chips like the Core i9-11900K the kind of cooling they’ll need to perform

at their best if overclocked. Other makers are also pouring on the high-

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Godlike and Ace models, and Asrock its usual Taichi. Of course, lesser

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step in a top-tier performance arsenal. But many folks who just bought a

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have, and the cost of upgrading to Z590 will just be too much to justify

the minimal feature gains that something like a boosted VRM or slightly

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But even with all these new features and tech being announced as a part

of the Z590 launch, and the new buzz surrounding Intel’s coming top-

end chips, we must always come back to question of AMD—and,

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WILL Z590 MAKE AMD BLINK?

AMD continues to grandfather in as many motherboards as it can to the

consumer-level Ryzen family of CPUs, and Intel asking potential buyers

to pony up for yet another motherboard upgrade seems untenable by

comparison unless you’re upgrading from several generations back.

Socket AM4 and its surrounding, successive chipsets have held strong as

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the current generation of X570 motherboards.

That level of compatibility is important when discussing the prospect of

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latest USB protocols, raw spec bumps aren’t everything in the world of

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but one of the most populous is the “upgrader” class. This is a category

of PC owners who, rather than purchasing a brand new desktop every

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