What Z690 board are you eyeing?

Planning to get the ASUS TUF GAMING Z690 PLUS D4 for an i5 12600K so I can re-use my 32GB DDR4 3200MHz CL16 RAM kit. I don't want to be a guinea pig and early adopter for DDR5. I've read that it's built to be more complex than DDR4 with built-in power delivery and split channels within a single module. Complexity just has more things can go wrong this early in the game. I do realize that going DDR4 now will probably prevent me from upgrading the 12600K to 13th gen Raptor Lake using the same motherboard next year but I think this setup will last me a while anyway.

Going with ASUS again because their UEFI has been solid for me.
 
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If I do stick with DDR4, the Aorus Z690 Pro DDR4 is the one I'll be getting if I can find it. Currently, it isn't even listed at retail sites and I can't seem to find any other info on release dates.

I wanted to go with ASUS this round, but many of their models are not compatible with the Noctua D15 and other large air coolers.
 
I'm waiting for either Meteor or Raptor Lake happy with my Comet Lake I was going to buy something but heh it's all sold out already.
Sure you can get the Chips but the MB or the Ram is sold out. Or the CPU cooler mounting kit which prob got scalped.
 
kirbyrj said:
I'm waiting for a Z790 if I build an Alder Lake setup. I'm not going to be a guinea pig for new memory, new platform, new architecture, new Windows scheduler for efficiency cores, etc all at the same time. Not to mention paying an early adopter tax on DDR5 memory.

But out of those choices, I'd probably buy the Asus Strix.
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couldnt have said it any better
 
kirbyrj said:
I'm waiting for a Z790 if I build an Alder Lake setup. I'm not going to be a guinea pig for new memory, new platform, new architecture, new Windows scheduler for efficiency cores, etc all at the same time. Not to mention paying an early adopter tax on DDR5 memory.

But out of those choices, I'd probably buy the Asus Strix.
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Yeah, I've settled on this. I normally jump on new architectures (Core2, 2600k, 6700k, etc - I only skipped Northwood C when it was new); I've got more than one system so bugs can be worked out and I can use something else for a bit if I have to and it ends up buggy, but this is a bit TOO much new - especially when my 10th gen stuff is still good. Not doing new EVERYTHING at once - that just sounds like "oh hey new bug again". Especially since I'd be draining the loop again, swapping everything over, refilling, etc... Nah. I'll wait a gen on this one.
 
I agree with too many new things at once. Also where are the motherboard reviews? I don't see much yet so how are we to make an informed decision?
Even if you want to pull the trigger, Newegg is all out of DDR5, and both Chicago area Micro Center stores are out of stock on DDR5 as well. Then add in that most air coolers do not ship with the LGA 1700 brackets, and water coolers are pretty much in the same boat.
This launch just seems too early and rushed.
 
dvsman said:
I have the Gigabyte Aorus Ultra DDR4 on order simply because it was the only one I could find that I could order and is in mITX format. My next build will be going into a spare white HYTE case I bought a while back that I never got around to building in. I'll basically using parts I have leftover or laying around (or cannibalized from other builds).
  • Hyte Revolt 3 White
  • 12900KF *(no integrated graphics)
  • Gigabyte z690 Aorus Ultra DDR4
  • Cooler Master ML 280 Mirror
  • Cooler Master 750w SFX
  • 2x8gb G.Skill Trident Z NEO 3800
  • Zotac Trinity Gaming 3090
At least that's the plan for now.
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You'll more than likely be happy with that Gigabyte board. Never had any issues with any Gigabyte boards that I have had over the last 20+ years.
 
Asrock Steel Legend has 8 sata ports. Taichi only has 7 but is double the price.Can only fit 7 drives in my case unless I go the M.2 ripoff route.
 
Comixbooks said:
Asrock Steel Legend has 8 sata ports. Taichi only has 7 but is double the price.Can only fit 7 drives in my case unless I go the M.2 ripoff route.
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Just buy a PCI-E card for SATA drive ports? Presumably, that sort of thing is part of the point of going ATX size anyway.
 
Comixbooks said:
Asrock Steel Legend has 8 sata ports. Taichi only has 7 but is double the price.Can only fit 7 drives in my case unless I go the M.2 ripoff route.
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What ripoff route? SATA drives cost the same form factor does not factor in
 
Got my Z690I AORUS ULTRA DDR4.

This thing seems to be excellent quality. And its loaded up with tons of heatsink material. Its the heaviest ITX board I have ever had and I've had some nice ones in hand.

The heatsink for the top NVME is comically large. However, it ought to wring every last drip of performance from the hottest single sided drives. Dual sided drives could suffer a bit, as there is only a small cold plate for the opposite side. The heatsink for the bottom drive isn't exactly small, either. But again, one side only gets a slim plate. The elephant in the room is whether or not this huge sandwich interfere's with popular air coolers.

The VRM heatsinks all look really nice. All those fins ought to work well. You can see a heatpipe connecting them, too. I don't think this is actively cooled.

The backside of the board has a nearly full sized heat spreader for the backside of the VRMs. This is the best I have ever seen on an ITX board. Not only is it large, the contact is really good. The heatpads are absolutely attached. and the heatspreader is also solidly secured. In contrast to an Z590 asrock board I had in hand recently, which had a pretty large heatsrpeader on the back. But it wasn't solidly secured. You could press on it and tap it against the PCB with your thumbs.

If you didn't catch it in the board name, this is the DDR4 version. I've got 32GB (2x16GB) of nice Crucial 3600 RAM. I don't sweat DDR5 one bit, right now.

Still waiting on EK to even announce an LGA 1700 conversion kit for my EK AIO so.....it will be days or weeks before I get to use this board.

I haven't had a Gigabyte board since Core2Quad days.
 

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chameleoneel said:
Got my Z690I AORUS ULTRA DDR4.

This thing seems to be excellent quality. And its loaded up with tons of heatsink material. Its the heaviest ITX board I have ever had and I've had some nice ones in hand.

The heatsink for the top NVME is comically large. However, it ought to wring every last drip of performance from the hottest single sided drives. Dual sided drives could suffer a bit, as there is only a small cold plate for the opposite side. The heatsink for the bottom drive isn't exactly small, either. But again, one side only gets a slim plate. The elephant in the room is whether or not this huge sandwich interfere's with popular air coolers.

The VRM heatsinks all look really nice. All those fins ought to work well. You can see a heatpipe connecting them, too. I don't think this is actively cooled.

The backside of the board has a nearly full sized heat spreader for the backside of the VRMs. This is the best I have ever seen on an ITX board. Not only is it large, the contact is really good. The heatpads are absolutely attached. and the heatspreader is also solidly secured. In contrast to an Z590 asrock board I had in hand recently, which had a pretty large heatsrpeader on the back. But it wasn't solidly secured. You could press on it and tap it against the PCB with your thumbs.

If you didn't catch it in the board name, this is the DDR4 version. I've got 32GB (2x16GB) of nice Crucial 3600 RAM. I don't sweat DDR5 one bit, right now.

Still waiting on EK to even announce an LGA 1700 conversion kit for my EK AIO so.....it will be days or weeks before I get to use this board.

I haven't had a Gigabyte board since Core2Quad days.
Click to expand...


They still use double thick copper PCB? you should take a picture of the back of the box.
 
I pre-ordered an ASUS z690 maximus hero from B&H probably won't get it until mid-Dec they said. I'm thinking about maybe going for the Aorus Master since I don't think I'll ever use the thunderbolt 4 ports nor will I use the m.2 pcie card that the hero has. The aorus master has a 10G Lan which would use before a TB4 port. It also has a big backplate on the backside which I'm sure draws some heat from vrm. It's also $130 cheaper than the hero. What do you think? I can just run down to my local microcenter and pick up an Aorus Master no problem.
 
Mine just came in a few minutes ago too. The office mail just plopped it on my desk. No CPU yet though - that should be coming in next week. Also no ETA whatsoever on LGA 1700 specific mounts / adaptors. I think that's going to be the big roadblock to fnishing the new builds.

719.jpg
 
dvsman said:
Mine just came in a few minutes ago too. The office mail just plopped it on my desk. No CPU yet though - that should be coming in next week. Also no ETA whatsoever on LGA 1700 specific mounts / adaptors. I think that's going to be the big roadblock to fnishing the new builds.

View attachment 411361
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what cooler?
 
I'm scavenging spare parts from around my workbench for this build - other than new mobo and CPU - and I happen to have a newish Cooler Master ML280 Mirror sitting around.

I'm hoping CM puts out the adaptor soon (for sale, I'll pay for it) ... but so far their internet team has just said to wait. My CPU should be coming in sometime next week, so I'm hoping I also get good news on the adaptor mount by then as well.
 
Is the Asus ProArt Z690-Creator any good? It's got Thunderbolt 4 ports and the 10Gbase-T Ethernet which I both need.
 
That creator board would be fine for over clocking. Most of these boards have overbuilt VRM and huge heatsinks. This one is no exception.

Gigabyte has the Vision boards as a creator focus. Also, the aero boards. And MSI’s Unify boards sometimes have dual thunderbolt.
 
Found a Asus Tuf Z690 online going to buy that. Going with a 12700k hoping to have a build completed by my 9 day vacation in a few weeks. Need to buy a kit for my Noctua.
 
Picked up an Asus Z690M Plus D4 with a 12700k. Not bad. IF you have a Z490m Plus with a 10700k, you will not notice much of any difference. The CPUZ benchmark is better, but to me, it doesn't offer much difference. The TEMPS of the CPU weren't as bad as I thought they would be. Using a Noctua NH-D9L with a single 92mm fan. Idles in the 30's with MAX stress temp of 85 C.
 
chameleoneel said:
Got my Z690I AORUS ULTRA DDR4.

This thing seems to be excellent quality. And its loaded up with tons of heatsink material. Its the heaviest ITX board I have ever had and I've had some nice ones in hand.

The heatsink for the top NVME is comically large. However, it ought to wring every last drip of performance from the hottest single sided drives. Dual sided drives could suffer a bit, as there is only a small cold plate for the opposite side. The heatsink for the bottom drive isn't exactly small, either. But again, one side only gets a slim plate. The elephant in the room is whether or not this huge sandwich interfere's with popular air coolers.

The VRM heatsinks all look really nice. All those fins ought to work well. You can see a heatpipe connecting them, too. I don't think this is actively cooled.

The backside of the board has a nearly full sized heat spreader for the backside of the VRMs. This is the best I have ever seen on an ITX board. Not only is it large, the contact is really good. The heatpads are absolutely attached. and the heatspreader is also solidly secured. In contrast to an Z590 asrock board I had in hand recently, which had a pretty large heatsrpeader on the back. But it wasn't solidly secured. You could press on it and tap it against the PCB with your thumbs.

If you didn't catch it in the board name, this is the DDR4 version. I've got 32GB (2x16GB) of nice Crucial 3600 RAM. I don't sweat DDR5 one bit, right now.

Still waiting on EK to even announce an LGA 1700 conversion kit for my EK AIO so.....it will be days or weeks before I get to use this board.

I haven't had a Gigabyte board since Core2Quad days.
Click to expand...

I was also interested in this board or the Asus Z690 ITX option. My wife wants me to build a smaller rig than what I have now (see sig) but I don't want to skimp on features too much. What CPU are you going with?
 
chameleoneel said:
Got my Z690I AORUS ULTRA DDR4.
Click to expand...

dvsman said:
Mine just came in a few minutes ago too. The office mail just plopped it on my desk. No CPU yet though - that should be coming in next week. Also no ETA whatsoever on LGA 1700 specific mounts / adaptors. I think that's going to be the big roadblock to fnishing the new builds.
Click to expand...

Hi,

congratulations! Where did you lucky guys succeed to purchase the DDR4 boards?
Here's no nothing to order:
https://geizhals.eu/?cat=mbp4_1700&xf=4400_Mini-ITX
And if there is an air cooler sitting around I would be happy to know if one actually fits.

@dysman: Au contraire my i7-12700K and DDR4 memory are longing for mommy. Maybe for a long cold winter ...

Update: Here we are:
https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-z690i-aorus-ultra-ddr4/p/N82E16813145351?Item=N82E16813145351
 
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Yep! I got it from Newegg too, Larry Hard

I'm debating buying a cheapo $40 air cooler off of Amazon as a stopgap measure. I'll see on Monday (CPU is scheduled to arrive then).

EDITL adding Amazon link to cheapo cooler: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product...f&pd_rd_w=QfnNx&pd_rd_wg=sItyw&ref_=pd_gw_unk

Cooler Master is charging $5 for the adaptor (totally reasonable) but it's out of stock ATM and given ongoing global supply chain issues who knows how long before it comes back into stock.
 
I had all the parts ready on monday but the Asus Z690 Hero I received had a crooked HDMI port so I sent it back for replacement. Now it's out of stock so I'll probably get a refund. Looking at the Aorus Master maybe, or wait for another Hero.

So sad, the most expensive board I've ever bought and it's the first one I have to send back...
 
gpitpitan said:
I was also interested in this board or the Asus Z690 ITX option. My wife wants me to build a smaller rig than what I have now (see sig) but I don't want to skimp on features too much. What CPU are you going with?
Click to expand...
I got a 12700k from Best Buy, on release day. Just waiting now for my LGA 1700 mounting hardware from EKWB. They shipped it last night. I got a text message from DHL shipping: Estimated delivery from Europe is November 17th.
 
smoothmove said:
Picked up an Asus Z690M Plus D4 with a 12700k. Not bad. IF you have a Z490m Plus with a 10700k, you will not notice much of any difference. The CPUZ benchmark is better, but to me, it doesn't offer much difference. The TEMPS of the CPU weren't as bad as I thought they would be. Using a Noctua NH-D9L with a single 92mm fan. Idles in the 30's with MAX stress temp of 85 C.
Click to expand...
opted for this same board. Pretty satisfied so far, but havent yet pushed it. Appreciate they drilled it for 1200 coolers as well. Not optimal, but good transitional feature.
 
I ordered an Apex last week but it's not even had any movement on shipping yet.
 
kirbyrj said:
Asus seems to be on top of things with their mounting hole solution. Would likely work with my EK AIO without the new unreleased brackets. I don't mind reusing something that it isn't designed for as long as it works.

Then again, it's not like my Ryzen setup is bad or anything...probably don't need to "upgrade."
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It probably would work. It may not be 100% contact, as Alderlake apparently has a lower Z-height.

However, EK finally announced and made LGA 1700 kits available for their AIOs.
https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-aio-lga1700-upgrade-kit

My kit will be here on the 17th. its coming from EK HQ which is overseas so, it was like $18 DHL shipping for now. Until they get some U.S. sites stocked with them. I also ordered an extra set of the mounting screws, springs, etc.
https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-aio-mounting-nuts-and-springs

Really sucks I have to pay almost $20 to be able to cool my 12700k, 2 weeks after release.
 
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I decided to order the Asus TUF Gaming Z690-Plus Wifi D4 along with an Asus Thunderbolt EX4 card. I already have a Mellanox Connect-X3 10G network card and 32gigs of DDR4 memory.

I figured I could save some money with these instead of getting the Asus ProArt Z690-Creator Wifi with DDR5 and use the savings to step up to the i7 12700K instead of the i5 12600K I was originally targeting.
 
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therealjustin said:
If I do stick with DDR4, the Aorus Z690 Pro DDR4 is the one I'll be getting if I can find it. Currently, it isn't even listed at retail sites and I can't seem to find any other info on release dates.

I wanted to go with ASUS this round, but many of their models are not compatible with the Noctua D15 and other large air coolers.
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It looks like it mainly depends on the board. Asus TUF Gaming Z690-Plus Wifi D4 is compatible with the D15 for example according to Noctua. Maybe the mounting kit helps? https://ncc.noctua.at/motherboards/model/ASUS-TUF-Gaming-Z690-Plus-WiFi-D4-5378
 
I canceled the Pre-order I had for the Z690 Hero in favor of the Aorus Master since I don't need or care about TB4 ports and it had 10gbe port. But actually, I don't think I would even use the 10gbe port yet even a 2.5gbe port on my pc since I've always gone wireless and its fast enough with 6e. Then I saw a review that compared VRM temps on some of the boards and the hero had the best at 50C and the Master was at 63C. I couldn't believe the difference considering the Master has a huge backplate and massive vrm heatsinks with "Fins array". The Hero has no backplate so why the difference? Then you can see that the Master has a huge piece of plastic covering/cooking the VRM. Why in the world would Gigabyte put a cover blocking air flow to a crucial heatsink? Either cut the cover way back or put a bunch of holes in it above the VRM so it can get some damn airflow. WTF Gigabyte. I'm not so sure I should have canceled by Hero Pre-order now considering its only a $130 price difference. I wish though that the Hero could have cut cost by not including the extra m.2 expansion card that I would never use. But maybe I could sell the m.2 card to offset some of the price difference.
 
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The same reason some of their power supplies explode... bad design and component choices and lack of willingness to fix it.
 
Dutt1113 said:
I canceled the Pre-order I had for the Z690 Hero in favor of the Aorus Master since I don't need or care about TB4 ports and it had 10gbe port. But actually, I don't think I would even use the 10gbe port yet even a 2.5gbe port on my pc since I've always gone wireless and its fast enough with 6e. Then I saw a review that compared VRM temps on some of the boards and the hero had the best at 50C and the Master was at 63C. I couldn't believe the difference considering the Master has a huge backplate and massive vrm heatsinks with "Fins array". The Hero has no backplate so why the difference? Then you can see that the Master has a huge piece of plastic covering/cooking the VRM. Why in the world would Gigabyte put a cover blocking air flow to a crucial heatsink? Either cut the cover way back or put a bunch of holes in it above the VRM so it can get some damn airflow. WTF Gigabyte. I'm not so sure I should have canceled by Hero Pre-order now considering its only a $130 price difference. I wish though that the Hero could have cut cost by not including the extra m.2 expansion card that I would never use. But maybe I could sell the m.2 card to offset some of the price difference.
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A. 63C is a great temp for VRMs. 50C is amazing. But....63C is still really good and you won't be held back, at all. Additionally.....Alder Lake doesn't have much headroom for OC anyway. I wouldn't sweat the VRM temps, in this comparison. (I'm a person whom has run 5950x and 11900k at full performance, in mini-itx scenarios. See: boards with less VRM phases and smaller heatsinks, compared to most desktop boards.)

B. I think probably the main factor for the temp difference, is that Asus' VRM heatsinks are quite a bit larger. (and that size has hurt cooler compatibility). Most of the brands have plastic and other shroud bits around the back-panel/VRM area. Asus included. I don't think there is much in it, in terms of temp differences due to those shrouds.
However, Gigabyte's finely finned heatsink design, is designed to catch some airflow. More so than Asus' chunky designs. If you have airflow moving towards the top of the case, I bet the Gigabyte temps would drop a bit.

Can you link that review/comparison on VRM temps? I'm curious to see it.
 
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