Choose Z690 immediately or wait for AMD Zen 4/X670
Choose Z690 immediately or wait for AMD Zen 4/X670
Hey there! I'm really looking forward to the upcoming DDR5 compatible Intel and AMD motherboards. Should I hold off until AMD Zen 4 and the X670 boards arrive, or should I opt for a Z690 now? My setup includes an i7-10700k, 32GB RAM at 3200MHz, an Asus Strix 3070 OC (perfect for PCIE 4.0), an MSI Z490 Gaming Edge, and some slower M.2 drives like the Western Digital Black 500GB (3500MB/s) and Sandisk 3D Ultra 1TB (2500MB/s). For a recommendation, I’m considering the 12900K or 12700K options. The links you shared look promising—especially the Asus models, since they blend well with your existing gear. As for the new Corsair Dominator or G Skill Trident Z5, they’re solid choices but might not be the absolute best fit right now.
You don’t have to upgrade unless you’re going to render files that might require more memory. Even then, it’s doubtful to upgrade with this configuration. Do it only if you really want to move to a newer generation, but I don’t think there’s much reason to change just for the new gear.
Absolutely exciting latest gadgets, though I still see assembling PCs as a passion project.
I felt the same way—10700k seems solid for another 2 to 3 years. I’m also thinking about getting a Secretlab Titan Evo 2022.
I feel like ur setup is just fine rn but if u r gonna upgrade wait fr zen4/x670
It feels like time flies, especially with how quickly our generations move. Five years seems reasonable. Your configuration is quite similar to mine—5800X/3070ti. With those specs, you're well-equipped unless you're looking for something more powerful or a higher graphics level.
Based on your current configuration, it makes sense to hold off. DDR5 costs are expected to drop significantly next year and will offer higher speeds with reduced latency. The shift from Zen 4 to Raptor Lake will mark the main challenge, as AMD is adopting a 5nm process and likely adding V-Cache. Enhancements from Windows 11 updates should address many of the shortcomings of the 12th generation. We might see an improvement of over 20% compared to Alder Lake, delivering a substantial upgrade that justifies the investment.
yeah, ive always wondered why ddr5 latency is so high, c36 smh. I hear somewhere that Zen 4 will only have one gen 5 PCIE lane, idk if that is true though. I dont really like what Intel is doing with the effieciency cores, why dont they just run them cores at a lower frequency when not in heavy use? That's what my 10700k does.
Latency in DDR5 remains flexible. DDR5-7200 CL36 matches the latency of DDR4-3600 CL18. Currently, most DDR5 versions lag behind the top DDR4 models, but this gap will narrow as production improves. I’m unsure if Zen 4 will support PCIe Gen 5, but it won’t be a big deal. The 3090 GPU is the only one that could gain from Gen 4, though the benefit is minimal. No NVMe drives reach Gen 4 yet, and it’ll take a long time for Gen 4 to become widespread. There are no consumer Gen 5 drives available yet, so even if X670 is Gen 4, it shouldn’t matter much. Regarding the E cores, the trend is clear: smaller chips. Intel can cram nearly four E cores into the area of one P core, making E cores more affordable. I expect future chips will push the limit to eight P cores, possibly reaching sixteen, twenty-four, or thirty-two E cores, since an 8+32 configuration uses the same space as a 16+0 layout.