What should I do with my Mobo dead (Z170)?
What should I do with my Mobo dead (Z170)?
Hey there! I’m looking for some fresh perspectives on this situation. My MSI Gaming M7 Z170 is down after an accident, and I have a brand new x299 MSI Gaming M7 ACK board ready to go. I’m considering whether to upgrade to a Z170/270 or install a compatible CPU for my i7-7700k. Also, I’m planning to use the system for gaming, coding, virtual machines, and servers—so I want something versatile. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
For working with virtual machines and coding, having extra cores and faster memory bandwidth makes sense. An X series chip could be a good choice. The 10 core 10900X costs $574, while the 18 core 10980XE is $1068 on Newegg. These are likely the top options to think about. At these prices, you might prefer an Alder Lake processor on a DDR4 board. The 12700K will generally beat both of those in most tasks and works well with a Z690 board for about $650. You’ll miss out on quad channel memory, ECC support, and many PCIe lanes, but the 12th generation provides more overall PCIe bandwidth due to Gen 5 and 4 lanes compared to Gen 3.
Thanks for your response. I checked eBay and found a cheap X299 motherboard around $600, which is used. Could selling it help fund your upcoming software engineering course? I’m considering listing it on a marketplace, though I doubt many nearby buyers would be interested. I’m also thinking about selling the 7700K—any idea what its value is?
Recent transactions of that mobo suggest a selling price near $600. For the 7700K, eBay sales have been about $220–$250, meaning you can likely recoup the cost with an upgrade to Alder Lake.