Best Z790 DDR5 board at or under $500?

[xDiVolatilX]

I am having continual boot issues with my z690 MSI carbon and I have tried a lot of things.. once windows loads it's solid as a rock but a cold boot in the morning is typically a "hang, power off, re-attempt and usually it makes it to W11" ... it was annoying as hell.. Sooo I was about to just return it and get a z790 Aorus master or the Asus rog strix z790-E... The others on reddit with this same issue never sorted it out, just returned the board for another and that was that. but I am now keeping this board... read my updates below:

EDIT: update - looks like a bad sata cable was to blame for the boot issues.. I had one older SSD which required a connection to a sata port via cable.. I noticed that drive didn't show up in the devices from time to time so I reseated the cables on both ends really well.. that didn't improve things at all. It was still intermittent and booting took a lot longer than I felt it should.. so just removed the drive and now the system boots quickly and reliably.. I had this happen years ago on another system and I should have caught this sooner but oh well. The z690 carbon feels solid now in all respects.

EDIT2: the final update: turns out the ASMedia chip on the MSI z690 carbon and edge and I think on their MEG z690/z790 variant boards have issues. My boot problems were 100% related to this, it was not a bad sata cable, the whole controller is not working right and most people are just disabling it in the BIOS (called "External SATA 6G" - runs the physical ports A and B on my board) because windows 11 was complaining about it literally every other boot without anything even connected to it. Fortunately this was just two additional SATA ports - I just has the misfortune of using one of them for my one non-m.2 drive and it caused a bunch of issues.. AND all of the SATA ports are buried behind my giant ass video card - requiring a complete removal of said video card to access those ports. Anyways.. just wanted to make note in case anyone else runs into this issue. Maybe MSI will fix the ASMedia chip issue with a bios update. who knows. I don't even care about that controller so I am leaving it disabled in the bios from here on out.

Thanks for sharing. I have the Aorus Z790 Master and I have no issues at all if you were considering it I recommend this board it's so sweet.

 

[DPI]

Or don't use that slot and you won't have to worry about it.

You can just use the CPU connected gen 4 slot instead and not even deal with the gen 5 m.2 slot that shares bandwidth. Just avoid that one. I have my main m.2 into the CPU gen 4 slot and the game drive on the chipset connected slot.

The idea of leaving the primary M.2 slot empty is silly because then you're accommodating the MB, rather than the MB accommodating you. Desktop class Intel and AMD is already so PCIe lane starved, and I rather buy the right motherboard to begin with that doesn't squander lanes. The downside in the case of Aorus Master - and likely all their Z790 MB's with a Gen5 M.2 slot - is how hard the second and third PCIe slots are gimped because of this: x4 and x1 respectively, hanging off the chipset. This is unacceptable because it's so limiting for adding any other cards (a second GPU, networking or storage adapters).

If ALL you do is game and never need anything but a GPU and couple M.2 drives, ignorance is bliss I guess and just about any Z790 is going to work for you. But we're in a "Best Z790 for under $500" thread, and while "best" is going to depend on use case, having to severely limit expansion options doesn't make sense when there are many other boards with a smarter balance of PCIe lane mappings.

FWIW, I've owned many Gigabyte MB's, but their PCIe mapping design decisions - specifically lack of x8/x8 - on Z690/Z790 has pushed me away. Even X670E, they're the only board partner that don't have a single x8/x8 capable board. It's baffling.

 

[xDiVolatilX]

The idea of leaving the primary M.2 slot empty is silly because then you're accommodating the MB, rather than the MB accommodating you. Desktop class Intel and AMD is already so PCIe lane starved, and I rather buy the right motherboard to begin with that doesn't squander lanes. The downside in the case of Aorus Master - and likely all their Z790 MB's with a Gen5 M.2 slot - is how hard the second and third PCIe slots are gimped because of this: x4 and x1 respectively, hanging off the chipset. This is unacceptable because it's so limiting for adding any other cards (a second GPU, networking or storage adapters).

If ALL you do is game and never need anything but a GPU and couple M.2 drives, ignorance is bliss I guess and just about any Z790 is going to work for you. But we're in a "Best Z790 for under $500" thread, and while "best" is going to depend on use case, having to severely limit expansion options doesn't make sense when there are many other boards with a smarter balance of PCIe lane mappings.

FWIW, I've owned many gens of Gigabyte MB's, but their PCIe mapping design decisions (lack of x8/x8) on Z690/Z790 has pushed me away. Even X670E, they're the only board partner that don't have a single x8/x8 capable board. It's baffling.

I know what you mean but I don't even worry about it anymore because it's a gaming rig and all I need is a gpu and sound card so it's fine. As long as the 13900ks 4090 SN850X are all running at their max potential it's good. The Aorus master is a beastly board I love it.

 

[Mad Maxx]

Or don't use that slot and you won't have to worry about it.

That's what I did for my 4 SN850X drives. Installed them in slots 2-5 and everything's been great.

I've seen a lot of recent outrage over Asus boards from PC reviewers/builders on YouTube. The problem seems to be Asus boards are overvolting CPUs and the BIOS fixes actually void any warranty if used. I've had no such trouble with my board, and am by no means anything remotely close to an expert on this, but can't say it doesn't concern me.

 

[revenant]

Thanks for sharing. I have the Aorus Z790 Master and I have no issues at all if you were considering it I recommend this board it's so sweet.

Thanks... that was my go-to if I didn't sort the issues out but I did. The ASMedia controller was 100% the issue.. disabled in the bios. System behaves totally normal now.

 

[DPI]

I've seen a lot of recent outrage over Asus boards from PC reviewers/builders on YouTube. The problem seems to be Asus boards are overvolting CPUs and the BIOS fixes actually void any warranty if used. I've had no such trouble with my board, and am by no means anything remotely close to an expert on this, but can't say it doesn't concern me.

This is an Intel thread, sir. The outrage is specific to certain ASUS AMD motherboards.

Every ASUS Intel board I've tested with Raptor Lake has been top notch.

 

[Denpepe]

The outrage is specific to certain ASUS AMD motherboards.

Most of it but not all of it, it's just a culmination of years of misstakes (like the 12th gen hero mobo's which could catch fire due to a reversed cap or something)

Also the beta bios voiding warranty thing is something that was in the Asus docs for ages, but just now people seem to have caught on to it and make a big deal of it.

 

[Mad Maxx]

This is an Intel thread, sir. The outrage is specific to certain ASUS AMD motherboards.

Every ASUS Intel board I've tested with Raptor Lake has been top notch.

Understood, sir... but I don't assume there's no cause for concern simply because I've never had a problem with Asus Intel boards in my years of building PCs. As noted in the post above, the Z690 Hero boards had a nasty habit of failing less than a year ago.

 

[Deleted member 312202]

Every ASUS Intel board I've tested with Raptor Lake has been top notch.

Same here. I have a Z690 Maximus Formula in my main PC and have also used a Asus Z690-E board that has been rock solid as well. The Hero boards if I remember right were a production issue with a transistor which caused them to fail.

 

[DPI]

Why? Mine has been so wonderful.

Purely for gaming, it's a good board with overkill power delivery, but for anyone else looking for more of an all-arounder, particularly for I/O, it falls down. My experience over several months:

1. 2nd and 3rd PCIe slots on Z790 Aorus Master are unusable. It also seems to have PCIe handshaking problems on those slots, where many of the add-in x4 and x1 peripherals I tested were ignored by the BIOS.
2. Gigabyte's 1-click overclocking implementation and algorithms are near useless, but manual CPU overclocking is beastly.
3. Esoteric, but hardware level issue with Gigabyte motherboards and Renesas PMIC's (the integrated memory controller on Hynix A-die DDR5 modules) being voltage limited, and so OC'ing of the best DDR5 modules is limited.

100% of these problems went away when I moved the same CPU and memory to a Z790 ASUS ProArt. I also tested ASUS Hero and Extreme Z790 in parallel, and found that ASUS' DDR5 OC special sauce on those boards was present on Z790 ProArt.

What I lost in Aorus Master -> ProArt:

• Gen5 M.2 port

What I gained in Aorus Master -> ProArt:

• Usable, CPU-connected x8 second PCIe slot (dual GPU's)
• Usable, chipset-connected x4 PCIe slot that works with 100% of the 4-lane Gen4 add-in devices that failed to on Aorus Master's x4 slot.
• +600Mhz extra stable speed on my 2x16GB Hynix A-die's. Aorus Master struggled to hold 7600Mhz stable, Z790 ProArt holds same sticks stable at 8200MHz and probably has room to go. ProArt also does its memory training FAR faster (faster boot-up time).
• 2.5G Network port in addition to the 10GB Network port common to both boards
• 2x Thunderbolt 4 ports, saving $125 of a TB4 add-in card
• ASUS's 1-click "AI Overclock" feature works extremely well despite my initial skepticism of it being a gimmick. It achieves 98% of the manual OC performance that took me weeks of learning the ins and outs of Raptor Lake manual OC'ing - I kinda regret bothering with the latter.
• ATX instead of E-ATX, so case is less cramped.
• No RGB (I consider this a feature)

 

[EmerilLIVE]

Same here. I have a Z690 Maximus Formula in my main PC and have also used a Asus Z690-E board that has been rock solid as well. The Hero boards if I remember right were a production issue with a transistor which caused them to fail.

The ASUS Z690 Hero was a diode installed backwards, which caused several capacitors to fail. Had to RMA mine, but it was a smooth process.

 

[xDiVolatilX]

Purely for gaming, it's a good board with overkill power delivery, but for anyone else looking for more of an all-arounder, particularly for I/O, it falls down. My experience over several months:

1. 2nd and 3rd PCIe slots on Z790 Aorus Master are unusable. It also seems to have PCIe handshaking problems on those slots, where many of the add-in x4 and x1 peripherals I tested were ignored by the BIOS.
2. Gigabyte's 1-click overclocking implementation and algorithms are near useless.
3. Esoteric, but hardware level issue with Gigabyte motherboards and Renesas PMIC's (the integrated memory controller on Hynix A-die DDR5 modules) being voltage limited, and so OC'ing of the best DDR5 modules is limited.

100% of these problems went away when I moved the same CPU and memory to a Z790 ASUS ProArt. I also tested ASUS Hero and Extreme Z790 in parallel, and found that ASUS' DDR5 OC special sauce on those boards was present on Z790 ProArt.

What I lost in Aorus Master -> ProArt:

• Gen5 M.2 port

What I gained in Aorus Master -> ProArt:

• Usable, CPU-connected x8 second PCIe slot (dual GPU's)
• Usable, chipset-connected x4 PCIe slot that works with 100% of the 4-lane Gen4 add-in devices that failed to on Aorus Master's x4 slot.
• +600Mhz extra stable speed on my 2x16GB Hynix A-die's. Aorus Master struggled to hold 7600Mhz stable, Z790 ProArt holds same sticks stable at 8200MHz and probably has room to go. ProArt also does its memory training FAR faster (faster boot-up time).
• 2.5G Network port in addition to the 10GB Network port common to both boards
• 2x Thunderbolt 4 ports, saving $125 of a TB4 add-in card
• ASUS's 1-click "AI Overclock" feature works extremely well despite my initial skepticism of it being a gimmick. It achieves 98% of the manual OC performance that took me weeks of learning the ins and outs of Raptor Lake manual OC'ing - I kinda regret bothering with the latter.
• ATX instead of E-ATX, so case is less cramped.
• No RGB (I consider this a feature)

View attachment 570977

Good findings. Most of these tips are only discovered through trial and error so thanks for sharing.
The funny thing is I'll never even use the gen5 m.2 slot because I'm likely to stay on my gen4s through the life of this board.
I just have a simple gaming rig so it runs the gpu and sound card perfect, also I am not big on RAM OC I have a nice 64gb C32 kit that I really like a lot.
The difference is negligible for me. They are both very nice boards.

 

[kurdt]

Main thing I'd suggest staying away from is the higher end Z790 boards whose primary M.2 slot next to the CPU is wired Gen5, because it cuts the GPU x16 PCIe slot down to x8 as soon primary M.2 is populated, and you net lose 4 electrical PCIe lanes. I'd recommend a board with primary M.2 wired Gen4 to avoid this. Unfortunately you'll have to dive into the PDF manual to sniff this out since it's case by case. In general, the highest end Z690/Z790 boards tend to be M.2 Gen5, and IMO better avoided for this gen.

Examples: ASUS Z790 Hero is M.2 Gen4, ASUS Z790 Extreme is M.2 Gen5.

Somehow I'd missed this. Not necessarily going to change what I purchase, but certainly would change how I configure it -- not to mention save troubleshooting why the lane is only running x8, heh. Good info, thanks.

 

[brennok]

Curious if thoughts have changed at all. Now that the 14th gen is out I am thinking of picking up a 13700k or 14700k and the board choices are just overwhelming considering it has been 8 years or so since I built.

 

[Furious_Styles]

Curious if thoughts have changed at all. Now that the 14th gen is out I am thinking of picking up a 13700k or 14700k and the board choices are just overwhelming considering it has been 8 years or so since I built.

Since 14th gen is a dud I'd say things haven't changed much. I'd just try to get a good feature set for a reasonable price. Kinda sucks they are so expensive.

 

[Dan_D]

Curious if thoughts have changed at all. Now that the 14th gen is out I am thinking of picking up a 13700k or 14700k and the board choices are just overwhelming considering it has been 8 years or so since I built.

The 14700K is way better than the 13700K given they upped the core counts. As for the boards, the newer boards handle DDR5 memory better than the older ones. They have better compatibility and clock memory much higher with a lot less headache.

I recently tested the GIGABYTE Aorus Z790 Elite X WiFi7 with a Core i7 14700K and the board was fantastic. Absolutely trouble free.

 

[brennok]

The 14700K is way better than the 13700K given they upped the core counts. As for the boards, the newer boards handle DDR5 memory better than the older ones. They have better compatibility and clock memory much higher with a lot less headache.

I recently tested the GIGABYTE Aorus Z790 Elite X WiFi7 with a Core i7 14700K and the board was fantastic. Absolutely trouble free.

Thanks I keep leaning towards the 14700K especially since we have already seen the price difference drop from $80 to $50. I am still trying to narrow down what features I want vs need. I had heard rumors of new Z790 boards coming so figure I might as well wait and see what if any BF deals I can grab. Motherboards and GPUs choices always seem to be the thing that delays my builds.

Last time I built SATA ports and LAN brand were some of the driving forces. Not sure how much RealTEK vs Intel matter these days, and with drive sizes number of SATA ports isn't as important especially considering how many cases have little room for drives. Figure I will probably go Fractal Torrent and air cool.

 

[Dan_D]

Thanks I keep leaning towards the 14700K especially since we have already seen the price difference drop from $80 to $50. I am still trying to narrow down what features I want vs need. I had heard rumors of new Z790 boards coming so figure I might as well wait and see what if any BF deals I can grab.

The motherboards are already here. GIGABYTE and several other companies have announced their updated Z790 boards. The afore-mentioned GIGABYTE Aorus Z790 Elite X WiFi7 is one of the newer boards which I reviewed recently. There have been some VRM changes to the newer boards and naturally, they come with an updated UEFI BIOS that can handle the 14xx series CPU's out of the box. However, most Intel chipset based boards can be updated without even having a CPU or memory installed. Therefore, you can use older boards with ease. The main thing the newer boards bring to the table is superior DDR5 memory overclocking and better compatibility with XMP and EXPO memory profiles. Speeds in excess of DDR5 7000 are easily achieved on the newer boards. On Z690 that was hard to achieve, though I have seen boards do it from time to time.

 

[xDiVolatilX]

The 14700K is way better than the 13700K given they upped the core counts. As for the boards, the newer boards handle DDR5 memory better than the older ones. They have better compatibility and clock memory much higher with a lot less headache.

I recently tested the GIGABYTE Aorus Z790 Elite X WiFi7 with a Core i7 14700K and the board was fantastic. Absolutely trouble free.

This is what I was thinking. It's rock solid stable because the platform is tried and true and mature now especially for DDR5 The 14700k is a nice chip and for the right price is admirable. Every once in a while my 12700kf will miss boot needing a restart. I'd imagine that would never be an issue with a 14700 and likely the 13700 either just the 12th isn't 100% Stable booting up for memory above 6000 in my testing where my 13900KS has never once missed boot with XMP 6400. Running the same board on both chips it's the IMC making the difference.

 

[Dan_D]

This is what I was thinking. It's rock solid stable because the platform is tried and true and mature now especially for DDR5 The 14700k is a nice chip and for the right price is admirable. Every once in a while my 12700kf will miss boot needing a restart. I'd imagine that would never be an issue with a 14700 and likely the 13700 either just the 12th isn't 100% Stable booting up for memory above 6000 in my testing where my 13900KS has never once missed boot with XMP 6400. Running the same board on both chips it's the IMC making the difference.

Well, it's not the chip themselves. I have two 12900K's and they've never done that. Most of the issues with the 12th gens comes from using them with early Z690 boards.

 

[xDiVolatilX]

Well, it's not the chip themselves. I have two 12900K's and they've never done that. Most of the issues with the 12th gens comes from using them with early Z690 boards.

But when your using the same high end Z790 board with the same ram kit and 2 different cpus it actually does boil down to the only variable that is different, the CPU IMC. Also the 12900 "should" have better binned silicone quality vs a 12700 so that's a factor as well. I'd expect the 12900 to be more stable.

 

[Dan_D]

But when your using the same high end Z790 board with the same ram kit and 2 different cpus it actually does boil down to the only variable that is different, the CPU IMC. Also the 12900 "should" have better binned silicone quality vs a 12700 so that's a factor as well. I'd expect the 12900 to be more stable.

Since you are talking about a 13900KS versus a 12700K, yes. The newer IMC is better than the older one just as the 14th generation will be even better. However, there is no reason to believe a 12900K would be more stable than a 12700K. Better quality silicon does not equate to that in this context. All binning does is guarantee that a CPU will operate within a certain TDP at a certain frequency and achieve a certain minimum standard for all areas of quality control guaranteeing the customer a certain baseline experience with the product. However, in their specific operating ranges, the higher end CPU's are not inherently more stable than the cheaper ones. While its true that cores are often disabled on cheaper CPU's, they are no longer a factor as they are permanently disabled. In some cases, Intel doesn't disable these because they were defective but rather to meet customer orders for the lower tier products which are higher volume sellers than more expensive ones.

 

[xDiVolatilX]

Since you are talking about a 13900KS versus a 12700K, yes. The newer IMC is better than the older one just as the 14th generation will be even better. However, there is no reason to believe a 12900K would be more stable than a 12700K. Better quality silicon does not equate to that in this context. All binning does is guarantee that a CPU will operate within a certain TDP at a certain frequency and achieve a certain minimum standard for all areas of quality control guaranteeing the customer a certain baseline experience with the product. However, in their specific operating ranges, the higher end CPU's are not inherently more stable than the cheaper ones. While its true that cores are often disabled on cheaper CPU's, they are no longer a factor as they are permanently disabled. In some cases, Intel doesn't disable these because they were defective but rather to meet customer orders for the lower tier products which are higher volume sellers than more expensive ones.

Okay let me ask you this since you seem to know a lot about it. Why would it be that my 12700k misses boot once in a dozen boots and just has a black screen necessitating me to restart the machine again for it to actually boot up to desktop? Do you think if I got a 13700k it would boot up every single time perfectly? The reason I ask this is because it really bothers me that it misses boot once in awhile and brings me back to the topic of bios updates being dangerous and crashing in another thread we were discussing. I feel like if ever bricking the motherboard was to happen, it would be in this scenario where the 12 series chip even though on a high-end z790 board and good quality ram would miss boot during a bias update or something along those lines. I'm wondering if it's worth just grabbing a 13700k for the better I am see just to make sure I never break the board during an update?

I'd like to also add that I have another machine with the same exact motherboard with even faster ram same brand just 400 Hertz faster and it never misses boot likely because it has a 13900ks in it. This is what is leading me to believe that it's the damn 12 series chip causing me to miss boot which as I said before could result in bricking the board during an update.

 

[chameleoneel]

Okay let me ask you this since you seem to know a lot about it. Why would it be that my 12700k misses boot once in a dozen boots and just has a black screen necessitating me to restart the machine again for it to actually boot up to desktop? Do you think if I got a 13700k it would boot up every single time perfectly? The reason I ask this is because it really bothers me that it misses boot once in awhile and brings me back to the topic of bias updates being dangerous and crashing in another thread we were discussing. I feel like if ever breaking the motherboard was to happen, it would be in this scenario where the 12 series chip even though on a high-end z790 board and good quality ram would miss boot during a bias update or something along those lines. I'm wondering if it's worth just grabbing a 13700k for the better I am see just to make sure I never break the board during an update?

Do a bios update, with the bios set to defaults. Which would remove the XMP or RAM overclock settings. If your motherboar support bios flashing via USB stick, you can do that, as well. As that skips booting the system.

If you haven't updated the bios, you should. It generally improves compatibility.

That said, there is likely some voltage tweaking you need to do, to get your RAM overclock more stable. Could be voltage for the RAM, could be voltage for the CPU/memory controller. Could be both. And those voltages can differ, depending upon your motherboard brand.

*I used this video, to get an idea on how to tweak my mobo for DDR5.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn1jWvZFPFM&t=2257s

Here are a couple of buildzoid videos:
Asus mobo:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_L-acfyvWw

MSI mobo

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o02PCxswUPI

 

[DPI]

<snip>

Update to my prior writeup in May comparing Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master against Z790 ASUS ProArt, the Z790 Aorus Master has seen drastic improvements in latest F11 BIOS, compared to F7 BIOS I tested previously before shelving the motherboard due to too many problems with both memory overclocking and PCIe device handshaking in the x1 and x4 slots. All those issues cleared up somewhere between BIOS F7 -> F8 -> F9 -> F10 -> F11. Memory OC's are FAR better on F11. In essence they took 6 months to catch up to ASUS, but better late than never.

 

[xDiVolatilX]

Update to my prior writeup in May comparing Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master against Z790 ASUS ProArt, the Z790 Aorus Master has seen drastic improvements in latest F11 BIOS, compared to F7 BIOS I tested previously before shelving the motherboard due to too many problems with both memory overclocking and PCIe device handshaking in the x1 and x4 slots. All those issues cleared up somewhere between BIOS F7 -> F8 -> F9 -> F10 -> F11. Memory OC's are FAR better on F11. In essence they took 6 months to catch up to ASUS, but better late than never.

Good to know. I actually used @ BIOS the in Windows software program made by Gigabyte and it worked perfectly updating to the lastest F11 like you mentioned.
I'm considering getting faster RAM if it's worth it but I wonder what the Z790 Aorus Master tips out at? I'm considering getting 8000 and just running it as fast as it will go?
Any literature about how fast people are running their RAM on the Aorus Z790 Master?