Gigabyte Z590 AORUS Xtreme Pictured – More Power and More Features for Rocket Lake

At CES 2021, Intel is likely to reveal their 500-series chipset and discuss their Rocket Lake CPU architecture. Rocket Lake is Intel’s upcoming core design for their 11th Generation desktop processors, which deliver new features and increased single-threaded performance to the company’s desktop CPU lineup. 

All major motherboard manufacturers will likely reveal new 500-series motherboard designs next week. Gigabyte has been the first to have one of their 500-series motherboard designs leak (thanks Videocardz) ahead of its official reveal. Meet that Gigabyte’s Z590 Aorus Xtreme, the likely flagship of the company Rocket Lake motherboard lineup.  

Based on leaked specifications from @KOMACHI_ENSAKA on Twitter, this motherboard features 100A Smart Power Stages, a 20+1 Phase Digital VRM and support to 10Gb Ethernet, 2.5Gb Ethernet, Thunderbolt 4 and WiFi 6E. These features will place the Z590 Aorus amongst the highest-end motherboards for Intel’s 11th generation processors, especially when combined with the motherboard’s PCIe 4.0 support. 

Thunderbolt 4 isn’t a new standard from Intel in the strictest sense, its maximum performance is the same as Thunderbolt 3, albeit with higher minimum specifications. Thunderbolt 4 effectively merges Thunderbolt 3 and the USB4 standard, offering 32Gb/s connectivity and the features of both standards. Thunderbolt 4 is full-fat USB4 and Thunderbolt 3 with a 32Gb/s data requirement. More information about Thunderbolt 4 is available here.