News Intel Z490 Chipset Launches: 50 Comet Lake-S Motherboards Detailed

namad7

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This quoted sentence is not a sentence and has no meaning.

"While many of these boards are feature-rich, it is worth noting none of these Z490 launch motherboards from Asus will not support PCIe 4.0 with Rocket Lake. "

It has a double negative none of these will not support. There's no way to have any idea what the author means here. I would GUESS he means none of these will support. Or perhaps all of these will not support. However there is no way to know. Please edit this typo, to fix it.
 

PCWarrior

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This quoted sentence is not a sentence and has no meaning.

"While many of these boards are feature-rich, it is worth noting none of these Z490 launch motherboards from Asus will not support PCIe 4.0 with Rocket Lake. "

It has a double negative none of these will not support. There's no way to have any idea what the author means here. I would GUESS he means none of these will support. Or perhaps all of these will not support. However there is no way to know. Please edit this typo, to fix it.
It means that ALL of these boards from ASUS will support PCIe4 with a Rocketlake cpu. It is also reflected on the price. The Z490 boards will be 20-50 dollars more expensive than the equivalent branded tier of Z390 boards, exactly because of the PCIe4.0 support
  • The Z390 TUF Gaming Plus (Wi-Fi) had an MSRP of $179. Now the Z490 TUF Gaming Plus (Wi-Fi) has an MSRP of $199, i.e 20 dollars higher.
  • The Prime Z390-A had an MSRP of $190. Now the Prime Z390-A had an MSRP of $230, i.e. 40 dollars higher.
  • The Z390 Formula had an MSRP of $450. Now the Z490 Formula has an MSRP of $500, i.e. 50 dollars higher.
 
I meant to ask this LAST gen, on the Z390 Dark, but it looks like EVGA has continued it with the Z490 Dark. Why in the name of God did they put the DIMM slots at the top of the motherboard when most every modern CPU air cooler is designed to have memory clearance to the right of the heatsink, not on top. Top DIMM slot designs pretty much rule out everything that is a halfway decent aftermarket cooler unless it's an AIO or custom loop.

Anybody have any insights on why those were moved, because I haven't found much on it. I know they rotated the CPU socket and eliminated two DIMM slots, moving them to the top of the motherboard, but that's about all I can find for both the Z390 and Z490 dark. Seems like stepping on your own junk to me.
 

xyriin

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It means that ALL of these boards from ASUS will support PCIe4 with a Rocketlake cpu. It is also reflected on the price. The Z490 boards will be 20-50 dollars more expensive than the equivalent branded tier of Z390 boards, exactly because of the PCIe4.0 support
  • The Z390 TUF Gaming Plus (Wi-Fi) had an MSRP of $179. Now the Z490 TUF Gaming Plus (Wi-Fi) has an MSRP of $199, i.e 20 dollars higher.
  • The Prime Z390-A had an MSRP of $190. Now the Prime Z390-A had an MSRP of $230, i.e. 40 dollars higher.
  • The Z390 Formula had an MSRP of $450. Now the Z490 Formula has an MSRP of $500, i.e. 50 dollars higher.
Incorrect, none of the launch ASUS boards will support PCIe 4.0 even if you get a Rocket Lake CPU a year from now. Asus clearly shows this on their launch site, no need to guess.

https://www.asus.com/us/site/motherboards/Intel-Z490/
 

PCWarrior

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Incorrect, none of the launch ASUS boards will support PCIe 4.0 even if you get a Rocket Lake CPU a year from now. Asus clearly shows this on their launch site, no need to guess.

https://www.asus.com/us/site/motherboards/Intel-Z490/
An official announcement clearly stating PCIe4 support would be disclosing information about a future product, something that is forbidden by Intel. It would also cause confusion and potentially be perceived as false advertsing as you would be unable to use PCIe4 with any cpu you can currently buy to use with these motherboards. But just because they don't officially say it on their product page it doesn't mean they don't support PCIe4. All big 4 motherboard vendors have confrimed to tech reviewers that all the necessary hardware to support PCIe4 (namely PCIe 4.0 timers, drivers, and redrivers, low loss PCBs) is baked into their Z490 motherboards. For ASUS, ASRock and MSI that spans across their entire Z490 lineup. For Gigabyte it is their entire Aorus and Vision lineups. Only Biostar and Supermicro will not support PCIe4 with their current Z490 boards.
 

xyriin

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An official announcement clearly stating PCIe4 support would be disclosing information about a future product, something that is forbidden by Intel. It would also cause confusion and potentially be perceived as false advertsing as you would be unable to use PCIe4 with any cpu you can currently buy to use with these motherboards. But just because they don't officially say it on their product page it doesn't mean they don't support PCIe4. All big 4 motherboard vendors have confrimed to tech reviewers that all the necessary hardware to support PCIe4 (namely PCIe 4.0 timers, drivers, and redrivers, low loss PCBs) is baked into their Z490 motherboards. For ASUS, ASRock and MSI that spans across their entire Z490 lineup. For Gigabyte it is their entire Aorus and Vision lineups. Only Biostar and Supermicro will not support PCIe4 with their current Z490 boards.

Are you just making stuff up at this point?

The article clearly states:

"All of the new MSI and ASRock’s product stack supports PCIe 4.0. Gigabyte’s coverage extends to the Aorus and Vision lines, while Biostar and Supermicro boards will not support it at all--at least according to the info we have as of this writing." (NO MENTION of Asus which you conveniently added all on your own)

"While many of these boards are feature-rich, it is worth noting none of these Z490 launch motherboards from Asus will not support PCIe 4.0 with Rocket Lake. That’s quite surprising considering multiple other board partners implemented this feature."

If you use context clues it was obviously a simple grammar error. Asus is not supporting PCIe 4.0 while the other manufacturers are.
 

PCWarrior

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Are you just making stuff up at this point?

The article clearly states:

"All of the new MSI and ASRock’s product stack supports PCIe 4.0. Gigabyte’s coverage extends to the Aorus and Vision lines, while Biostar and Supermicro boards will not support it at all--at least according to the info we have as of this writing." (NO MENTION of Asus which you conveniently added all on your own)

"While many of these boards are feature-rich, it is worth noting none of these Z490 launch motherboards from Asus will not support PCIe 4.0 with Rocket Lake. That’s quite surprising considering multiple other board partners implemented this feature."

If you use context clues it was obviously a simple grammar error. Asus is not supporting PCIe 4.0 while the other manufacturers are.
Sigh. First, my earlier response was to you citing the absence of PCIe4 being mentioned on ASUS’ webpage as a supposed ‘proof’ to back up the claim of absence of PCIe4 support on ASUS motherboards with Rocket lake. I just pointed out that this was no proof. Absence of confirmation is not confirmation of absence. As for me supposedly making stuff up and “conveniently adding ASUS to the text”, perhaps you need to read again what I wrote. I wrote “as the big 4 confirmed to tech reviewers”. You see I get my information from other sources as well. Perhaps you need to do that too.

ASUS on PCIe 4.0: “ASUS has not proactively marketed PCIe 4.0 support, because information pertaining to Intel’s next-gen processors is under NDA. Full validation cannot be performed until those chips are available to motherboard vendors. Please rest assured that many of our ASUS Z490 motherboards have been engineered for PCIe 4.0 readiness.”

Source:

Andreas Schilling editor of German site Hardwareluxx. Here are this tweets: 1, 2.
And here is a summary about PCIe4 support on Z490 boards on OC3D.

Besides, as the experience with AMD X470 boards has shown PCIe4 support on the primary x16 slot closest to the cpu socket is possible even without forward thinking about PCIe4 support and installation of dedicated PCIe4 hardware. The advantage of the Z490 boards with dedicated support for PCIe4 is:
(a)their capability of supporting the other slots as well (this is done through an additional external base clock generator and through re-drivers that boost PCI-E 4.0 signals to longer lengths),
(b) their capability of PCIe4 bifurcation i.e. splitting the PCIe 4.0 x16 signal into x8/x8 design
(c) their capability of enabling one of the M.2 slots to get x4 PCIe4 direct lanes (since Rocket-lake will have 20 direct PCIe4 lanes (4 for the M.2) instead of 16).

In other words PCIe4 hardware is for pretty much enabling full PCIe4 support on the PCIe slots and for some even on one M.2 slot. So the “many ASUS boards” that are confirmed to support PCIe4 will get full support and those that few (lowest end) that don’t will most likely get the primary x16 slot.

Anyway I rest my case. I wasted enough of time arguying with you already.
 

xyriin

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Sigh. First, my earlier response was to you citing the absence of PCIe4 being mentioned on ASUS’ webpage as a supposed ‘proof’ to back up the claim of absence of PCIe4 support on ASUS motherboards with Rocket lake. I just pointed out that this was no proof. Absence of confirmation is not confirmation of absence. As for me supposedly making stuff up and “conveniently adding ASUS to the text”, perhaps you need to read again what I wrote. I wrote “as the big 4 confirmed to tech reviewers”. You see I get my information from other sources as well. Perhaps you need to do that too.

ASUS on PCIe 4.0: “ASUS has not proactively marketed PCIe 4.0 support, because information pertaining to Intel’s next-gen processors is under NDA. Full validation cannot be performed until those chips are available to motherboard vendors. Please rest assured that many of our ASUS Z490 motherboards have been engineered for PCIe 4.0 readiness.”

Source:

Andreas Schilling editor of German site Hardwareluxx. Here are this tweets: 1, 2.
And here is a summary about PCIe4 support on Z490 boards on OC3D.

Besides, as the experience with AMD X470 boards has shown PCIe4 support on the primary x16 slot closest to the cpu socket is possible even without forward thinking about PCIe4 support and installation of dedicated PCIe4 hardware. The advantage of the Z490 boards with dedicated support for PCIe4 is:
(a)their capability of supporting the other slots as well (this is done through an additional external base clock generator and through re-drivers that boost PCI-E 4.0 signals to longer lengths),
(b) their capability of PCIe4 bifurcation i.e. splitting the PCIe 4.0 x16 signal into x8/x8 design
(c) their capability of enabling one of the M.2 slots to get x4 PCIe4 direct lanes (since Rocket-lake will have 20 direct PCIe4 lanes (4 for the M.2) instead of 16).

In other words PCIe4 hardware is for pretty much enabling full PCIe4 support on the PCIe slots and for some even on one M.2 slot. So the “many ASUS boards” that are confirmed to support PCIe4 will get full support and those that few (lowest end) that don’t will most likely get the primary x16 slot.

Anyway I rest my case. I wasted enough of time arguying with you already.
Using your very own source "Please rest assured that many of our ASUS Z490 motherboards have been engineered for PCIe 4.0 readiness." Keep in mind this is a tweet without a source, still does not promise full lineup support, and only talks about "engineered for readiness". If you're using that as fact...you should probably buy the Asus Z490 board now for your future Rocket Lake CPU =D
 

escksu

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I have to say Intel design sure sucks now. That DMI 3.0 is a massive bottleneck. Just 4GB/s of bandwidth. Its enough during SATA days but not so for nvme days.........They have 2.5Gb/s ethernet. They have superspeed USB, etc... all using that miserable 4Gb/s link.......Even if the board give your 4 nvme slots for your RAID 0 its also useless.....
 
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Alright towns folk!! I picked up the ASUS Z490 Creator 10G MoBo to pair it with a i9-10900T, yep that's correct. The goal is to build a file server that runs around a light bulb 24/7. I know the board is overkill but I liked not having to buy a separate 10G card. In any case, the board says it will support 4600 RAM but the proc only 2933. My question is should I get 3000, 3200, 4400, or 4600 RAM? I know the 44&46 are overkill but what's the point in building an intel board that supports 4600 RAM but the chips are only 2933?