ASRock Reveals Intel H470, B460, H410 Motherboards For 10th Gen Comet Lake CPUs

Motherboard vendors took advantage of Intel's 10th Generation Comet Lake-S spotlight to reveal their shiny, brand-new Z490 motherboards. Budget-focused PC builders have nothing to fear as ASRock's latest listings suggest that the non-Z motherboards should be right around the corner as well.

Consumers who don't fancy a Z490 motherboard have three other mainstream options at hand, including the H470, B460, and H410 chipsets. Technically, the W480 chipset is also on the table, but that chipset is tailored to the workstation crowd, so there are probably features that your everyday user will never use.

Right off the top, the Z490 chipset offers two features that aren't available in the other chipsets: Overclocking and two-way Nvidia SLI support. Motherboard manufacturers like ASRock have introduced a proprietary feature called Base Frequency Boost (BFB) that lets you overclock a locked Comet Lake-S processor's base clock on a non-Z motherboard. We don't know how Intel feels about that, or if the chipmaker will eventually disable ASRock's solution in the future. 

On the topic of multi-GPU configurations, Z490 is the only chipset out of the 400-series lot that supports a x8/x8 configuration. Nvidia graphics cards require eight PCIe lanes as a minimum for SLI. Therefore, the Z490 is the only suitable model for a two-way Nvidia SLI configuration. AMD graphics cards, on the other hand, are happy with just four PCIe lanes to build a CrossFireX configuration. Depending on the motherboard layout, the H470, B460, and H410 chipsets can run up to a three-way CrossFireX setup. If you plan to overclock your processor, run a two-way SLI configuration, or both, a Z490 motherboard is your best bet.

Of the three available alternatives, the H470 chipset is the closest you can get to the Z490 chipset without paying the premium. It basically comes with four fewer PCIe 3.0 lanes and two fewer USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 and USB 3.2 Gen 1x1 ports. Other than that, the H470 chipset retains the majority of the Z490's feature set, such as Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 functionality and support for Intel Optane, Smart Sound, etc.

B460, which is designed to be business-oriented, is a legit option as well. The difference between it and the H470 chipset is minimal. Essentially, you sacrifice wireless connectivity and USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 ports.

The H410 is at the bottom of the barrel, and will likely entice PC builders that have a really tight budget. In comparison to the other chipsets, H410 only comes with two DDR4 memory slots. The PCIe 3.0 lanes are limited to six, and you only get access to four SATA III ports, which lack support for RAID arrays. You will only see USB 3.2 Gen 1x1 and USB 2.0 ports on H410 motherboards. Not to mention that you lose out on Intel Optane and Smart Sound.

ASRock H470 Motherboards

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ASRock B460 Motherboards

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ASRock H410 Motherboards

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