme WaterForce leads the pack, with its included CPU+VRM monoblock, followed by its air-cooled twin, the Z490 Xtreme. The AORUS Z490 Master is next in line, with a firm footing in the enthusiast segment, thanks to its elaborate CPU VRM solutions, and PCB heatsink assembly. This board is closely followed by the AORUS Z490 Ultra, with a similar appearance to Master, but a toned down CPU VRM solution. The AORUS Z490 PRO series sits in the middle of this lineup, with a fairly well-endowed feature set. The AORUS Z490 Elite is where the lineup begins. There are several other models from GIGABYTE's Gaming and Ultra Durable families, listed int he feature-set slide below.
36 Comments on GIGABYTE AORUS Z490 Motherboard Lineup Leaked, PCIe Gen 4 Readiness Included
Maybe its for those of us who prefer things rather geometrically plain.
This time it does feel a bit lower end, maybe even sub- Aorus Pro level, somewhere in between Gaming X and Pro i would say. Besides the {censoered} controller they opted to implement, which is a nice touch and not too expensive from the usual stuff. I do hope pricing will justify the design, and be somewhere around 200$ for the G
At least adoption on Intel platform will make this a mainstream feature, so we may finally see a proper choice of SSDs.
For now this is limited to a handful of expensive products.
Then again... PCIe 4.0 SSDs are hot and problematic. So most people won't get one anyway.
What we could really benefit from is a SATA successor...
Soon external SSDs will be faster than internal ones.
I'm amazed!
Also, most (all?) recent sockets have supported 2 generations of CPUs. I'm not sure what you're talking about...
genarchitecture CPUs on the same socket.Intel has supported 2 very different architechtures on the same socket, and LGA1200 will move into a less dramatic change, but sure a decent one next year with RKL-S for these
Earlier architectures were carefully planned, so it made sense to launch them on new sockets.
Rocket Lake is a forced backport of Tiger Lake onto 14nm. So they just don't care. They'll make it work on the existing socket.
For gods sake, what is the point of releasing "a PCIe 4.0 ready motherboard" that requires new CPU's with a new LGA socket ? Nobody even knows when that CPU line supporting PCIe 4.0 will arrive.