z690, DDR4, 13600-K
z690, DDR4, 13600-K
Hello everyone, I just bought a 13600-K chip at a discount and am planning to get a new board for my first build. I need to confirm compatibility and minimize chances of issues. I'm considering an ASUS ROG STRIX z690-A or the MSI PRO z690-A WiFi. As a musician, I don’t mind using an external soundcard much. Right now I’m weighing both options. Would it be helpful if the board arrived with the newest BIOS updates? I could update myself, but would either of these boards come preloaded with the latest BIOS that supports 13th generation? Thanks in advance!
There's a chance, but it's a lot closer to winning the lottery than it is to a coinflip. If you really don't want to manually update the BIOS, you have to go for a Z790 board, but those are generally an extra $50-100 for a very similar motherboard, not something I'd really consider worth it. I've used the Z690-A Pro DDR4 in two different builds for friends (12700K and 12600K), it's a solid board that does everything you need and nothing you don't. There's nothing about it that's really special, nothing it does is exceptionally good or anything like that, but it does everything good enough and it's really cheap. Only thing that board struggles with a little bit is voltage regulation, so your max CPU overclock might be ~50MHz lower than it otherwise would be on the Strix, which is in the grand scheme of things nothing. It's got solid memory overclocking support if you care about that, it's got a VRM that's plenty to power a moderately overclocked 13600K, and it's got a decent stock set of internal connections so there's nothing really you need for more expansion. If those two boards are the same price, the Strix is easily the better motherboard (though ASUS has been having issues with 13th gen CPUs on their Z690 boards having severely reduced performance, so it might be a good idea to avoid that board no matter what), but if the Z690-A Pro is cheaper as it should be, I don't see a reason to pay extra for the Strix.
Thanks for your response. It seems the Strix is what I was thinking about instead of the Pro, mainly because the Pro is much more affordable. Appreciate the help!