While the specs have improved, weвЂ™re still not impressed with the upward trend in pricing. Intel wonвЂ™t confirm any details one way or the other about its future products, so for now PCIe 4.0 support on Z490 seems sketchy at best and shouldnвЂ™t factor into a purchase decision at this point in time. Some manufacturers, such as MSI, are claiming PCIe 4.0 support on their Z490 motherboards, even though it is not supported by 10th generation CPUs and hence cannot be validated. One of the areas the Intel Z490 chipset might be seen as lacking in is official PCIe 4.0 support, something which is present on AMDвЂ™s competing X570 platform. This means even budget Z490 motherboards are built with robust power delivery circuitry. The K-series CPUs have 125W TDPs, though the higher core count models will actually pull a lot more power than that. Upgrading from the 7th, 8th or 9th to 10th generation might not be a big leap, but 2nd to 10th Gen sure is! Faster cores and more of them, faster networking, faster and higher capacity memory, faster storage, and faster USB amongst other things. If your current gaming machine is several years old then upgrading right now will get you a faster system in every way. Especially given Intel's propensity for 14nm siliconвЂ¦ While 10th Generation CPUs may not have shaken the foundations of the tech world, they are the fastest gaming chips around. 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.

Intel z390 motherboards