Intel's 10th generation Core "Comet Lake-S" desktop processor series inches chose to its probable April 2020 launch. Along the way we get this fascinating leak of the company's Core i7-10700K desktop processor, which could become a go-to chip for gamers if its specifications and pricing hold up. Thai PC enthusiast TUM_APISAK revealed what could be a Futuremark SystemInfo screenshot of the i7-10700K which confirms its clock speeds - 3.80 GHz nominal, with an impressive 5.30 GHz Turbo Boost. Intel is probably tapping into the series' increased maximum TDP of 125 W to clock these chips high across the board.

The Core i7-10700K features 8 cores, and HyperThreading enables 16 threads. It also features 16 MB of shared L3 cache. In essence, this chip has the same muscle as the company's current mainstream desktop flagship, the i9-9900K, but demoted to the Core i7 brand extension. This could give it a sub-$400 price, letting it compete with the likes of AMD's Ryzen 7 3800X and possibly even triggering a price-cut on the 3900X. The i7-10700K in APISAK's screenshot is shown running on an ECS Z490H6-A2 motherboard, marking the company's return to premium Intel chipsets. ECS lacks Z390 or Z370 based motherboards in its lineup, and caps out at B360.

Thanks to the findings of VideoCardz, we have information that GIGABYTE has listed its upcoming motherboards for AMD and Intel platforms. Starting with AMD's upcoming mid-range chipset, the B550 model is supposed to bring PCIe 4.0 connectivity options to lower-priced motherboard variants. So far, only high-end chipset versions like X570 had PCIe 4.0 support, while the mid-range option was lacking. GIGABYTE has prepared a total of six B550 AORUS models, along with a GAMING series which is supposed to be a tier below AORUS models. The B550 chipset will span all motherboard sizes, including ATX, Micro-ATX, and Mini-ITX.

In the EEC listing, GIGABYTE also submitted Intel's upcoming Z490 motherboards for Comet Lake-S CPUs. In the listing, we see a total of 15 motherboards listed with an unusable entry. Again the W480 chipset appears, which is meant to power workstation motherboards. This chipset will go inside a new motherboard lineup called the "VISION" series. While we don't know what this new series brings, we know that both the workstation enabled W480 chipset and regular Z490 chipset will be a part of it.

According to VideoCardz, ASRock has already listed Intel's upcoming lineup of motherboards in its Polychrome Sync software for controlling the RGB lighting of your motherboard. In the installed program files, ASRock displays several of the models that are a part of Intel's upcoming LGA1200-based Comet Lake-S 10th generation of CPUs. There are a total of nine Z490 motherboards and they are ASRock Z490 AQUA, Phantom Gaming 4, Phantom Gaming 4 SR, Phantom Gaming 6, Pro4, Steel Legend, Taichi, Z490M ITX AC, and Z490M Pro4.

When it comes to the cheaper, non-overclockable H470 chipset, there are two motherboards listed - H470 Steel Legend and H470M ITX AC. Additionally, perhaps one of the most interesting finds is the appearance of W480 chipset meant for workstation solutions. The motherboard using the new chipset is a model named W480 Creator, which should be a new addition to the consumer motherboard lineup.

Intel's upcoming 400-series desktop chipset will lack support for PCI-Express gen 4.0. The motherboards will stick to gen 3.0 for both the main x16 PEG slots wired to the LGA1200 socket, and general purpose PCIe lanes from the PCH, according to a Tom's Hardware report. It was earlier expected that 400-series chipset motherboards will come with preparation for PCIe gen 4.0, so even if the upcoming 10th gen "Comet Lake" desktop processors lacked gen 4.0 root-complexes, the boards would be fully ready for the new bus standard in 11th gen "Rocket Lake" desktop processors.

10th gen "Comet Lake" desktop processors are built on 14 nm process, and implement Intel's current-gen CPU core design Intel has been implementing since 6th gen "Skylake." It's only with 11th gen "Rocket Lake" that the mainstream desktop platform could see a new CPU core design, with the company reportedly back-porting "Willow Cove" CPU cores to the 14 nm process. "Rocket Lake" is also expected to feature a small Gen12 iGPU with 32 execution units, and a new-gen uncore component that implements PCIe gen 4.0. PCIe gen 4.0 doubles bandwidth over gen 3.0, and while only a handful GPUs support it, the standard is made popular by a new generation of M.2 NVMe SSDs that are able to utilize the added bandwidth to push sequential transfer rates beyond M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 limitations.

As we gear up for another Intel CPU launch with their 10th Gen Comet Lake-S CPUs with up to 10 cores, motherboard manufacturers have to go through the process of getting their products approved through various regulatory requirements. The Eurasian Economic Commission is one which constantly gives little snippets towards the future, and now, MSI motherboards based on Intel's Z490 chipset and LGA 1200 socket have shown up.

Knowing MSI's usual staple of motherboards for each product generation, there aren't many surprises here. The entries refer to these MSI motherboards: Z490-A PRO (Standard ATX); Creator Z490I (Mini-ITX); MAG Z490 TOMAHAWK (Standard ATX); MPG Z490M GAMING EDGE WIFI (Micro-ATX); MPG Z490 GAMING; CARBON WIFI (Standard ATX); MPG Z490 GAMING PLUS (Standard ATX); MEG Z490I UNIFY (Mini-ITX); MEG Z490 UNIFY (Standard ATX); MPG Z490 GAMING EDGE; WIFI (Standard ATX); MEG Z490 ACE (Standard ATX); MEG Z490 GODLIKE (E-ATX). You can expect the GODLIKE to be so in both features and price, as usual, topping out MSI's lineup.

BIOSTAR have left out a teaser trailer for a new motherboard, which seemingly packs an improvement to the company's RGB design on the heatsinks surrounding the CPU area. While this could simply be a new product announcement for an already existing motherboard lineup, we know fully well that Intel is gearing up for the announcement of their Comet Lake-S family of CPUs, which have already been broadly approached in this publication. It makes sense for motherboard companies, who are certainly already privy to the new Intel platform specifications, to start teasing the new features they've come up with to accompany a new generation of motherboards.

Intel's Comet Lake-S family will introduce builders to the new Intel LGA 1200 socket (some things never do change). The new 10000 series CPUs should see another core bump through the lineup, with the top of the line Core I9-10900K CPU sporting a reported 125 W TDP running through its 10-core, 20-thread design. Considering the number of leaks and additional information that has been recently coming to light regarding Intel's latest CPU launch, it seems plausible that the company is gearing up to an announcement, and as such, motherboard makers are also flexing their marketing muscles to get in the first wave of sales.

A 3DMark results database entry confirmed that the 10th generation Core i5 desktop processor will indeed feature HyperThreading (HTT). Based on the 14 nm "Comet Lake" silicon, the next-gen Core i5 processor will be 6-core/12-thread. Besides HTT, the processors will feature higher clock-speeds than their 9th generation counterparts. In the 3DMark validation, a Core i5-10600 processor is referenced, featuring 6 cores and 12 logical processors. The chip has a nominal clock-speed of 3.30 GHz in its name string (a 200 MHz increment over the i5-9600), although its Turbo Boost frequency hasn't been detected properly by SystemInfo.

It's possible that the maximum Turbo Boost will be a similar 100-200 MHz gain over the 4.60 GHz of the i5-9600. It remains to be seen what L3 cache amount Intel gives these chips. The 6-core/12-thread Core i7-8700 has 12 MB, or an additional 512 KB L3 slice per core, to cope with the HTT overhead, although there have been exceptions to this rule in the company's mobile processor lineup. Intel is expected to debut its 10th generation Core "Comet Lake" processor series alongside the Z490 Express chipset in April 2020.

Intel is inching closer to the launch of its socket LGA1200 mainstream desktop platform based on its 400-series chipset and 14 nm "Comet Lake-S" silicon. The platform provides a forward upgrade path to the company's 10 nm "Ice Lake-S" processors when they come out. "Comet Lake-S" is a derivative of the "Skylake" microarchitecture that's been scaled up to 10 CPU cores, and HyperThreading enabled across the board, with clock speeds pushed to the limits of the 14 nm silicon fabrication process. The TDP of some of these parts is reportedly set as high as 125 W. GIGABYTE is ready with dozens of motherboards for these processors, based on one of five chipsets - Z490, H470, Q470, B460, and H410.

The Intel Z490 Express will be the top-end chipset geared toward gamers and enthusiasts wanting to overclock their processors. The H470 will be a slight step down, and possibly lack multi-GPU and CPU overclocking support. The Q470 is its twin with certain enterprise-relevant features. The B460 is the mid-range chipset, targeting a spectrum of users including gamers who don't overclock their CPU. The H410 will be the entry-level chipset for everyone else. What's interesting about GIGABYTE's list of motherboards filed for regulatory clearance from the Eurasian Economic Commission, is that is looks partial. There are far too few AORUS-branded products.

Intel is rumored to have shelved the iteration of its upcoming Z390 Express chipset as earlier publicized, the one which had certain new hardware features. It could now re-brand the existing Z370 Express as Z390 Express and probably bolster its reference design with heftier CPU VRM specifications, to cope better with its upcoming 8-core LGA1151 processors. The Z370 Express is similar in feature-set to the brink of being identical to its predecessor, the Z270 Express. This move could impact certain new hardware features that were on the anvil, such as significantly more USB 3.1 gen 2/gen1 ports directly from the PCH, integrated WiFi MAC, and Intel SmartSound technology, which borrowed certain concepts from edge-computing to implement native speech-to-text conversion directly on the chipset, for improved voice control latency and reduced CPU overhead.

The reasons behind this move could be a combination of last-minute cost-benefit analyses by Intel's bean-counters, and having to mass-produce Z390 Express on the busier-than-expected 14 nm silicon fabrication node, as opposed to current 300-series chipsets being built on the 22 nm node that's nearing the end of its life-cycle. Intel probably needed the switch to 14 nm for the significant increases in transistor-counts arising from the additional USB controllers, the WiFi MAC, and the SmartSound logic. Intel probably doesn't have the vacant 14 nm node capacity needed to mass-produce the Z390 yet, as its transition to future processes such as 10 nm and 7 nm are still saddled with setbacks and delays; and redesigning the Z390 (as we knew it) on 22 nm may have emerged unfeasible (i.e. the chip may have ended up too big and/or too hot). The Z390 Express chipset block-diagram, which we published in our older article has been quietly removed from Intel's website. It's also rumored that this move could force AMD to rethink its plans to launch its Z490 socket AM4 chipset.

Bluechip computer, a German IT distribution company, has inadvertently spilled the beans on AMD and Intel's plans for the remainder of this year, shedding some more light on a number of products whose existence was still somewhat marred in fog. The information comes straight from a webinar Bluechip presented to its industry partners - a 30-minute presentation which made its way to YouTube.

The information gleaned is a confirmation, of sorts, of AMD's planned launch of their Z490 platform in June; the B450 chipset coming a little bit later, in July (an expected product, in every sense); and AMD's second-gen Threadripper, a known-quantity already, which should accompany a X399 platform refresh.

AMD is reportedly readying a new high-end motherboard chipset positioned higher than even its upcoming X470 chipset, which makes its market debut on April 19. The new Z490 chipset, as it's called, is emerging to be significantly different from X470, and could finally overcome its biggest limitation - downstream PCIe connectivity. While the X470, like its predecessor, puts out just 8 downstream PCIe lanes, which are PCI-Express gen 2.0 at that, the new Z490 will put out a total of 12 PCI-Express gen 3.0 downstream lanes, which will power additional bandwidth-hungry devices, such as additional M.2 slots, external USB 3.1 controllers, 10 GbE controllers, etc. The Z490 was first leaked through a GIGABYTE Aorus internal presentation.

In its current implementation, socket AM4 motherboards have a total of 24 PCI-Express gen 3.0 lanes from the AM4 SoC, besides 6-8 gen 2.0 lanes from the chipset. From this SoC budget, 16 lanes are allocated for PEG (PCI-Express Graphics), 4 lanes as chipset-bus (connecting the SoC with the chipset), and the remaining 4 lanes powering one 32 Gbps M.2 slot. Additional M.2 slots are either gen 2.0, from the chipset's downstream lane budget, or split from the PEG budget. The Z490 overcomes this with a downstream PCIe root complex that's not just 50% broader, but also twice as fast, with PCI-Express gen 3.0. The rest of its feature-set appears to be identical to the X470. There's no timeline on when we can expect Z490 to launch.