Gigabyte Confirms Z490 Will Support Rocket Lake-S

So, it’s official, with the confirmed launch of Intel Comet Lake-S and its respective Z490 motherboards, we’re less than a month away now before we finally get to find out just how good (or bad) this 10th-gen platform will be. One of the biggest questions, however, hasn’t been specifically surrounding Comet Lake-S with the Z490 platform, but rather it’s successor, Rocket Lake-S.

Well, as part of their official launch announcement video, Gigabyte may have inadvertently let some big news slip. What, you ask? Well, the fact that Z490 will support Intel’s 11th-gen processor releases!

Intel Rocket Lake-S

In the video coming via Videocardz, it seems pretty clear that the Gigabyte representative wasn’t certain if they were technically allowed to answer the question or not. Being placed on the spot, however, he had to concede that Rocket Lake-S is going to work (at least in some form) on the Z490 motherboard platform.

A somewhat semi-surprising bit of confirmation as Intel does have a well-deserved reputation for mixing up motherboard socket designs with most of their major CPU launches.

Why So Curious?

One of the biggest remaining question marks over Intel’s Comet Lake-S platform surrounds the business of PCI-e 4.0. While most manufacturers say it will offer ‘some’ support for it, it’s still more than a little unclear as to exactly how far that will go. As such, many people in the industry have already starting turning towards Tiger Lake-S as possibly a far more logical long-term upgrade option. Particularly since Tiger Lake-S is expected to release about this time next year!

Still, the cats out of the bag now in terms of the Z490 compatibility, and we have Gigabyte to thank for it!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!