Question I'm having trouble choosing an ASRock Z790 board ?

[aggielaw]

Hi there, and thanks in advance for your advice.

I'm building an intel-based machine, and I'm stuck between the ASRock Taichi Lite (https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z790 Taichi Lite/Specification.us.asp#Support) and the newer PG Nova (https://pg.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z790 Nova WiFi/index.asp#MemoryRPL). Here is the spec comparison page: https://www.asrock.com/mb/compare.us.asp?Models=Z790 Taichi Lite,Z790 Nova WiFi

I plan to perform a moderate overclock on the cpu (probably an i9-13900K) as well as the RAM in the winter months. In the summer I'll return the settings to XMP to reduce heat, as my home office is about 27.3C/81F in the summer, which is uncomfortably warm for me. The GPU will be an RTX 4070, and I will use two NVMe drives and no SATA drives. The computer will be an "all-around" machine, performing office productivity tasks, dealing with 40-60 browser tabs open for work, handbrake video encoding, television and high end music consumption (the latter through a usb-connected DAC and headphone amplifier), and some gaming, mostly Starcraft II, Stellaris, and Civ 6.

The boards are priced identically at $299 in the US right now. One other factor is that I can source the Nova locally, through at its retail $329. I have to order the Taichi Lite from Newegg.

Based on the above, which board would you recommend?

 

[Lutfij]

IMHO, I'd choose the Taichi since it has a Thunderbolt port on the rear but I also want a full featured board, so those two would tend to go out of the suggestions list. One of your boards doesn't have a dual LAN which might or might not be what you're looking. As for connectivity and slots on the board, they are nearly identical, just segmented differently in ASRock's product stack/portfolio. I'd also want to have multi display output options on the rear I/O of the board in case I run into discrete GPU issues,

Question is, what are you looking for from the the board's purchase?

 

[aggielaw]

IMHO, I'd choose the Taichi since it has a Thunderbolt port on the rear but I also want a full featured board, so those two would tend to go out of the suggestions list. One of your boards doesn't have a dual LAN which might or might not be what you're looking. As for connectivity and slots on the board, they are nearly identical, just segmented differently in ASRock's product stack/portfolio. I'd also want to have multi display output options on the rear I/O of the board in case I run into discrete GPU issues,

Question is, what are you looking for from the the board's purchase?

I think my problem is I can't answer that fundamental question. I suppose my priorities are rather basic:
1) Stong, but not necessarily elite, OC ability of both CPU and RAM
2) Reasonably strong cooling of the motherboard itself
3) Ability to power EKWB AIO to its full capability
4) Ability to run both GPU and boot NVMe (Samsung 990 Pro) at rated speed
5) I will only use Thunderbolt occasionally, so while a plus, certainly not required if other features, such as faster RAM, yields a daily dividend.

I've had dual LAN on the last four desktops I've built. Unfortunately, I lack the knowledge to use the dual NICs for networking, and use an NAS attached to my router instead. I don't anticipate being able to aggregate streams because I'm already using all four output ports on it, so no room to run a second cable to one device. I did run across a motherboard in my research that allowed aggregating of onboard wifi and ethernet. I don't remember what board it was, but I found that intriguing because I did not know that was possible.

Thanks for helping me think through my wants and needs. It doesn't lead me to a purchasing on its own, but hopefully will be helpful in developing sound advice from those of you smarter than I on hardware performance. Thanks again!