Intel ® Z490 AORUS Motherboard with Direct 12+1 Phases Digital VRM Design, Comprehensive Thermal Solution with Fins-Array II, ESSential USB DAC, Intel ® WiFi 6 802.11ax, Intel ® 2.5GbE LAN, RGB FUSION 2.0 As expected, the quality of the processing of this board is very good in this price category. During testing, I did not encounter any problems with the software or drivers, which is also positive. I like that the board has a POST LCD for error codes and also LEDs showing a possible problem. It's also nice to find M.2 disk coolers on the board. Each header can be set to monitor and react to three user-configurable thermal sensors for workload-based cooling, and all settings can be easily managed by Fan Xpert 4 or via the UEFI.​

So while you need a whole new motherboard platform for Intel's new chips, there's a strong chance it will last for a few CPU generations to come. Especially given Intel's propensity for 14nm silicon… While 10th Generation CPUs may not have shaken the foundations of the tech world, they are the fastest gaming chips around. If your current gaming machine is several years old then upgrading right now will get you a faster system in every way. Faster cores and more of them, faster networking, faster and higher capacity memory, faster storage, and faster USB amongst other things. Upgrading from the 7th, 8th or 9th to 10th generation might not be a big leap, but 2nd to 10th Gen sure is!GIGABYTE's EasyTune™ is a simple and easy-to-use interface that allows users to fine-tune their system settings or Intel ® Z490 Ultra Durable Motherboard with Direct 11+1 Phases Digital VRM, Extended MOS Heatsink, Dual NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2, GbE Gaming LAN, Integrated I/O Shield, Q-Flash PLUS, RGB FUSION 2.0 LAN: Upgradednetwork solution for professional and multimedia use. Delivers a secure, stable and fast network connection AI Cooling: Manages and controls all motherboard fans, automatically optimising settings based on current system load and temperature

Thermal Reactive Armor with Fins-Array II Heatsink, Direct Touch Heatpipe II and NanoCarbon Baseplate Intel ® Z490 AORUS Motherboard with Direct 12+1 Phase Digital VRM Design, Comprehensive Thermal Solution with Enlarged Surface Heatsink, 2.5GbE LAN, RGB FUSION 2.0ROG Strix motherboards deliver sterling performance and superior aesthetics to Outshine the Competition. ASUS Aura offers full RGB lighting control with a variety of functional presets for the built-in RGB LEDs as well as strips connected to the onboard RGB header — and it can all be synced with an ever-growing portfolio of Aura-capable ASUS hardware. The maximum memory capacity on the Z490 motherboard is 128GB. After Intel updated the memory reference code, a single Revisions to the motherboard's trace routing provide the latest Intel processors with unrestricted access to memory bandwidth. Realtek 8118 LAN is a high performance and friendly network chip for gaming players with automatic bandwidth allocation to Intel ® Z490 GAMING Motherboard with Direct 11+1 Phases Power Design, 2-Way CrossFire™ Multi-Graphics, Intel ® GbE with cFosSpeed, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A, Dual M.2 with 1 Thermal Guard, Smart Fan 5, Dual Armor with Ultra Durable™ Technology, RGB FUSION 2.0, Q-FLASH PLUS