Z690 to Z790
Z690 to Z790
Hello everyone, I’m looking for feedback on whether upgrading my motherboard would noticeably boost the speed of my storage devices. My current configuration includes: a CPU from Intel Core i9-13900KS, an RTX 4090 GPU, an ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 motherboard, 128GB Corsair Dominator Platinum RAM, a 250GB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD, a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD for gaming, and additional drives such as two 8TB Corsair MP600 PRO XT M.2 NVMe SSDs, an S95 3D TLC NAND SSD (up to 7000 MB/s), and six 8TB SATA SSDs in RAID 0. I’ve observed variable transfer speeds—sometimes starting around 2–3 GB/s, then dropping to a few hundred MB/s or even pausing briefly before recovering. These results feel much lower than what my drives can handle, suggesting a possible bandwidth constraint from my current setup. An ASUS Technical Support Advisor recommended switching to the Z790 Extreme, citing improvements like more PCIe lanes, better bandwidth handling, and enhanced performance for high-speed devices. I’d like to understand if these points truly apply and whether the bottleneck lies in my motherboard or elsewhere. I’m also curious about RAID settings, drive placement, and whether optimizing my current configuration could resolve these issues without a hardware change. Thank you for your insights!
The benefits seem slightly exaggerated, though most points hold true. The chances of achieving a clear improvement, let alone a substantial one, are quite low. Although Z790 offers more PCIe lane capacity, it's likely only around 8 lanes between Gen 3 and Gen 4, and the CPU connection remains constrained to Gen 4x8 regardless of whether you use Z690 or Z790. The ASUS suggestion to purchase a new board, particularly one priced above $1000, can come across as more promotional than practical guidance. This might indicate an attempt to push a product rather than provide genuine advice. The problem could lie with the drives themselves, not just RAID configurations. Many drives use SLC caching, running in high-speed but low-capacity mode until the cache fills, then performance drops sharply as TLC or worse QLC modes take over. If this issue is mainly with SATA drives, switching to a dedicated RAID controller might resolve it, avoiding the limitations of the Intel SATA controller firmware. If the drives are the root cause, this change may not address the core concern.