Arrow Lake Z890 board + RAM

[Sol_Badguy]

Hello.

Okay so it seems like I need to pull trigger pretty soon or else I'll be stuck in this procrastination limbo that will result in some serious regrets down the line.
Right so I'm almost convinced that I should go with 265K + Z890 + 48 GB 7200 MT/s instead of 7950X + X870E + 64 GB 6000 MT/s.

Spoiler: price comparison

7950X (470 €) + X870E Tomahawk (326 €) + F5-6000J3040G32GX2-TZ5K (220 €) -> total 1016 €.
265K (366 €) + Z890 Tomahawk (264 €) + F5-7200J3646F24GX2-TZ5RK (172 €) -> total 802 €.

Therefore my Z890 options until now have been Aorus Elite ($290 MSRP) and Tomahawk ($300 MSRP) which I can get for slightly cheaper in €.
Gigabyte Aorus Elite - 271 € (this is for the white/ICE version, for some reason it's slightly cheaper than the black one which is 283 €)
MSI MAG Tomahawk - 264 €
I am leaning towards the Tomahawk (also considering the HUB roundup conclusions) although I am not fully happy with the package, nor I am with the Aorus Elite for that matter.
But I realize that nothing will ever be perfect, so accepting that everything will have some cons the Tomahawk comes out on top in this matchup, and it's actually marginally cheaper even though as per the MSRP it should be about the same or slightly more expensive.

However now there's a third one -> the ASRock Taichi Lite (MSRP $400).
I can get this for 312 €. However as per the HUB roundup conclusions this has an unjustified MSRP considering it's actually a downgrade from the PG Nova (MSRP $350).
There's no point in trying to get the Nova as that is 369 €.
Objectively the only upgrade the Taichi Lite has over the PG Nova is regarding the onboard audio.
Subjectively the only upgrade is using Realtek 2.5 GbE LAN instead of Intel 2.5 GbE LAN on the Nova.
The Nova on the other hand has a backplate, has quick/easy release for the GPU slot, has an included PCI-E x4 M.2 card and it has a toolless shield that covers all of the M.2 slots.
If I'm being honest I'm most dissapointed about the lack of quick/easy release for the GPU slot and the M.2 shield, the backplate as well even though that one won't actually do anything to positively affect the everyday user experience.

So now the question is regarding the Taichi Lite vs Tomahawk for an additional 47 €.
If I consider that the Taichi Lite should have had a $350 MSRP (which is 16.7% higher than $300 for the Tomahawk) then the current discounts bring the boards down almost the same (312 € vs 264 €) -> 18.2% more for the Taichi Lite.
Any opinions?

About the RAM well there aren't many options for me by going the 48GB route.
There's the F5-7200J3646F24GX2-TZ5RK kit which is 172 € (I don't want RGB but it's cheaper go figure).
There's also the PVX548G76C36K kit which is 180 €, an excellent kit if it wasn't for the 1.45V, I would've liked the RAM to not exceed 1.4V.
Going higher with G.SKill is the F5-7600J3848F24GX2-TZ5RK which is at 211 € (way too high compared to the 7200 kit).
So yeah there's not much wiggle room.

Thank you.

 

[Bobaganoosh]

I think either of those motherboards will make you happy once you're using it. For me, the biggest thing the MSI was missing compared to ASRock was the m.2 slots. It was like 3 vs 6 last I checked lol. Also, on the Taichi, one is above the GPU slot, making it more accessible anyway (but something to think about in terms of the difference in GPU location in your case).

I was looking at faster ram kits for Z890 the other day out of curiosity...the best bang/buck I found was FFXD548G8200HC38EDC01 from teamgroup. Not sure on pricing availablility in your region. Also, you'd want to see if the increased bandwidth is even helpful for your use-case.

 

[Sol_Badguy]

Seems like I omitted the most important aspect from my original post, and that is:
TL;DR opting for an ASRock mobo amid the recent pop-goes-the-cpu controversy.
Yes I know that is regarding Ryzen CPUs but it's because people are actually buying Ryzen CPUs as opposed to AL ones, so it's more likely to pop up (pun intended) if indeed ASRock boards have an issue.

@Bobaganoosh

Personally I don't feel I would need more than 3 M.2 slots.
Here are the boards without heatskins/shields: ASRock Z890 Taichi Lite vs MSI MAG Z890 Tomahawk
It's 6 vs 4 in this case, for me personally there's no disadvantage for the Tomahawk.
Yes I agree that when actually using them the differences that might appear significant on paper would blend into the background so to speak and not matter.
Still I felt the need to ask.

The Teamgroup kit isn't available for me anymore, it was up to about half a year ago.
Regarding RAM I wouldn't buy below 6400 MT/s anyway because I would be running below the rated speed and I would just feel weird.
The cheapest 6400 MT/s with decent timings is F5-6400J3239G24GX2-RS5K for 146 €.
After that there's F5-6800J3446G24GX2-RS5K for 164 €.
Going higher in price there's LD5U24G76C38BR-RGD for 202 €, on the surface this seems like it has the same specs as the G.Skill 7600 kit (38-48-48-121 @1.35V).
Further there is PVX548G82C38K for 212 € but the store is actually from Slovakia, they do deliver to my country but this clearly wouldn't be my first option.
And last F5-8000J4048F24GX2-TZ5K for 218 €. I really don't like the timings on this one. If I could downclock it to 7600 and run the 7200 timings (36-46-46-115) on it with 1.4V that would be pretty good. But I don't know if it works like that.

Spoiler

The problem with the 7200 kit is that I have no way of knowing it will do 7600 MT/s with the default timings but with the voltage increased to 1.4V. Most likely it won't. I think more likely is that the 7600 kit would allow the same timings as the 7200 kit but with the voltage increased to 1.4V. The problem is that the 7600 kit is too close in price to the 8000 one.

I have looked further but I'll stop here because I'm already crossing into diminishing returns territory.

 

[Bobaganoosh]

I think the current Ryzen popping issue is mostly an AMD issue, but ASRock is the worst offender on overvolting something too much. I say this because other boards have had the issue too, just not nearly as much. They'll sort it out eventually (maybe already have?), but it seems to be specific to the ryzen 9000 chips and how the BIOS is running them. The configs are totally different for Intel and they've been locking things down a bit more since the raptor-lake issues (which have actually been sorted by now).

As for m.2, sorry, I must have mixed it up with the x870 or something. 4 vs 6 isn't too bad if you don't plan to use them, but I usually buy motherboards for a long time and it seems over the years I'll always use more storage lol. Games keep getting bigger in my situation.

 

[warriorunited]

It's the third build I've recently built using Core Ultra 7 265k and the CPU it's being great, people shouldn't be afraid to get this CPU anymore, specially if you need the PC to something else besides gaming, work flow on it it's just unbeatable.

Regarding the motherboards, the latest build for my GF, we used the MSI Z890 Tomahawk Wi-Fi and the build quality of this motherboard is very very good, plenty feature rich and stable, it's rocking 4 sticks of RAM (128GB) at 7800 mhz without any issue... She wanted the Asus TUF Z890 because of the aesthetics, but that motherboard wasn't worth the extra money, MSI was just a better board for less money, and 4 M.2 slots is more than enough.

 

[Sol_Badguy]

@warriorunited

Much obliged.
Yeah I just felt the need to ask, we always get excited when we feel we might strike gold.
In this case the Tomahawk gives more than I need really, but still we always want more.
The Taichi Lite might be worth the extra money or maybe not, as the saying goes "it depends".

Any thoughts on the RAM? I see from your specs you have the F5-6400J3239G32GX2-TZ5RK kit if I'm not mistaking.

 

[Bobaganoosh]

I think the F5-7200J3646F24GX2-TZ5RK looks like a good bang/buck kit, looking at all the ones you posted there. I don't see anything else in that price range online that competes close. The next step up in performance I see looking at PCPartpicker is FF3D548G7200HC34ADC01 (7200-CL34, with slightly better latency than the G.Skill kit). Not sure it's worth the price difference lol. I don't see FF9D548G7600HC36EDC01 available in Europe (not sure where specifically to look for you, but it's listed on the Taichi Lite's QVL).

 

[Sol_Badguy]

@Bobaganoosh

Thank you.
Yeah that one looks the best in this situation. No point in chasing some unicorn.
The FF9D548G7600HC36EDC01 is available at 218 €, I'll take the G.Skill.

 

[ir_cow]

it's rocking 4 sticks of RAM (128GB) at 7800 mhz without any issue... .

I have a hard time believing you got 4x DR to run at DDR5-7800. Have you run any stability tests? Maybe it's 7800 memory without XMP enabled. That would make more sense Probably is running at JEDEC 4800.

 

[warriorunited]

I have a hard time believing you got 4x DR to run at DDR5-7800. Have you run any stability tests? Maybe it's 7800 memory without XMP enabled. That would make more sense Probably is running at JEDEC 4800.

I have XMP active, it's the second build i do with 128GB RAM, but the other one was with 6400mhz, this one in particular that i've mentioned is 7800mhz and runing rock solid on all the tests.

@warriorunited

Much obliged.
Yeah I just felt the need to ask, we always get excited when we feel we might strike gold.
In this case the Tomahawk gives more than I need really, but still we always want more.
The Taichi Lite might be worth the extra money or maybe not, as the saying goes "it depends".

Any thoughts on the RAM? I see from your specs you have the F5-6400J3239G32GX2-TZ5RK kit if I'm not mistaking.

I have F5-6400J3239G32GX2-TZ5RK, it costed me 225€ August 2024, from Amazon, as i couldn't find them anywhere in my country. Never had any issue with them, always XMP enabled.

 

[ir_cow]

@warriorunited anything is possible with enough voltage and LN2

But seriously I have hard time believing it's really running at 7800 for 4x Dual-rank on the 1851 socket.. Can you share CPUz mem and AID64 benchmark? Curious to see the results.

 

[Sol_Badguy]

@ir_cow

Since you're here, would you please answer the questions from this post if you have the time?
It seems that now they're of greater interest to me than when I've made the post.
Thank you.

 

[ir_cow]

@Sol_Badguy I'll PM you now. Also Guilty Gear X2 Reload is the best

 

[Sol_Badguy]

@ir_cow

Thank you for the reply.
Well the truth is that Samurai Shodown IV is no.1 for me, but GGX2 is so awesome that I will agree with you anyway.