Upgrade advice from i7 6th gen

[ATiRubyfan]

Hello!

My current rig consists of this :
Zalman Z9 case
Seasonic 650W PSU
i7 6700
Xigmatek Thor's hammer Heatsink
14cm Noctua cooling fan
ASUS Z370-A PRIME
16GB G.SKILL TridentZ DDR4
Samsung 980 NVME SSD
Sapphire RX6700XT
DVDRW drive

I have bought a new i7 12700K
I am after an ASUS motherboard as I have always loved the brand and the looks of their motherboards.
Can I kep the same heatsink? It's massive and really keeps the current CPU cool.
I am happy to keep my current RAM, if possible.
My zalman Z9 is quite strong and it has been with me for over 10 years. But, it is quite big and does not have a clear side window.

 

[Tetras]

Can I kep the same heatsink? It's massive and really keeps the current CPU cool.

Officially: socket 1700 is not compatible with socket 115x/1200 coolers.

Unofficially: it depends. You can find videos that go into more detail on YouTube, but the mounting mechanism is the key factor. You might be able to modify it (well, you can certainly modify it, but it comes down to your skills and if that is worth bothering).

The good news is that if you do need a new cooler, there are very affordable air coolers that can cool your CPU reasonably well (at least, plenty good enough for gaming), like the freezer 36 and peerless assassin/phantom spirit.

I am happy to keep my current RAM, if possible.

Yep, possible, but personally I wouldn't bother buying a DDR4 board just to keep 16GB of DDR4 memory. 32GB I'd say is worthwhile..., but not less than that.

Do you care about how many M.2 slots the motherboard has?

Anything else is required, like USB ports, sound, wireless?