Economic woes notwithstanding, that’s a lot of money, particularly when the equally strong MSI and Gigabyte Z490 motherboards are a bit cheaper. Intel ® Z490 Creator Motherboard with Direct 12+1 Phases Power Design, Direct Touch Heatpipe II /w Micro-Block Heatsink, Intel ® 2. Turbo LAN with cFosSpeed traffic-shaping technology adds even more lag-reducing support and an intuitive user interface, so you can reduce lag by up to 1. ASUS LANGuard is a hardware-level network protection feature that integrates advanced signal-coupling technology and premium anti-EMI surface-mounted capacitors to improve throughput and ensure a more reliable connection.

Intel ® Z490 AORUS Motherboard with Direct 12+1 Phases Digital VRM Design, Comprehensive Thermal Solution with NanoCarbon Fins-Array II, Intel ® WiFi 6 802. improvement over standard Ethernet connections for faster file transfers, smoother lag-free gaming and high-res video streaming. Gen 2 2x2 (20 Gbps) as well, but those ports are managed with a 3rd party controller (ASMedia) and aren't native to the chipset.Not only has the brand been a favourite of our readers year-on-year, but this year’s results have been their highest in the last decade, surpassing their previous high of 62% in 2020’s Awards. Refer to our extensive list of guaranteed-compatible components, it also includes a dedicated Qualified Vendor List (QVL) for memory — so you can build fuss-free. The U-shaped design allows rapid and even heat transfer from the VRM to the extended MOS heatsink for better performance and wattage resistance.

TUF Gaming motherboards are designed to be easy to set up and configure just the way you want —even for first-time builders. Revisions to the motherboard's trace routing provide the latest Intel processors with unrestricted access to memory bandwidth. But faster ethernet is still valuable for transfers within your own network (assuming your other hardware is capable of similar speeds). You might expect all Z490 boards to handle K-series Intel processors well, but that's rarely the case with budget-oriented models, especially if you plan on overclocking.Way Optimization is an automated tuning utility that optimizes overclocking and cooling profiles for your unique system configuration. Stable LAN, faster storage and USB transfer speed and other expandable connectors are ready to enlarge your flexibility.

Below, we’ll detail what we know about all the new boards and the chipset so far -- including PCIe 4. From a single intuitive interface, Armoury Crate puts command of all your Aura gear at your fingertips, with the new Aura Creator ready.The Digi+ voltage-regulator module (VRM) delivers real-time control over voltage droop, switching frequency and power-efficiency settings, allowing you to fine-tune CPU voltage regulation for ultimate stability and performance.

The Asrock Z490 Phantom Gaming-ITX is also quite good, but suffers the same CPU compatibility problem as the Asus. The board packs a dozen 45A power stages for the vcore portion of the VRM with some rather large heatsinks, so it'll have no trouble overclocking the Core i9-10900K, even with minimal air-flow.With how Intel measures TDP and the new chips boosting as high as they are, this is a welcome sight, especially for the hardcore overclockers. And as you might expect, it gets quite a bit of premium features from its more premium brethren from the ROG Maximus XII family too. Every aspect of ProArt Series motherboards is built to remove barriers and deliver optimal performance to content creators who work in 3D modeling and rendering, animation or media production. Prime Z490-A utilises a unique audio codec designed in close collaboration with Realtek — the Realtek S1220A. Maximum memory support on Z490 receives a slight increase from DDR4 2666 to DDR4 2933 for the new Core i7/i9 CPUs.