Last week, Intel finally announced its long-awaited 10th Generation Comet Lake-S processors for desktops. Although you can't pre-order the CPUs yet, the Z490 motherboards are up for pre-order today.
Various retailers around the world are starting to list their Z490 motherboard offerings. Among the major retailers in the U.S., Newegg has already listed a total of 40 Z490 boards from the likes of Asus, ASRock, MSI and Gigabyte, and Amazon has also started adding the LGA1200-based motherboards to its arsenal.
We recently detailed the Intel Z490 chipset and Comet Lake-S motherboards (50 boards, to be exact). All things considered, the Z490 motherboards don't bring a lot of new features to the table. They come with a new chipset and a new CPU socket, LGA1200, but many of the boards only support PCIe 3.0, though there are a few that stand out with PCIe 4.0. But keep in mind that Comet Lake-S CPUs don't support PCIe 4.0. That feature is expected to come with the upcoming Rocket Lake-S launch. Thankfully, Z490 and LGA1200 should support the 11th Gen CPUs too.
Pricing for the boards ranges from $150 for the cheapest of the bunch to about $200 for the boards with the kit that mid-tier boards are expected to pack. You can also splurge well upwards of $700 for the best motherboards in the Z490 lot with options for E-ATX designs, water blocks and very elaborate power delivery subsystems for maximum overclocking potential.
The Z490 motherboards will be released on May 20 with the Intel Comet Lake-S desktop processors. However, as tempting as it might be to buy a new motherboard early, we recommend waiting for us to test out Comet Lake-S before investing in the platform.
