Which Z390 Motherboard?

[WannaCrypt]

Hi,

 

I've been having a hard time choosing the right motherboard for a i9-9900K / 2080 Ti build. I was almost going to settle with the Asus Maximus XI Hero (Wifi) until I saw this video:

 

 

And then there's this guy explaining how using two or more M.2 SSD's on any intel Z390 motherboard causes a bottleneck situation:

https://youtu.be/ammQwaU2qnA?t=386 I did a search however and couldn't find more information on the problem...

 

For this build I already bought some parts among which the Corsair Crystal 570X RGB White case, which is an ATX model

 

So I went through the list of alternatives should I add the i9-9900K to my build and not many choices were left over, so I went on another search journey and found out that one can eventually fit an EATX motherboard inside the 570X case (though it would be partially covering the cable holes) ...so now it looks like I'm left with the following choices:

• Gigabyte Aorus Master
• Asus ROG Maximus XI Extreme
• MSI MEG Z390 Godlike
• Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme

These are the last choices I've been researching and I'm not certain about any of them. I also couldn't find more tests to compare them. I got to the point where I started to wonder whether it's worth to invest in any of these including the i9-9900K considering all motherboards that go with it have problems. I partially wanted to go with Asus because of the RGB Aura system, but I don't want it at the cost of so much OC performance. Honestly, RGB is the least important issue right now and I'm sure there are many tweaks and/or alternative solutions for this. I just want a good motherboard for OC the i9-9900K and also to work well with the two M.2 SSD's I bought.

 

List of items I possess:

• Corsair Crystal 570X RGB White
• Samsung SSD 970 Pro M.2 512GB
• Samsung SSD 970 Evo M.2 1TB
• MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio

So please let me know your thoughts on these motherboards, as well as alternatives that may be even better than the ones I've listed. Also feel free to let me know if it's really worth investing in a i9-9900K setup at this time or that there are better options in the near future (3rd generation Ryzen?). I won't lie... I desperately need a new computer so I'm hoping to find a solution now instead of waiting it out, but I'm open for that option

 

Thanks

[Princess Luna]

It has never been easier to buy a Z390 motherboard.

 

There's only 2 rules:

*Avoid ASUS at all cost, EXTREMELY overpriced junk, you're only paying for ROG branding not components.

*Buy any Gigabyte motherboard from the Aorus line up, best value and quality.

 

That's really it... if you wanna go all in go with the Aorus that fits your budget.

[Jurrunio]

You could just get a Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Elite and call it a day. It's the cheapest board carrying this VRM. There's still the Pro if you want more bling. the Godlike and Xtreme are the two best boards currently available, but that's plenty overkill.

 

13 minutes ago, WannaCrypt said:

And then there's this guy explaining how using two or more M.2 SSD's on any intel Z390 motherboard causes a bottleneck situation:

https://youtu.be/ammQwaU2qnA?t=386 I did a search however and couldn't find more information on the problem...

That's just because of Intel's architecture. SSDs are all connected to the PCH sharing the low bandwidth there, unlike Ryzen which has 4 dedicated PCIe lanes from the CPU for the M.2 slot for PCIe drives.

 

15 minutes ago, WannaCrypt said:

it's really worth investing in a i9-9900K setup at this time or that there are better options in the near future (3rd generation Ryzen?).

depends on what you want from the system

 

4 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

*Avoid ASUS at all cost, EXTREMELY overpriced junk, you're only paying for ROG branding not components.

but you have the Gene right? 

[CharminUltraStrong]

9 minutes ago, WannaCrypt said:

-snip-

For the money you'd spend on an MSI MEG(Around 500$ USD) you could put that towards a better case, better storage options etc. etc. My personal recommendation would be the MSI Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon/Ac or non AC. It's a better form factor (ATX vs. E ATX) shares MOST of the same features, has 2 NVME M.2 slots, 6 Sata Slots etc. etc. You just sacrifice the little screen and clear CMOS button but since you can clear CMOS by holding a power button or you can reset the values by jumping pins it's a bit of a gimmick...

[Mephi00]

I've go the small brother of the GODLIKE, the ACE, and the ACE is quite good and I love it:

[Princess Luna]

13 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

but you have the Gene right? 

Sadly, you know how every one acts like mATX is a dead form factor

 

So little options.

[Jurrunio]

5 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Sadly, you know how every one acts like mATX is a dead form factor

 

So little options.

too bad EVGA ditched their Micro lineup on Z390

[xg32]

3 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

too bad EVGA ditched their Micro lineup on Z390

wish we know what % of buyers are matx etc. but it's probably niche enough that it's not worth to bother

[Jurrunio]

Just now, xg32 said:

wish we know what % of buyers are matx etc. but it's probably niche enough that it's not worth to bother

so we have a whole bunch (truck loads) of mATX cases that's clearly way overkill for normal users, yet no boards for the power users... Like really, if you want AM4 I can at best recommend the Mortar, which is hardly a high end board. On TR4 we only have the X399M Taichi (thankfully a high end product). On X299...4 boards, 2 of them from EVGA, 1 from Asrock, 1 from MSI. WTF are these companies thinking 

[WannaCrypt]

39 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

depends on what you want from the system 

It's going to be multifunctional: Gaming, VR, Video Editing, Virtual Machines, Live Streaming and Coding

 

I'm aiming for it to perform well in these areas. I also want to learn the art of overclocking

[Jurrunio]

1 minute ago, WannaCrypt said:

It's going to be multifunctional: Gaming, VR, Video Editing, Virtual Machines, Live Streaming and Coding

 

I'm aiming for it to perform well in these areas. I also want to learn the art of overclocking

9900k does well in all but VM where it falls behind TR and Skylake-X, it's the best choice you can go to. Ryzen isnt as consistent in performance for video editing, not looking forward to 3rd gen Ryzen changing that.

 

Learning the art of overclocking simply means using all of those platforms

[WannaCrypt]

Virtualization is actually quite important and a major part of what I wanted to achieve with the new system... I'm now even more lost than I was before.

 

This strange review shows i9-9900K outperforming everything else on virtualization, which contradicts what's being said in several posts/comments:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i9_9900K/11.html

 

Are there any other tests/reviews showing TR outperforming the intel CPU's on virtualization? I couldn't find any myself ><

 

If TR appears to be best for virtualization, but sucks at everything else then it basically comes down to having to buy two separate systems... crazy!

 

3 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

not looking forward to 3rd gen Ryzen changing that

 

Yeah good point there, 3rd gen Ryzen won't change it but may be worth waiting for instead of buying one of the current TR's?

[Jurrunio]

45 minutes ago, WannaCrypt said:

Virtualization is actually quite important and a major part of what I wanted to achieve with the new system... I'm now even more lost than I was before.

 

This strange review shows i9-9900K outperforming everything else on virtualization, which contradicts what's being said in several posts/comments:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i9_9900K/11.html

 

Are there any other tests/reviews showing TR outperforming the intel CPU's on virtualization? I couldn't find any myself ><

 

If TR appears to be best for virtualization, but sucks at everything else then it basically comes down to having to buy two separate systems... crazy!

 

 

Yeah good point there, 3rd gen Ryzen won't change it but may be worth waiting for instead of buying one of the current TR's?

I can't find more info either, but it seems like there's something wrong with techpowerup's test. I mean, why the hell would 2700X beat the 2950X in a multicore work considering the 2950X is practically a pair of 2700X glued together? It's not suffering from the memory connection problem like the 2990WX and 2970WX do. Even at worst, it should be doing the same as the 2700X, minus the frequency difference. Also no numbers on skylake-x even though techpowerup reviewed the 7900X earlier on.

[WannaCrypt]

Thanks for the replies, very useful information in here. I've started looking into the TR 2950X cpu and TR4 motherboards. Currently trying to figure out the pros and cons of getting TR4 socket now and upgrading to 3rd gen Ryzen in the future

[Conman1700]

Just got the MSI MEG Z390 ACE and threw it in my 570X. Works well and has all the features you could want. I'd recommend against the Godlike or any E-ATX board. I don't think you can fit any E-ATX mb in the case, and if you can, it won't be worth it IMO.

[SliceT]

16 hours ago, WannaCrypt said:

Hi,

 

I've been having a hard time choosing the right motherboard for a i9-9900K / 2080 Ti build. I was almost going to settle with the Asus Maximus XI Hero (Wifi) until I saw this video:

 

 

And then there's this guy explaining how using two or more M.2 SSD's on any intel Z390 motherboard causes a bottleneck situation:

https://youtu.be/ammQwaU2qnA?t=386 I did a search however and couldn't find more information on the problem...

 

For this build I already bought some parts among which the Corsair Crystal 570X RGB White case, which is an ATX model

 

So I went through the list of alternatives should I add the i9-9900K to my build and not many choices were left over, so I went on another search journey and found out that one can eventually fit an EATX motherboard inside the 570X case (though it would be partially covering the cable holes) ...so now it looks like I'm left with the following choices:

• Gigabyte Aorus Master
• Asus ROG Maximus XI Extreme
• MSI MEG Z390 Godlike
• Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme

These are the last choices I've been researching and I'm not certain about any of them. I also couldn't find more tests to compare them. I got to the point where I started to wonder whether it's worth to invest in any of these including the i9-9900K considering all motherboards that go with it have problems. I partially wanted to go with Asus because of the RGB Aura system, but I don't want it at the cost of so much OC performance. Honestly, RGB is the least important issue right now and I'm sure there are many tweaks and/or alternative solutions for this. I just want a good motherboard for OC the i9-9900K and also to work well with the two M.2 SSD's I bought.

 

List of items I possess:

• Corsair Crystal 570X RGB White
• Samsung SSD 970 Pro M.2 512GB
• Samsung SSD 970 Evo M.2 1TB
• MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio

So please let me know your thoughts on these motherboards, as well as alternatives that may be even better than the ones I've listed. Also feel free to let me know if it's really worth investing in a i9-9900K setup at this time or that there are better options in the near future (3rd generation Ryzen?). I won't lie... I desperately need a new computer so I'm hoping to find a solution now instead of waiting it out, but I'm open for that option

 

Thanks

How about Z390 Taichi, can't go wrong with that one... specially if you are looking to overclock.

[Jay Deah]

theres not really a "best" for virtualisation. it depends on your use case.

 

the 9900k has 8 cores, if you ran 4x VMs with 1vCPU each you've still got at least 4 full physical cores completely spare for the host OS. which is like still having a 7700k there! ANd i say at least as you still dont lose the core when you allocate it to a VM, it's all shared.

 

for most home users it will be fine, and if you were doing heavy virtualisation of many servers then you wouldnt be looking at consumer grade stuff anyway you'd be looking at real servers with proper processors.

 

hell a few years ago we used to run VM Hosts with 2x dual core Xeons so youre talking 4 cores, 8 threads at like 2Ghz... that would still run a dozen light VMs!

[WannaCrypt]

9 hours ago, Jay Deah said:

the 9900k has 8 cores, if you ran 4x VMs with 1vCPU each you've still got at least 4 full physical cores completely spare for the host OS. which is like still having a 7700k there! ANd i say at least as you still dont lose the core when you allocate it to a VM, it's all shared.

Thanks for this helpful piece of information. Based on everything I've learnt so far I started to see the 9900K as the best solution, although I also came across the i9-7980XE which appears to be outperforming the 9900K in several games as well as having the benefits of 18 cores in other applications. The release date (september 2017) does put me off as well as the question as to whether I will need that amount of cores.

 

I must say that Gigabyte's matching X299 DESIGNARE EX (rev 1.0) looks pretty awesome, though I've no idea how it performs

 

9 hours ago, SliceT said:

How about Z390 Taichi

I'm not entirely sure about the benefits of this one - it came across as average in the VRM test video, while the Aorus Master outperformed everything

[Princess Luna]

Intel has always handled VM's much better than Ryzen, stability wise at least.

 

Now if you'll get limited or not that's another story.