Question Damaged Z390 Aorus Master

[EightBitRanger]

A little over a month ago, I accidentally damaged my Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master which caused my A1/A2 DIMM slots and PCIe slots to quit working. I could still run 16GB of ram (2x8gb) in single channel which wasn't the end of the world, but I could no longer make use of my 1080 Ti and had to make do with integrated graphics which wasn't ideal for gaming. I RMA'ed the board and sent it off for repair/replacement (when I thought it might be defective, before I found out it was damaged), was told it was damaged and my warranty was void but they'd try and repair it and send it back if they could. I got the board back and my DIMM slots are working again but I still can't get a GPU to work in any of the PCIe slots. I tried both my 1080 Ti as well as my old R9 280X without any luck. I pulled my old desktop out of storage and put the 1080 Ti in there to eliminate a bad card and it worked just fine.

It cost me $40 to ship the board down the first time. If it came back like this, am I pretty much screwed and should I just bite the bullet and replace the board?

 

[ThatVietGuy]

Replace the board.

 

[EightBitRanger]

Disappointing news, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised considering the damage. Waste of $400 and a lesson learned to be more careful next time I guess. So second question; any recommendations on what I should replace it with? I'm currently weighing two options right now:

• Replacing my LGA1151 board with another one. The Master was fine and did what I needed it to but that's about $370 shipped and I'm not entirely sure I need something that extravagant. I only have an i5 9600k which I don't overclock, only need one PCIe 16x slot for my 1080 Ti, two M.2 slots for an NVMe SSD and an optane module, and wifi enabled since my router is on another floor. I've been looking at the Aorus Ultra and Pro Wifi in addition to the Master but the spec sheets all look quite similar.
• Or upgrading to a Ryzen 3000 and accompanying board since they're due out tomorrow. Even though my current board/CPU are only about 8 months old, this will future-proof me a little bit and benchmark leaks (if they're to believed) has the Ryzen 5 3600 with a slightly higher single thread rating and significantly higher CPU mark than my 9600k. Although then I'll be out a new board, a new CPU and a new cooler (or at least an AMD bracket for my current cooler since I bought it used and only got the Intel bracket).

 

[EightBitRanger]

Never mind. Just went with the Zen 2 CPU with an X570 board.