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So I won one of Intels sweepstakes... 9700k and z370 advice.

dazzlaa

dazzlaa

dazzlaa

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It seems I am a lucky winner of a 9700k after winning Intel's sweepstakes this week. I know it should be a decent upgrade from my 8600k, especially at no cost to myself but Im wondering if I should upgrade my mobo. I know they slot into z370 with a bios upgrade but I have also read that the VRM's can take a bit of a battering with the new chips. My current board is a Gigabyte Z370 Gaming 7 and I'm pretty sure it has high end VRM's but has anyone gone down the same path and experienced any throttling from the board itself?
 
The Gigabyte Z370 boards generally didn't get great reviews because of their VRMs (they have since made big improvements for Z390). Your board is 8+2 (with the 8 doubled from 4). I would have thought it will be OK for running at stock, especially as the 9700K doesn't have hyperthreading. I would give it a go as you have nothing to lose.

Congrats by the way.
 
Thanks man.. I really don't want to have to buy a new board, but I am literally about to do a hard line water install too so don't want to have to dismantle anytime soon once its all in.

I think i'll take the risk and see how I get on.
 
It looks like a capable VRM, 8 phase 4x2 with 60A power stages. Run Prime95 and monitor VRM temps in HWinfo, if they stay below 100oC then its fine. I like to keep mine below 80oC so the caps last much longer. The heatsinks they use on current boards are terrible, there made more for looks than function, so I use a 80mm fan at 5v which drops approx 15oC of max temps.
 
its all going under water so temps should be controlled well. I bought a supremacy cpu block but now I wish I had got hold of the motherboard mono block instead... If I was loaded I would just replace the motherboard, but i'm tight.
 
Yes, some of the Z370 Gigabyte motherboards got bad press for hot VRM's. Mine runs really cool with a 5Ghz chip and under full load so as stated, just use HWInfo to check the VRM temps as to where you stand.
 
dazzlaa said:
its all going under water so temps should be controlled well. I bought a supremacy cpu block but now I wish I had got hold of the motherboard mono block instead... If I was loaded I would just replace the motherboard, but i'm tight.
Click to expand...
You have to be a bit careful with water cooling as airflow across the VRM heatsinks is often reduced. K would stress test your current setup and monitor VRM temperatures for a ballpark idea of how they're doing!
 
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