Strix Motherboard Recommendation

SightUp · Jun 20, 2023

I intend on building a whole new PC for the 14000 series but more budgeted. My present PC was as expensive as can be; 13900KS, Apex, a 8000 G.Skill kit. I want the next build to be a little more restrained. This is all presuming that the rumors are true about the 14000 series is indeed coming to the desktop and isn't being canceled.

Initially I was looking at something from ASRock, but evidently, they haven't released anything decent for the last few gens.
Going back to ASUS, I have had their named boards for the last few generations; two Heros and presently the z790 Apex. I never really pushed my overclocks and I am told for what I do, I could have gotten away with a much lesser board and saved a dollar or two.
I specifically want to work on primary/secondary timings and push the CPU max OC to .1 over the max. On my KS, stock max on all cores is 5.6. I push it to 5.7 on all Pcores for example. And I am happy with that. I am not trying to push anything crazy high.

I can evidently get away with that on a Strix board, right?

With that in mind, there are like 10 Strix boards out there. What's the difference between A-Z(H?)? They have constants between each generation that separates them right? Or should I go with a Hero again?

Ichirou · Jun 20, 2023

FWIW, pretty much every single board on Z690/Z790 has had little to no issue with core overclocking. They would all overclock similarly, subject to chip quality.
Even the ITX boards with single EPS connectors managed to clock high pretty well.

The only difference between the motherboards is really just how they handle the IMC and their ability to tackle higher frequencies and/or specific DIMM quantities.

So don't think too hard and just choose a board based on features.
But if you absolutely need 8,000+ MHz, then you'd be forced to go with the highest end ASUS for now, unless you want to roll the dice on competitor brands.

SightUp · Jun 20, 2023

Ichirou said:
FWIW, pretty much every single board on Z690/Z790 has had little to no issue with core overclocking. They would all overclock similarly, subject to chip quality.
Even the ITX boards with single EPS connectors managed to clock high pretty well.

The only difference between the motherboards is really just how they handle the IMC and their ability to tackle higher frequencies and/or specific DIMM quantities.

So don't think too hard and just choose a board based on features.
But if you absolutely need 8,000+ MHz, then you'd be forced to go with the highest end ASUS for now, unless you want to roll the dice on competitor brands.

Sorry, I forgot to mention I was planning on getting a new kit of RAM too. The following:

F5-7600J3852F24GX2-TZ5RK-(EOL) - Overview - G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd.

Trident Z5 RGB series DDR5 memory is designed for ultra-high performance on DDR5 platforms. Featuring a sleek and streamlined aluminum heatspreader design, available in metallic silver, matte black, or matte white, the Trident Z5 RGB series DDR5 DRAM memory is the ideal choice to build a...

www.gskill.com

So you're saying I can get away with the equivalent of the ASUS ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi 6E LGA 1700 on the 14000 series line up? What about the 10+1 power stages? Or that shouldn't matter at this point? Or does it? What is the minimum I should be trying for? Albeit this is more expensive than most Strix boards out there...

Ichirou · Jun 20, 2023

SightUp said:
Sorry, I forgot to mention I was planning on getting a new kit of RAM too. The following:

F5-7600J3852F24GX2-TZ5RK-(EOL) - Overview - G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd.

Trident Z5 RGB series DDR5 memory is designed for ultra-high performance on DDR5 platforms. Featuring a sleek and streamlined aluminum heatspreader design, available in metallic silver, matte black, or matte white, the Trident Z5 RGB series DDR5 DRAM memory is the ideal choice to build a...

www.gskill.com

So you're saying I can get away with the equivalent of the ASUS ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi 6E LGA 1700 on the 14000 series line up? What about the 10+1 power stages? Or that shouldn't matter at this point? Or does it? What is the minimum I should be trying for? Albeit this is more expensive than most Strix boards out there...

The point is that the power stages don't really matter anymore when modern motherboards are all overspecced.
Unless you're getting an ITX/SFF board with a single EPS connector, don't worry too much about the VRMs/MOSFETs/etc.
Pretty much every single board you could possibly get will be able to handle the same top-end overclocks on the CPU cores.
Even an old Z690/Z790 with an updated BIOS will be able to do so.

The primary concern is memory overclocking, which not everyone cares about. That is very heavily motherboard dependent.
Only the Z790 ASUS Apex has been optimized for very high frequencies with two DIMM configurations. All other brands/models are a hit or miss.
That's most likely going to persist with Z890(?) as well, although some lower-end boards might have a bone thrown to them. But nobody knows at this time.

Considering that not many people have bothered with lower end ASUS boards for memory overclocking, I'd suggest to just wait and see.

SightUp · Jun 20, 2023

I was looking at the z790-E. From what I am seeing, that's ASUS's top Strix board.

I am looking at the BIOS updates here: ROG STRIX Z790-E GAMING WIFI | ROG STRIX Z790-E GAMING WIFI | Gaming Motherboards｜ROG - Republic of Gamers｜ROG USA

2.Support GSKILL DDR5-7200 48GB(24GBx2) memory kit

- 904 BIOS Update Notes

Would this board not even support the kit then I want to buy? I am guessing this is what you meant when you said it's a hit and miss.
I will have to specifically look for updates to the BIOS in the next gen to make sure the kit I buy will be supported regardless of the actual specs on the boards homepage which states support for the 7800 kits.

s1rrah · Jun 20, 2023

SightUp said:
I intend on building a whole new PC for the 14000 series but more budgeted. My present PC was as expensive as can be; 13900KS, Apex, a 8000 G.Skill kit. I want the next build to be a little more restrained. This is all presuming that the rumors are true about the 14000 series is indeed coming to the desktop and isn't being canceled.

Initially I was looking at something from ASRock, but evidently, they haven't released anything decent for the last few gens.
Going back to ASUS, I have had their named boards for the last few generations; two Heros and presently the z790 Apex. I never really pushed my overclocks and I am told for what I do, I could have gotten away with a much lesser board and saved a dollar or two.
I specifically want to work on primary/secondary timings and push the CPU max OC to .1 over the max. On my KS, stock max on all cores is 5.6. I push it to 5.7 on all Pcores for example. And I am happy with that. I am not trying to push anything crazy high.

I can evidently get away with that on a Strix board, right?

With that in mind, there are like 10 Strix boards out there. What's the difference between A-Z(H?)? They have constants between each generation that separates them right? Or should I go with a Hero again?

I'm using a fairly mid range Strix Z690-E Gaming with my 13900K. I have no plans on upgrading it. Not sure how it would do with higher speed DDR5 but no issues with up to 7000mhz thus far.

I'm also not intending to upgrade the CPU should a "refresh" occur though I've read the current Z690/790 boards should work.

I run mine fine and daily at 58p/46e or 57p/45e all-core and mood depending. Zero issues. I by no means consider it the best mb in the world and in fact hate the stupid heatpipe m.2 slot (which happens to nerf the main GPU pci-e lanes if used) so much that I put a sticker on the heatpipe that simply says, "DUMB." lol ..

But other than that totally dumb, totally unused m.2 slot, I've had no problems with the mb.

Here's some reading...

Ichirou · Jun 20, 2023

SightUp said:
I was looking at the z790-E. From what I am seeing, that's ASUS's top Strix board.

I am looking at the BIOS updates here: ROG STRIX Z790-E GAMING WIFI | ROG STRIX Z790-E GAMING WIFI | Gaming Motherboards｜ROG - Republic of Gamers｜ROG USA

- 904 BIOS Update Notes

Would this board not even support the kit then I want to buy? I am guessing this is what you meant when you said it's a hit and miss.
I will have to specifically look for updates to the BIOS in the next gen to make sure the kit I buy will be supported regardless of the actual specs on the boards homepage which states support for the 7800 kits.

QVL lists are a good place to start, both on the motherboard's side and on the RAM's side (they each provide their own QVL lists from internal testing).
I'd trust the RAM side more since it tends to be up to date and their warranty would cover you since they would not want to be called out for false marketing.

scracy · Jun 21, 2023

SightUp said:
I was looking at the z790-E. From what I am seeing, that's ASUS's top Strix board.

I am looking at the BIOS updates here: ROG STRIX Z790-E GAMING WIFI | ROG STRIX Z790-E GAMING WIFI | Gaming Motherboards｜ROG - Republic of Gamers｜ROG USA

- 904 BIOS Update Notes

Would this board not even support the kit then I want to buy? I am guessing this is what you meant when you said it's a hit and miss.
I will have to specifically look for updates to the BIOS in the next gen to make sure the kit I buy will be supported regardless of the actual specs on the boards homepage which states support for the 7800 kits.

Generally 7200MT/s is about the limit for a 4 DIMM board, if you really want to go higher then buy an Apex board purely from a memory overclocking point of view or alternatively wait for the new Z790 boards to become available around October to coincide with Raptor lake refresh. It may well be the case that there might be more 2 DIMM boards to choose from combined with CPU's with possibly a better IMC. As @Ichirou said trust the memory manufacturers QVL not the motherboards, I know this from personal expierence with DDR5.

konawolv · Jun 21, 2023

The z790 strix-e should be fine. I have a friend who had it, and had that exact same kit of memory and was able to OC it to 8000mhz-8200mhz. The motherboard should definitely be able to run it at xmp. However, the variable is more likely to be your IMC than the motherboard. With that said, he switched apex and was able to hit ~400mhz higher ram oc vs the strix-e.

Alexandrus · Jun 21, 2023

konawolv said:
The z790 strix-e should be fine. I have a friend who had it, and had that exact same kit of memory and was able to OC it to 8000mhz-8200mhz. The motherboard should definitely be able to run it at xmp. However, the variable is more likely to be your IMC than the motherboard. With that said, he switched apex and was able to hit ~400mhz higher ram oc vs the strix-e.

Precisely this. Plus, easier OC of CPU on Apex, more stable VCore hence lower set VCore required and so on.
But the Strix-E will do just fine, and it should for what it costs, lol.
However, the IMC quality matters a lor, I tested XMP 7600 and most 13900KS would run it, most 13900K would too, but some did not, and some needed to lower the RAM to 7400 or 7200.

Strix Motherboard Recommendation

SightUp

Ichirou

SightUp

F5-7600J3852F24GX2-TZ5RK-(EOL) - Overview - G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd.

Ichirou

F5-7600J3852F24GX2-TZ5RK-(EOL) - Overview - G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd.

SightUp

s1rrah

Ichirou

scracy

konawolv

Alexandrus

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