Robust socket 1700 motherboard

[rangor gubbins]

Anyone got suggestions for very robust, long lasting 1700 socket motherboards?
I'm planning to upgrade my >10 year old pc (i7-4790K, with a gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK) with 13th or 14th gen Intel setup up.
I've been looking at MSI Mag z790 tomahawk and the Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite AX.

 

[rangor gubbins]

I should add, there's no major feature requirements.
I don't need WiFi, do need at least 6 sata ports plus a few m2, ideally 2.5 gbps lan.

 

[JollyJamma]

Anyone got suggestions for very robust, long lasting 1700 socket motherboards?

Do you mean a motherboard with a reinforced CPU socket or do you mean a motherboard that will last a long time and not fail/become faulty after only a couple years of use?

I think you mean the latter and that's impossible to say without some sort of mass database of all motherboards returned to the reseller or manufacturer and the reason for the return.

People will say stuff like "I had an MSI motherboard that's lasted me ages" but that's a sample size of one, doesn't mean anything and not indicative of the wider RMA rate of any particular range of motherboards, by brand or by model.

One thing you could do is look at a particular motherboard model you think will work for your use case and then look at reviews of the motherboard - If you see many 1 star reviews saying it faild after only a few months of use, then maybe avoid that particular model.

That being said: All products have a failure rate. All of them. There might be a small percent difference between a model with high reliability and one with poor reliability and you'll never really know which is which without knowing the world wide statistics.

Reply with a budget when you have a chance. I wouldn't overthink it though, just go with one that works for you spec and budget wise.

 

[rangor gubbins]

Do you mean a motherboard with a reinforced CPU socket or do you mean a motherboard that will last a long time and not fail/become faulty after only a couple years of use?

I think you mean the latter and that's impossible to say without some sort of mass database of all motherboards returned to the reseller or manufacturer and the reason for the return.

People will say stuff like "I had an MSI motherboard that's lasted me ages" but that's a sample size of one, doesn't mean anything and not indicative of the wider RMA rate of any particular range of motherboards, by brand or by model.

One thing you could do is look at a particular motherboard model you think will work for your use case and then look at reviews of the motherboard - If you see many 1 star reviews saying it faild after only a few months of use, then maybe avoid that particular model.

That being said: All products have a failure rate. All of them. There might be a small percent difference between a model with high reliability and one with poor reliability and you'll never really know which is which without knowing the world wide statistics.

Reply with a budget when you have a chance. I wouldn't overthink it though, just go with one that works for you spec and budget wise.

thanks, yes, exactly that. One that will last a long time. Is there any difference on warranty period, or do any advertise as 'using more durable components' (i realise this could just be marketing BS!)?
The gigabyte motherboard i'm using now GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK was described with these features:

• Extended server level 168 hour durability Test
• Long lifespan Durable Black Solid caps

And i think it had a much longer warranty period than other boards of the time.

Budget depends really. I don't mind paying more for something that has a better chance of lasting a long time, e.g. £300, but ideally i'd prefer to pay closer to the £200 range.

 

[JollyJamma]

Is there any difference on warranty period, or do any advertise as 'using more durable components' (i realise this could just be marketing BS!)?

Basically, it's marketing BS. Brands will advertise Japanese capcitors as a way to say that the quality of the caps are higher buuuut that doesn't really mean anything anymore since most Japanese made caps are made outside of Japan and then shipped into Japan where they get a noddy badge that they are of a certain quality.

Japanese caps have an image of higher quality after the capacitor plague that affected PC parts back in the day. Read more here. It's not really a thing any more.

You can get really high end VRM power phases as a feature but that doesn't really make a difference to AM5 as the CPUs don't run as hot as Intel CPUs.

I'd suggest you read reviews of motherboards that you like the look of rather than asking for opionions - most people will just buy a motherboard on looks and when it BOOTS up, they'll claim that it's faultless and perfect with zero research or testing.

Go look at Buildzoids motherboard roundup on Youtube if you want a deep dive on features and what motherboards make sense at different price brackets - he's excellent since he knows what goes into a well configured motherboard and what doesn't.

 

[rangor gubbins]

Great, I'll do that, thanks

 

[JollyJamma]

Nice.

This video should help

Edit: Sorry, meant to link LGA1700. Will do so now.

 

[Rroff]

Bit out of your price range but I've been pretty impressed by the build quality on the Z790 Aorus Master so far - the cooling and current delivery is over-specced quite a bit which should help with lifespan and the socket area seems well reinforced compared to some of the other Z790 boards. Sadly that doesn't necessarily flow down to the other boards in the range though.

 

[JollyJamma]

Roundup of Gigabyte boards for OP

Edit: Sorry, meant to link LGA1700. Will do so now.

 

[Tetras]

Is this a gaming PC, or a productivity PC?

If productivity, I'd be looking at the newer Core Ultra CPUs instead of the potentially problematic/broken 13-14th gen CPUs, especially since your main goal is for this PC to last and we don't know if any lasting damage / longevity is possible with these CPUs (..fixed or not). The 13th-14th gen -K CPUs do have a 5 year extended warranty, assuming Intel still offers it.

If a gaming PC, I'd be going AM5.

In terms of the motherboard lasting, I agree with JollyJamma, it is impossible to say.

You could buy a cheapo H610 board for £60 and it lasts for 10 years, or an expensive £500 Z790 board that dies 2 weeks later.

Generally speaking: I'd make sure that you get a board that has a more powerful VRM than the CPU requires and decent cooling, especially if you plan to run a high-draw CPU like a 13900K at maximum load for extended periods. For a gaming PC, any modest board should do fine, regardless of CPU.

 

[JollyJamma]

So I'm so used to people going AM5 that I was on autopilot and posted links to videos about AM5 - I cannot find a Buildzoid video with a round up of Z790 boards, only fairly old videos featuring Z690.

I agree with Tetras on the points he raised.

 

[rangor gubbins]

Hmm, hmm, some more food for thought.
I'm definitely very out of touch with hardware choices for PCs.
AM5 looks like a good option, as does the ultra core cpus.
The PC will mostly be for office type productivity, plus ripping dvd and blurays, and some gaming now and again.

 

[mattyfez]

Hmm, hmm, some more food for thought.
I'm definitely very out of touch with hardware choices for PCs.
AM5 looks like a good option, as does the ultra core cpus.
The PC will mostly be for office type productivity, plus ripping dvd and blurays, and some gaming now and again.

Well any reasonably good potato will be good for office productivity and DVD ripping... so it seems gaming is your main requirment in terms of the most demanding thing you will be doing...?

So the next question would be what games do you want to play and at what resolution?

Choose a prefered CPU first, as that will largely dictate what motherboard you buy.

 

[Tetras]

Hmm, hmm, some more food for thought.
I'm definitely very out of touch with hardware choices for PCs.
AM5 looks like a good option, as does the ultra core cpus.
The PC will mostly be for office type productivity, plus ripping dvd and blurays, and some gaming now and again.

That doesn't sound very demanding. If you prefer Intel, maybe go with the Ultra 245K and a cheap(ish) B860 or even H810 board. The onboard graphics are good enough for some light gaming and have hardware acceleration for encode/decode most media. If you find the graphics poop (likely if you're doing any big gaming), then you could add one later.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core Ultra 5 245K (Arrow Lake) Socket LGA 1851 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-03113) = £289.99
• 2 x Intel Holiday Bundle - Assassin's Creed Shadows + Ubisoft Plus (SKU: DIG-INT-03637) = £0.00
• 1 x Asrock B860 Pro-A WIFI (LGA 1851) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-04092) = £149.99
• 1 x TeamGroup Vulcan 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-51200C40 6400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (SKU: MEM-TMG-03145) = £89.99
• 1 x Sparkle Intel ARC A750 ORC OC Edition 8GB GDDR6 Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-SPK-03006) = £169.99
• 1 x Kingston FURY Renegade 2TB PCI-e 4.0 NVMe M.2 Solid State Drive (SFYRS/2000G) (SKU: STO-KNG-01330) = £124.99

Total: £832.94 (includes delivery: £7.99)​

I don't need WiFi, do need at least 6 sata ports plus a few m2, ideally 2.5 gbps lan.

Note that the vast majority of motherboards only have 4 SATA ports now, but the Z790 Riptide and Pro RS have 8

A 12600K should be sufficient for what you're doing and still has a pretty powerful onboard GPU for media work. Unfortunately for games, the 245K GPU is about twice as fast, so you're really going to need one unless you're playing Tetris.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i5-12600K 3.70GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-69X-IN) = £149.99
• 1 x B Grade Asrock Z790 PG Riptide (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: BG-19B-AK) = £170.00
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance EXPO/XMP 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C36 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRS-00996) = £82.99

Total: £402.98 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

 

[mattyfez]

Don't forget to budget for a blu-ray writer, if that's really nessesary? - cheapest one on OCUK seems to be £100 for an external one, there are some cheaper ones on amazon, but not brands I recognise - I'd go with a known brand with something like that if you want to stand a chance of reliable writes.

 

[rangor gubbins]

@Tetras thanks, that's really helpful.
I've already got a rtx 3060 12gb, but will upgrade that some time in the future.
Either a 12 series Intel or a core ultra seem like good options. I'll have a look price : performance between the two.
I don't have a lot of time for playing games these days but had been thinking about getting baldurs gate at some point, and also GoW ragnarock.
I've got a 27" 1440p monitor (LG 27GL83A-B) that will do 144 hz.
And have a large Li Lian case (can't remember the model)
I was looking at AM5 cpus yesterday, and the 7600 looks good value. Not sure which motherboard and chipset would be best though.

 

[JollyJamma]

I was looking at AM5 cpus yesterday, and the 7600 looks good value. Not sure which motherboard and chipset would be best though.

AM5 has plenty of years of support left which is why a lot of people go for it. LGA 1700 is EOL.

I'd not worry too much about either AMD or Intel as either one will be great for your needs.

I wouldn't stress about which motherboard to get. It's the one component that is the least impactful on performance and spending £300 on an expensive model won't guarentee that it'll last longer as has been previously pointed out.

I would definitly get a CPU with an iGPU for the reasons that Tetras said - it can be very useful for encoding/decoding.

 

[rangor gubbins]

If the system has a dedicated GPU, as well as an igpu in the cpu, does the igpu still help with encoding decoding, or is it not used due to the presence of the dedicated GPU?

 

[JollyJamma]

If the system has a dedicated GPU, as well as an igpu in the cpu, does the igpu still help with encoding decoding, or is it not used due to the presence of the dedicated GPU?

You can choose. The software will give you the option of selecting which accelerator you want to use for the process.

It's handy because you can do things like have Photoshop use the Nvidia GPU for brute force but assign the iGPU of the processor for Plex media streaming to a device (you might be able to do both at the same time but the CPU might get overwhelmed and it can cause issues but it reaaaaalllly depends on what applications you're using and the work load).

 

[Tetras]

I was looking at AM5 cpus yesterday, and the 7600 looks good value. Not sure which motherboard and chipset would be best though.

Keep in mind that for productivity, the 12600K is generally faster. For AM5, you can buy any board really, very few are terrible, so it really comes down to what you want out of the motherboard. Latest features like USB4 and PCI-E 5.0 would mean X870 and that costs around £200. If you're happy with a basic board with 2 or 3 M.2 slots, PCI-E 4.0 graphics, maybe 1x PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slot, then B650 around £130-£150 or B850 around £160-£190 (most of these have PCI-E 5.0 graphics). You could even go for one of the MATX boards at around £100 or less, but they have more limited expansion and the VRMs may not be suitable for a high-end CPU upgrade.