Question i7-12700K Motherboard For Non Gamer ???

[kenwood850]

It has been a while since I built my current PC for Windows with an i5-7600 CPU. A lot has changed since then, including the addition of M.2 slots that I have had to investigate. What is really disappointing however is that I do not remember the motherboard industry catering almost exclusively to those building a PC to use with games.

My current thinking is to use an Intel i7-12700K for the CPU, but it seems whenever a motherboard’s specs sound reasonable, I feel I am paying extra for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and aesthetics such as colored lights, that I could care less about. All I want is a middle of the road motherboard that takes good advantage of what the i7-12700K has to offer, that runs on a cabled Ethernet LAN, and that is happy to run in case with solid sides. It will never see a game and I am not really interested in overclocking.

My current thinking is to use the Z690 chipset, but I do not want to set limits on what you might think is a good choice. I do not expect anyone to spend a lot of time typing a response. All I need is enough information to find and read about the motherboard on my own. I am hoping I have I simply missed in my searches the motherboard that makes the most sense for me.

 

[bill001g]

If you have no interest in overclocking then save the money and buy a non "k" cpu and something like a b660 chipset motherboard.

 

[geofelt]

What kind of work do you do on the pc?
If you are buying new, the 13th gen intel offerings will be a better value.
The performance per clock is some 15% better.
If you will be running batch apps that can fully use all threads, then more cores/threads is good.
But, if you will be doing mainly desktop work then faster single thread performance is good.
Run the cpu-Z bench on your i5-7600 and look at the single thread performance.
You should see a number like 461:
http://valid.x86.fr/bench/i45qsj
FWIW:
I3/5/7/9 no longer mean what they used to, namely how many cores and presence of hyperthreading.
Today, id relates to relative performance.
On motherboards, The Z chipsets cater to high performance and permit overclocking.
For most, a B660 motherboard is fine, even with a K processor.

Just as a starting point, look at the I5-13400:
https://www.newegg.com/intel-core-i5-13400-core-i5-13th-gen/p/N82E16819118430?Item=N82E16819118430
A B660 motherboard like this
MSI PRO B660M-A DDR4
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813144531?Item=9SIB8P0JHC1975

You can reuse your DDR4 ram.

Yes, if you want a 12700K, that would work also.

 

[Nighthawk117]

If your getting the K chip I would get a Z690 board, even if your not overclocking you may well want to undervolt should you find the CPU runs too hot for your liking.

 

[kenwood850]

@geofelt
My work on a PC is pretty routine and nothing specialized. I do some modification of photographs occasionally, but the highest use is for web surfing, LibreOffice, particularly Calc, and radio/electronic software.

Based on your comments, I have done some preliminary reading and it appears the i5-13600(K) might be a better option. One thing I noticed is how much more power these new CPUs consume. Since my wife will want hers upgraded as well, and we both leave our PCs on 7/24 (we are both retired), I have a feeling we will notice a bump in the electric bill after the upgrade.

I did run the cpu-Z bench on the i5-7600 – three times - and the readings were 459, 473, and 472

I will look into the B660 motherboards, but I am still leaning toward the Z690. That might however change after more reading.

As for transferring the RAM, that is not really an option. I am planning to repurpose the PC as an NAS server running Slackware with a Samba accessed drive that is backed up once a day to a second drive using rsync without the delete option. I guess that means DDR5 is also on the table.


@Nighthawk117
Interesting point on using under voltage to control the amount of dissipated heat since less heat also means less power consumed. On other hand, what is the point of a fast CPU if you do not use it to full advantage. I think if excess heat was a problem, I would look around for an alternative means of cooling. I am assuming less heat also means less performance from the CPU, but I do not know that for certain.



@bill001g
I assumed the Z690 chipset offered features that better utilized the CPU other than simply overclocking, but since I have two suggestions to consider the B660, I will look into it further.



A special thanks to all three of you for taking the time to offer your opinions and insights. It is much appreciated.

 

[Nighthawk117]

Interesting point on using under voltage to control the amount of dissipated heat since less heat also means less power consumed. On other hand, what is the point of a fast CPU if you do not use it to full advantage. I think if excess heat was a problem, I would look around for an alternative means of cooling. I am assuming less heat also means less performance from the CPU, but I do not know that for certain.

I'm talking about undervolting at the same clock speeds so performance would be the same. The reason I suggest it is that all of the high end CPU's these days run hot and use a lot of power.

I assumed the Z690 chipset offered features that better utilized the CPU other than simply overclocking, but since I have two suggestions to consider the B660, I will look into it further.

Aside from overclocking the Z690 gives you more PCI-E lanes and as a result more expandability. If you had a lot of devices to plug into it then a Z690 would be a better choice. However at stock a CPU will perform no different on either.

 

[kenwood850]

I'm talking about undervolting at the same clock speeds so performance would be the same. The reason I suggest it is that all of the high end CPU's these days run hot and use a lot of power.

This is probably a stupid question, but if the performance is the same, what is the advantage of running a higher voltage?

The only cards I can think of are my old Essence STX sound card, an RS-232 card (if there is no integrated serial port), and perhaps a video card of some sort if I was not happy with the integrated graphics, which isn't likely. Anything else at the present time would be connected via USB connections which I would estimate at around 4 total at most, not counting KB/M connections. I also do not see them running at high data rates simultaneously.

 

[bill001g]

When you undervolt you might get instability if you take it too low. Intel sets the value fairly conservative because of the variations in the silicon between chips.

You have to read the features some none "z" boards you can undervolt even if you can't overclock. In general it doesn't matter a lot if you have proper cooling of the chip.

 

[Nighthawk117]

This is probably a stupid question, but if the performance is the same, what is the advantage of running a higher voltage?

That's a very good question, it's not stupid at all. The default voltage is typically set conservatively to ensure stability. However it is quite common for these CPU's to be able to run on less, what voltage the CPU can run on though varies from chip to chip, some will undervolt more successfully than others.