[Hardware] Intel Z590 Motherboard and Chipset Overview: 45 Rocket Lake Boards Detailed

[Sxynix]

In conjunction with Intel’s Rocket Lake CPU announcements, board partners pulled back the curtain on several new Z590-based motherboards to go along with the upcoming chip. The new motherboards promise native PCIe 4.0 support (with Rocket Lake CPUs), USB 3.2 Gen2x2 support from the chipset and upgraded power delivery. Best of all, we’ll get to see some new board designs. All of the major board partners have released a slate of options based on the new chipset -- many of which we’ll eventually review -- and a select few may even make it to our best motherboards page. 

On the CPU front, the Rocket Lake CPUs took a step backward on core count at the top end, with the flagship  Core i9-11900K set at 8-core/16-threads (like the i9-9900K had in 2018), while  the Core i9-10900K was a 10-core/20-thread part. But the reality is, that change won’t affect a lot of users. At this time, there aren’t many (possibly any) games that show a marked performance improvement above an 8-core/16-thread setup. And if your work needs more, you can step up to the HEDT platform or buy an AMD Ryzen 5000 series/X570 combination.

Helping to make up for the core count deficit, the new CPU is supposed to bring significant IPC improvements as well as AVX-512 support, faster base memory speed (up to 3200 MHz), 20 CPU-connected PCIe 4.0 lanes, Intel Xe integrated graphics and more. As with previous launches, Intel will certainly fill out the product stack with other variants such as 6-core/12-thread processors down to 4-core/8-thread parts. When the time comes, we’ll have a full CPU review as well as an updated product list. Until then, we have some high-level information about the new Z590 chipset and the motherboards that go along with it to tide you over.

Intel Z590 Chipset: Same Socket, Different Features  
At the time of this writing, Intel has not released the full details of the Z590 chipset. However, we do know a few things that differentiate Z590 from the previous-gen Z490. Unlike Z390 to Z490, the LGA 1200 socket remains the same, which in this case means both Rocket Lake-S and Comet Lake-S chips will work with Z590 based motherboards; Z490 requires a BIOS update to work with Rocket Lake processors. In addition to the flagship Z590 chipset, Intel is also releasing B560 and H510 chipsets. Typically these lesser chipsets are locked to prevent overclocking. However, there are rumors of B560 overclocking. Stay tuned on that front.

The most significant difference between the two chipsets is native PCIe 4.0 support when using a Rocket Lake processor. A Rocket Lake CPU shares 20 PCIe PCIe 4.0 lanes between the PCIe slots/GPU and M.2 socket/storage. It feels like Intel has finally caught up to AMD’s B550 chipset, at least, but still isn’t close to the lane count and flexibility of X570.

Another significant difference with Z590 is the DMI link between the chipset and CPU. On Z590, Intel has doubled the link speed, going from PCIe 3.0 x4 to x8. The jump to x8 effectively doubles the amount of bandwidth available for any chipset-connected devices (storage and networking for example). Additionally, the chipset now has native support for USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps), so we should see these ultra-fast USB Type-A and Type-C ports on most Z590 motherboards.

Other differences are more subtle, outside of the native PCIe 4.0 support on all boards. Here’s a look at how Z590 compares with Intel’s previous mainstream flagship chipsets. Keep in mind some details are still uncertain as we wrote this.