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 .