Z690 Tomahawk or B660M Mortar Max

ramharis24 · February 7

Hi all,

I'm upgrading my pc after 10 years now. I currently have 1660ti running with I5 4670. Upgrading to i5 12400 (non F) model, so I could continue to run the PC without the GPU, since GPU is on a upgrade path later on.

I'm confused between MAG Z690 TOMAHAWK WIFI DDR4 or B660M MORTAR MAX WIFI DDR4. Since I only upgrade after a long time, I need to be able to switch to better GPU later on.

I will only be running with 1 GPU, but I have 4TB mechanical HDDs with almost 3TB full. So in future I will add more nVME drives. The difference between the 2 boards are about 5K (in india) which will help with getting more drives. Plus I'm not an overclocker, so that is not must have. A fast system is all I need since I do a lot of photo editing.

Any suggestions between the 2 ?

mr cheese · February 7

B660M. General rule of thumb, if you're not buying an i7 or i9 and you're not committing to overclocking you don't need a Z-series board. Save yourself the money for a GPU later on down the road!

ramharis24 · February 7

Right, B660M has half the PCIe lanes of Z690, wont that compromise the speeds when I add multiple nvme drives ?

RONOTHAN## · February 7

9 minutes ago, mr cheese said:

B660M. General rule of thumb, if you're not buying an i7 or i9 and you're not committing to overclocking you don't need a Z-series board. Save yourself the money for a GPU later on down the road!

This is actually the very obscure case where the B660 board actually supports overclocking and the Z690 board does not. The B660M Mortar Max has an external clock gen on it which allows for non-K overclocking, meaning that if you want to overclock the 12400 you actually need to get the B660 board instead as counterintuitive as it may seem.

8 minutes ago, ramharis24 said:

Right, B660M has half the PCIe lanes of Z690, wont that compromise the speeds when I add multiple nvme drives ?

NVMe drives are already so fast that odds are you wouldn't even notice. I wouldn't worry about it.

mr cheese · February 7

2 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

This is actually the very obscure case where the B660 board actually supports overclocking and the Z690 board does not. The B660M Mortar Max has an external clock gen on it which allows for non-K overclocking, meaning that if you want to overclock the 12400 you actually need to get the B660 board instead as counterintuitive as it may seem.

All the more reason LOL I forgot those external clock boards existed

Gokul_P · February 7

27 minutes ago, ramharis24 said:

Hi all,

I'm upgrading my pc after 10 years now. I currently have 1660ti running with I5 4670. Upgrading to i5 12400 (non F) model, so I could continue to run the PC without the GPU, since GPU is on a upgrade path later on.

I'm confused between MAG Z690 TOMAHAWK WIFI DDR4 or B660M MORTAR MAX WIFI DDR4. Since I only upgrade after a long time, I need to be able to switch to better GPU later on.

I will only be running with 1 GPU, but I have 4TB mechanical HDDs with almost 3TB full. So in future I will add more nVME drives. The difference between the 2 boards are about 5K (in india) which will help with getting more drives. Plus I'm not an overclocker, so that is not must have. A fast system is all I need since I do a lot of photo editing.

Any suggestions between the 2 ?

Get the cheapest one and get 13400 it is 6K more, You can use 1660Ti with this pc also so you can get 13400F it is only 2K more. and there is Even cheaper boards. For 13400 the best pairing will be B760 like this https://www.amazon.in/ASUS-Motherboard-Realtek-Ethernet-DisplayPort/dp/B0BRMSJ1Q3/ref=sr_1_1?crid=TJLE8BE2J417&keywords=b760M&qid=1675754423&sprefix=b60m%2Caps%2C308&sr=8-1 (There is a wifi varient for 2K more if you care )