Having trouble deciding what motherboard for i5 13600k - please help..

malccy

malccy

malccy

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Hi

am tying myself up in knots trying to decide a suitable motherboard for an i5 13600k I bought from Overclockers' clearance' section the other day.

I don't plan to overclock the chip, but want a board that gets the best out of it.

Would like a board with an easy, simple bios and be rock steady if possible.

Currently, have an i9 9900k in an Asus ROG B360-f motherboard (i know) which has to be said has been pain free.

The B760 boards seem more suitable for my needs, but it seems everyone on net thinks b760 boards are waste for K chips which can slightly agree with.

So, am looking for a good, solid DDR4 atx board with minimum 3x m.2, good audio, non Intel LAN and an easy, understandable bios that can get best out of the i5 without heating it to destruction. Have a Corsair 240 aio (with 1700 fittings now arrived) to cool it. My budget is around £250.

My kinda shortlist is:

Asus Prime Z790-P D4 (LGA 1700) DDR4 ATX Motherboard​

MSI Intel PRO Z790-P WIFI DDR4 ATX Motherboard​


MSI Intel MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI DDR4 ATX Motherboard​

Gigabyte B760 GAMING X AX DDR4 ATX Motherboard​


At present the main contenders are the Asus Prime Z790 and the MSI MAG B760, but would really appreciate people's input.

Thanks for help in advance.
 
Please close thread.

Have purchased from Overclockers -

Asus Prime Z790-P D4 (LGA 1700) DDR4 ATX Motherboard​

 
malccy said:
Please close thread.

Have purchased from Overclockers -

Asus Prime Z790-P D4 (LGA 1700) DDR4 ATX Motherboard​

Click to expand...

I had the mATX version of that board and didn't like it
Couldn't get my ram stable at XMP settings and when I used ffmpeg to do encoding it would run on just the E cores, not the P cores.
I tried all sorts to fix it. I eventually had to run my ram slower and had to manually set ffmpeg to a higher priority for it to run on the P cores
Had some other weird and unexplained stability bugs as well so gave up in the end

Swapped to a Gigabyte Aorus board and everything has been fine.
This is with a 13900k, maybe you'll have more luck with the 13600k. I'm thinking that because the Prime boards are entry level with less robust VRMs it just wasn't able to power the 13900k properly. I dunno, that's the only thing I can think of anyway
 
Thanks no_1_dave for the confidence builder; hopefully I have better luck. The prime board had the features I wanted plus a bios I would recognise coming from the rog b360. I noticed yesterday that my memory is not actually listed on the list for the board so that might be a problem.

I have a feeling I shall be asking for help with this build soon after putting it together.
 
I'm running the ddr5 varient of that Asus board.
Don't have any complaints so far if that's any help.

Edit.. Sorry I actualy have the z790a which has better VRMs and a couple of other bells and whistles.
 
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I would absolutely be looking to overclock the 13600k given it has quite a low boost clock and lots of headroom, 5.1 > 5.6/7 should be very doable and will give it a large bump in performance.
 
Update: Had constant problems with the Asus board I bought with lock-ups, black screens and bsod's when Windows was finally installed. RMA'd the board and have now been refunded. Would like to give a positive shoutout to Marcel at Overclockers for support he gave. Updated the bios, but the board would still lock-up (sometimes shortly after booting). Lowered memory speed etc but nothing seemed to remedy the problem.

After packing the motherboard away I then had to re-build my previous i9 9900k build which took quite some time but everything okay.

Am now back to beginning with making a decision about which board to buy - do I try again with the Asus Prime board putting the last faulty one down to bad luck or do I get the msi mag b760? I am leaning more towards the b760 tbh.
 
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malccy said:
Am now back to beginning with making a decision about which board to buy - do I try again with the Asus Prime board putting the last faulty one down to bad luck or do I get the msi mag b760? I am leaning more towards the b760 tbh.
Click to expand...

I would get a different brand, but not the b760 gaming x.

If you want something tried and tested, get the msi z690-a, but it may need a bios flash.
 
tamzzy said:
if that's the case then any motherboard you want will be sufficient
Click to expand...

This, My Prime z790-a (DDR5 version)is running very happily at 5.3 ghz on an auto-OC at supprisingly sensible auto voltages too. I might try to manualy push it further, but with these chips, to OC doesn't really translate into massive FPS gains, so if you don't care about overclocking, then I wouldn't even suggest a Z series chipset, just get teh regular one that has the features you want, wifi, better audio chip etc.

Less heat and less electricity used too.
 
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Have ordered the msi B760 mag today from Overclockers.

Does anyone know of a good bios settings guide for this board (have searched for a while online but without any luck).

Was particularly wanting to know if selected the xmp setting would this as well as settings memory timings to their best timings would it also set the cpu p+e core to max 24/7? (would like to do this as did with my i9 9900k).

Many thanks again for replies and help.
 
malccy said:
would it also set the cpu p+e core to max 24/7? (would like to do this as did with my i9 9900k).
Click to expand...

It shouldn't, XMP should only change memory frequency, timings and dram voltage (sometimes it changes other voltages too, for stability reasons). I don't think B760 supports any other form of 'overclocking', except for raising the power limits. Making it run at max 24/7 would be changing the Windows power plan, or disabling power saving settings in the BIOS like C states and EIST.
 
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no_1_dave said:
I had the mATX version of that board and didn't like it
Couldn't get my ram stable at XMP settings and when I used ffmpeg to do encoding it would run on just the E cores, not the P cores.
I tried all sorts to fix it. I eventually had to run my ram slower and had to manually set ffmpeg to a higher priority for it to run on the P cores
Had some other weird and unexplained stability bugs as well so gave up in the end
Click to expand...

malccy said:
Thanks no_1_dave for the confidence builder; hopefully I have better luck.
Click to expand...

malccy said:
Update: Had constant problems with the Asus board I bought with lock-ups, black screens and bsod's when Windows was finally installed. RMA'd the board and have now been refunded.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that you also experienced problems.

Not sure if it's just their prime boards, or just their prime DDR4 boards this time around but I've had problems with their boards before so this time was the last straw for me. I'll never use another Asus motherboard again. Although, saying that... I was outside my return window for the board so I used it to give my plex server an upgrade along with a i5 12400. So far it's been fine in there running for 3 weeks straight, but I am running the ram at stock instead of XMP and the 12400 uses such little power as a plex server that the board shouldn't be pushed at all. I am however keeping my old i5 8500 and Z390 board for the time being in case problems do arise
 
Although I have the new board and my i5 13600k chip sat with it here, i've been unable to build it due to getting covid. Not really in a fit state to trust myself building it with the aches, constant sneezing and this weird crazy head thing i'm feeling.

Update: After a week of covid I felt well enough to do build unfortunately on boot I just got red/orange leds on motherboard which signifies cpu/ram problem. Changed Ballistix ram to my other Corsair ram but same problem. After varying troubleshooting, the error leds remained.

This being the second motherboard with problems points to the cpu being at fault. Have RMA'd the board and the cpu back to Overclockers who I have to say have been great. Rebuilt my previous i9 9900k build so at least not without a pc.
 
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