Difficulty choosing motherboard

[t-i-b-s]

Budget (including currency): any

Country: U.K

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Gaming

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

 

- Lian Li 216 (bought)

- i7 13700k or 14700k

- a 360 AIO (i'm thinking arctic II)

- some high speed DDR5 32gb

- not decided on GPU

I haven't built a PC in 10 years so I'm happy to spend a bit more to get quality components.

 

I've been stuck choosing MoBo for a while.

I think Z790 chipset for an i7 CPU, I've mainly been looking at the

ASUS ROG Strix Z790-H https://www.amazon.co.uk/STRIX-Z790-H-GAMING-Intel-Wi-Fi/dp/B0BSXJLWJ9/

MSI MAG z790 Tomahawk https://www.amazon.co.uk/MSI-Z790-TOMAHAWK-WIFI-Motherboard/dp/B09Y1FJBHX/

 

I've come very close to pulling trigger on either of these. My concerns

1. I hear ASUS Armoury Crate is bad bloatware

2. I hear ASUS has Quality Control issues recently

3. I read the Asus ROG Z790-H has compatibliity issues physically fitting the Arctic II 360 AIO, which I hear is best AIO so intended to get

So I was about to pull the trigger on z790 Tomahawk, but then...

4. I read there's issues with i225 and i226 ethernet, which both of these boards have - should I avoid i225/i226 intel ethernet and look for a board with realtek ethernet controller instead?

5. I'm unsure whether the ROG z790-H isn't higher build quality than the Tomahawk - am I getting an inferior motherboard if I get the Tomahawk? I read people say stuff like "Asus is higher quality but MSI is cheaper and you save money" but I'm not looking to save money and the ROG Z790-H is almost the same price, also it claims to be a higher standard retail price £369 reduced to £280 compared to MSI says retail price £270 reduced to £250

6. I need to update the bios by flash bios thing, which I'm not familiar and confident doing, in order to fit 14700k? I'm thinking I'll just buy 13700k for convenience

 

If ASUS ROG Strix is higher build quality than the MSI I'm willing to get it and a different 360 AIO that will fit it. I'm stuck on this all week and I really need to get on with it and a pull the trigger... it took me a month to decide on Lian Li 216.

Maybe neither of these boards? Maybe I should be considering something else? I feel like ordering either of these 2 mobos right now to get this over with, just eeniee meenie miney mo it.

 

Basically

- Is the ASUS board higher build quality than the MSI? Should I just get the Asus ROG z790-H and look for a 360 AIO that will fit?

[Guest]

1. yes, anything you dont absolutely need is bloatware.

2. Its usually pretty good especially with their higher end products, although some products have had issues but I think thats only for a few specific products. I bought an asus tuf gaming monitor a while back and it did not work properly and I had to return it for an lg monitor, so maybe their quality control is getting a little worse in some places.

3. I cant seem to find anything online about that.

4. Just make sure to install the proper driver for it and also make sure the settings are right.

5. Asus is typically better and is the first choice for alot of high end builds, so id probably go with that.

6. That should be pretty easy, the manual will tell you how to do it.

 

Id just get the asus, if there is an issue you should be able to return it if you bought it from amazon.
Also make sure to get hynix a die memory for 7000mhz+ memory overclocks.

[RONOTHAN##]

19 minutes ago, t-i-b-s said:

- some high speed DDR5 32gb

Define high speed. Are we taking 6400MT/s, 7200MT/s, or 8000+? 

 

19 minutes ago, t-i-b-s said:

Is the ASUS board higher build quality than the MSI?

Not particularly. I'd probably rather the Tomahawk just because ASUS boards tend to annoy me, though I'd be happy with either. If you're going to get a 14700K though, I wouldn't really want either of these boards and would instead want something with an 8 layer PCB since when you're pulling 300A+ like you are with a 14700K under full load, the PCB can get really hot on the 6 layer boards, though then again if you're using the Liquid Freezer with it's VRM fan that shouldn't actually be an issue. 

 

19 minutes ago, t-i-b-s said:

I need to update the bios by flash bios thing, which I'm not familiar and confident doing, in order to fit 14700k?

Unless you look at the refresh boards, yes. That said, BIOS Flashback is very easy to use, there's tons of tutorials online for how to use it. The general process is like this:

1. Make sure the CPU power connector and 24 pin are hooked up.
2. Get a flash drive and format it FAT32
3. Get the BIOS file and name it what the motherboard wants (MSI boards usually want MSI.ROM, ASUS boards want something weird specific to the board, though either way this can be found in the motherboard manual).
4. Put said file on the root of the flash drive. 
5. Plug the flash drive in the specific BIOS Flashback port (this is usually labeled in some way, either by a white outline or actual text, though the manual will say)
6. Hit the BIOS Flashback button, sometimes you need to press it for 2-3 seconds (the manual will specify). LEDs will start flashing to indicate it's doing something
7. Wait 5-10 minutes
8. The LEDs should stop flashing to indicate everything is working.

 

19 minutes ago, t-i-b-s said:

I read there's issues with i225 and i226 ethernet, which both of these boards have - should I avoid i225/i226 intel ethernet and look for a board with realtek ethernet controller instead?

I have the i225 on my board (Z690 Unify-X), no issues to really report with it. Most of the issues AFAIK are only when using it in 2.5GbE mode, so if you're only running gigabit networking in your house like most people, you won't run into issues. 

 

That said, you can get some better boards for that price range. There's the Z790 Nova, Z790 Taichi Lite, Z790 Aorus Elite X AX (all 3 of these are refresh boards and will work out of the box with the 14700K), or if you are willing to do the BIOS update, the Z690 Unify, Carbon, Force, or Ace are in that price range. I'd go for one of those rather than the Z790-H or Tomahawk. 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Define high speed. Are we taking 6400MT/s, 7200MT/s, or 8000+? 

^^^

For now id define high speed ddr5 as 8000+ though that is likely to change in the future as ~8000 will become standard judging by how standard ddr4 is now 3200-3600 whilst early on it was 2133-2400 in the skylake days even though the imcs are capable of ~4000 even back then or atleast on skylake x

 

Slow would be anything 6400 and below aka what you can reliably hit with xmp on current gen boards and imcs

 

 

Even if you got a high speed xmp youd still need to tune it anyways and at that point you would have been better off saving your money getting a 6400c32 hynix a die kit or a klevv branded kit and manually overclocking to ~8000 rather than overpaying for an 8000 xmp kit with the same hynix a dies and still having to tune it even after you paid all that, another benifit is that if you are too lazy to tune or wanna tune later you still have a usable xmp

 

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

That said, you can get some better boards for that price range. There's the Z790 Nova, Z790 Taichi Lite, Z790 Aorus Elite X AX (all 3 of these are refresh boards and will work out of the box with the 14700K), or if you are willing to do the BIOS update, the Z690 Unify, Carbon, Force, or Ace are in that price range. I'd go for one of those rather than the Z790-H or Tomahawk. 

The taichi lite is at 300£ and the nova at 285£ so id go for the taichi lite

 

The z790 aorus elite x is at 300£ so that can be thrown in the trash (i mean i dont think a mid end board would be comparable to a top end board) though the non x is at 232£ so that is also an interesting board on the cheaper end

 

As for z690 not much of a price save over z790, and is the normal z690 unify any good at clocking rams? Its at 260£ but its a 4dimmer and the unify x seems to have vanished, and i kinda doubt that itd be any better than the z790 taichi lite cause its abit of an older board

[RONOTHAN##]

3 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

The z790 aorus elite x is at 300£ so that can be thrown in the trash (i mean i dont think a mid end board would be comparable to a top end board) though the non x is at 232£ so that is also an interesting board on the cheaper end

Main reason I would consider it is that Gigabyte's BIOS is better to navigate than ASRock's, plus the Gigabyte board does have the better memory topology if you're going to be going for max memory speed. The non-X is only a 6 layer board, so I'd rather spend the extra $20 and get the Z690 boards. 

 

5 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

As for z690 not much of a price save over z790, and is the normal z690 unify any good at clocking rams? Its at 260£ but its a 4dimmer and the unify x seems to have vanished, and i kinda doubt that itd be any better than the z790 taichi lite cause its abit of an older board

It's OK. 7000 doesn't take that much effort if you know what you're doing, with much more than that being not obtainable. It's a little worse than the Taichi, but if you're not manually overclocking RAM like most people it's the better board, and saving $50 and getting an extra M.2 slot and better case compatibility is usually worth it. 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

29 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Main reason I would consider it is that Gigabyte's BIOS is better to navigate than ASRock's, plus the Gigabyte board does have the better memory topology if you're going to be going for max memory speed

Ive never really had any complaints with navigating the bioses of any of my boards so i wonder how bad it is on newer boards

 

So you can hit 8000 on the aorus board?

 

30 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

It's OK. 7000 doesn't take that much effort if you know what you're doing, with much more than that being not obtainable. It's a little worse than the Taichi, but if you're not manually overclocking RAM like most people it's the better board, and saving $50 and getting an extra M.2 slot and better case compatibility is usually worth it. 

So for right now trying to much past 7200 is a massive pain? Or is that just on intel and it wont be as hard to do high speed ddr5 on amd?

 

Ik intel imcs are quite inconsistent but i wonder if the difficulty mainly comes from the imc or the mobo

 

Cause if it was the latter then whyd a a lower end board like the livemixer be able to do 7600?

[RONOTHAN##]

9 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

So you can hit 8000 on the aorus board?

With a good enough CPU, 8266 is possible on the Gigabyte board. With a more mediocre CPU though they're about the same as the Nova/Taichi. 

 

9 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

So for right now trying to much past 7200 is a massive pain? Or is that just on intel and it wont be as hard to do high speed ddr5 on amd?

 

It's complicated. 7200 on Intel is where things start to get weird, and where you start needing to put in quite a bit of effort. On AMD it's not that bad, but at the same time it's also pointless to run 7200, and 7600+ where it makes sense to run it gets pretty weird depending on the board. 

 

9 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Ik intel imcs are quite inconsistent but i wonder if the difficulty mainly comes from the imc or the mobo

 

It's the IMC. There's over a 1000MT/s difference between chips, even on a 4 DIMM board.

 

9 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Cause if it was the latter then whyd a a lower end board like the livemixer be able to do 7600?

I wouldn't necessarily call the LiveMixer a low end board, it's still an 8 layer PCB with the same memory topology as the Taichi boards. Compare that to a 6 layer Z790 Aorus Elite, it's a mid range board, though even the Aorus Elite AX can do 7600+ if you have a good enough CPU. 

[t-i-b-s]

Thanks for all the responses. A lot for me to think about.

When I look at a motherboard's specifications and memory speeds supported it will say such as:

• DDR5 - 4800
• DDR5 - 5000
• DDR5 - 5200
• DDR5 - 5400
• DDR5 - 5600
• DDR5 - 5800(OC)
• DDR5 - 6000(OC)
• DDR5 - 6200(OC)
• DDR5 - 6400(OC)
• DDR5 - 6600(OC)
• DDR5 - 6800(OC)
• DDR5 - 7000(OC)
• DDR5 - 7200(OC)
• DDR5 - 7800+(OC)

I'm confused by the (OC). When you're buying 7200mhz is it overclocked out of the box? Does this mean 7200mhz RAM out of the box is supported by that mobo?

Could I take this RAM and out of the box put it on such a mobo and it will run 7200mhz? https://www.scan.co.uk/products/32gb-2x16gb-corsair-ddr5-vengeance-black-pc5-57600-7200-non-ecc-unbuffered-cas-34

 

18 hours ago, rippy4500 said:

3. I cant seem to find anything online about that.

About the Z790-H supposedly not fitting Arctic II AIO, I found one place I read about it.

I maybe read it another place too

[Guest]

1 hour ago, t-i-b-s said:

Thanks for all the responses. A lot for me to think about.

When I look at a motherboard's specifications and memory speeds supported it will say such as:

• DDR5 - 4800
• DDR5 - 5000
• DDR5 - 5200
• DDR5 - 5400
• DDR5 - 5600
• DDR5 - 5800(OC)
• DDR5 - 6000(OC)
• DDR5 - 6200(OC)
• DDR5 - 6400(OC)
• DDR5 - 6600(OC)
• DDR5 - 6800(OC)
• DDR5 - 7000(OC)
• DDR5 - 7200(OC)
• DDR5 - 7800+(OC)

I'm confused by the (OC). When you're buying 7200mhz is it overclocked out of the box? Does this mean 7200mhz RAM out of the box is supported by that mobo?

Could I take this RAM and out of the box put it on such a mobo and it will run 7200mhz? https://www.scan.co.uk/products/32gb-2x16gb-corsair-ddr5-vengeance-black-pc5-57600-7200-non-ecc-unbuffered-cas-34

If you are lucky with your board, imc, and memory combination it may work out of the box. But you will probably have to do a little tuning. More often than not you can get at least 7200. And you can probably get 7400-7600 on higher quality boards.
For 7000 plus you NEED to make sure you have Hynix A die. Anything else wont do it. But if the stock xmp is 7200 its basically guaranteed to be A die so then id say that is a safe choice.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

10 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

I wouldn't necessarily call the LiveMixer a low end board, it's still an 8 layer PCB with the same memory topology as the Taichi boards. Compare that to a 6 layer Z790 Aorus Elite, it's a mid range board, though even the Aorus Elite AX can do 7600+ if you have a good enough CPU. 

Damn

 

I guess the livemixer is more on par with the pg lightning then? On pcpp its usually around the 150$ mark likely due to its rather odd colour scheme

 

 

Kinda curious as to how you determine ram topologies on mobos and how to see which ones better without having any experience with it yet cause my x58a ud3r has a garbage 3rd channel that wont clock for shit but i can coax it to post at 2800 with 2.06v on my double sided cfr and thats just boot voltage since stable volt is 2.1v for the inner 2 channels

 

x58a oc is the board i want as it does seem to have a very strong ram topology but theyre unobtainium and asus boards are trash for ram clocking because forced uncore ratio or atleast no special 1:1 ratio like what i can set with my giga board which allows me to run these speeds on nehalem

 

For the available boards im interested in theres the ex58 ud3r and ex58 ud4p, id assume the ud3r might be better since the 3rd channel is closer to the cpu but the ud4p is a tier above it, and i dont mind pcie modding the thing since its just a simple move a resistor on the mobo. Theres also the foxconn flaming blade which does have a 1dpc ram layout so in theory its good for ram clocking but how does it stack up to these other giga boards? It is awardbios so if theres a bullshit uncore ratio i can just flash it to a gigabyte bios and implement voltmods to control voltages

[RONOTHAN##]

3 hours ago, t-i-b-s said:

When I look at a motherboard's specifications and memory speeds supported it will say such as:

• DDR5 - 4800
• DDR5 - 5000
• DDR5 - 5200
• DDR5 - 5400
• DDR5 - 5600
• DDR5 - 5800(OC)
• DDR5 - 6000(OC)
• DDR5 - 6200(OC)
• DDR5 - 6400(OC)
• DDR5 - 6600(OC)
• DDR5 - 6800(OC)
• DDR5 - 7000(OC)
• DDR5 - 7200(OC)
• DDR5 - 7800+(OC)

Try not to look at this section, they're greatly exaggerated a lot of the time. 

 

3 hours ago, t-i-b-s said:

When you're buying 7200mhz is it overclocked out of the box?

Yes. It would require enabling XMP, though 7200 is in the range where it doesn't work with every CPU. It works with most, but not all. The mobo it might work on, though again, it more comes down to your luck with the CPU.

 

3 hours ago, t-i-b-s said:

Could I take this RAM and out of the box put it on such a mobo and it will run 7200mhz? https://www.scan.co.uk/products/32gb-2x16gb-corsair-ddr5-vengeance-black-pc5-57600-7200-non-ecc-unbuffered-cas-34

If you have a good enough CPU, yes. Intel CPUs though are hilariously inconsistent, so even on good motherboards you can get CPUs that won't work out of the box at 7200MT/s. My 13700K, for instance, unless I manually tune a few voltages will not pass memory stress tests at 7200MT/s even on a Z690 Unify-X, and this is a board/CPU/RAM setup that would do DDR5 8000 with enough tuning. With 14th gen, they're a bit more consistently not bad, so if you go 14700K I'd be just willing enough to go for the 7200MT/s kit, though even then I'd probably want a better motherboard if you're trying to hit those speeds. 

 

2 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Kinda curious as to how you determine ram topologies on mobos and how to see which ones better without having any experience

If the layer count and the QVL is the same, it's almost certainly the same topology. It's just cheaper for them to design, release, and maintain a single topology across multiple boards rather than have a discrete topolgy for every board that could have the same topology. At least for boards Haswell and newer, I don't have a ton of experience with earlier boards. 

 

3 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

x58a oc is the board i want as it does seem to have a very strong ram topology but theyre unobtainium and asus boards are trash for ram clocking because forced uncore ratio or atleast no special 1:1 ratio like what i can set with my giga board which allows me to run these speeds on nehalem

 

For the available boards im interested in theres the ex58 ud3r and ex58 ud4p, id assume the ud3r might be better since the 3rd channel is closer to the cpu but the ud4p is a tier above it, and i dont mind pcie modding the thing since its just a simple move a resistor on the mobo. Theres also the foxconn flaming blade which does have a 1dpc ram layout so in theory its good for ram clocking but how does it stack up to these other giga boards? It is awardbios so if theres a bullshit uncore ratio i can just flash it to a gigabyte bios and implement voltmods to control voltages

Probably not the right place to be asking this. Plus I'm not necessarily the best person to ask as most of my X58 experience is from 7 years ago and I was never particularly good at it, and all the boards I've used for X58 have been ASUS (P6T Deluxe V2, R3F, R3B)

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

If the layer count and the QVL is the same, it's almost certainly the same topology. It's just cheaper for them to design, release, and maintain a single topology across multiple boards rather than have a discrete topolgy for every board that could have the same topology. At least for boards Haswell and newer, I don't have a ton of experience with earlier boards. 

Wonder if the ud4(p) ud5 ud7 or ud9 would do any better than the ud3r

 

Heck even the x58a oc has the same memory support spec of 2200mhz ddr3 as the ud3r, just the ud9 lists 2200+

 

so yea looks like ill actually have to tinker and buy the damn thing for myself then and if its trash guess ill just resell and find another board

 

I do know mobo binning is a thing but idk if that affects x58 or not atleast for ram clocking or something since the memory controller is on the cpu unlike previous gens where the memory controller was on the northbridge, i mean maybe this ud3r just happens to have a shit 3rd channel or maybe thats for all ud3rs

 

Or maybe i epower my rams considering that i need 2.06v to post 2800 on the 3rd channel so maybe its just flaky power delivery

 

5 hours ago, t-i-b-s said:

Could I take this RAM and out of the box put it on such a mobo and it will run 7200mhz? https://www.scan.co.uk/products/32gb-2x16gb-corsair-ddr5-vengeance-black-pc5-57600-7200-non-ecc-unbuffered-cas-34

As @RONOTHAN## said it may or may not work

 

Also you really shouldnt be ripping yourself off by overpaying for the same hynix a dies that youd get in a much cheaper 6400c32 kit or a klevv branded kit (klevv is a division of hynix), you even have a usable xmp to fallback on if you dont wanna tune just yet