Question Looking for feedback on a Gigabyte Z790 UD AC motherboard.

[Moondoggy]

Let me state up front that I'm not a gamer. I mainly use my PC for surfing the internet, Microsoft Office 365 editing, general photo editing and home accounting. My current system is now old but when it was built, it was built with great parts and I'm about to build a new system and I want to use quality parts in this build. I was in my local parts shop and looked at a Gigabyte Z790 UD AC board that I plan to use with DDR5 memory, a SSD and a Core i5 processor. Would this Gigabyte board be a good one to use or is there something better? I want something that will last and I have no experience with Gigabyte boards. Any help will be appreciated.

 

[Lutfij]

If you don't game, overclock or tax the system beyond it's spec, you can look towards a lower spec chipset like an H770 or a B760, if you're looking at a 13th Gen locked Intel processor. If you're looking at an unlocked processor, then yes you look at a Z790 chipset motherboard.

What other options do you have at your disposal, apart from the Gigabyte motherboard mentioned above?

 

[Lafong]

Let me state up front that I'm not a gamer. I mainly use my PC for surfing the internet, Microsoft Office 365 editing, general photo editing and home accounting. My current system is now old but when it was built, it was built with great parts and I'm about to build a new system and I want to use quality parts in this build. I was in my local parts shop and looked at a Gigabyte Z790 UD AC board that I plan to use with DDR5 memory, a SSD and a Core i5 processor. Would this Gigabyte board be a good one to use or is there something better? I want something that will last and I have no experience with Gigabyte boards. Any help will be appreciated.

UD series wouldn't be my first choice. Nothing outright wrong with it.

You might consider Micro ATX rather than full ATX.

And B760 chipset rather than Z790.

A B760M micro ATX motherboard would likely be price competitive with Z790 full ATX. Probably 160 to 200 dollars in US.

Check Gigabyte AORUS series.

Or MSI MAG Mortar series.

Both in B760M DDR 5 varieties.

Have you checked the motherboard spec sheets for:

Number and type of monitor connections
Number and type of M.2 drive ports
Qualified memory list
Number of case fan connections.

etc etc, those details can matter.

 

[Moondoggy]

If you don't game, overclock or tax the system beyond it's spec, you can look towards a lower spec chipset like an H770 or a B760, if you're looking at a 13th Gen locked Intel processor. If you're looking at an unlocked processor, then yes you look at a Z790 chipset motherboard.

What other options do you have at your disposal, apart from the Gigabyte motherboard mentioned above?

The component parts store I visited had a lot of Gigabyte boards but most were boards for Intel 12th Gen processors using DDR4 memory and since DDR 5 has been available I questioned why go with a DDR 4 board. They had a few ASUS boards but only one was DDR5. That all being said, the only limitation I have is the fact that I want a custom built rig with decent parts of my choosing not a prebuilt boxed system from Sam's club or elsewhere. I can actually buy whatever I want from any parts supplier but I like to support my local parts house and have them put the rig together for me as I just didn't want to hassle with building it myself.

 

[ttheobald]

Okay, first off, nothing wrong with that board at all. I like Gigabyte's stuff myself, and in spite of a bit of trouble I'm having with one of theirs, I've got three other systems humming with Gigabyte boards in them.

As others have said, if you're really not aiming to push the limits of your system, you might be spending more $$ on that board than you need to. I'm assuming when you say "Core I5" that you're aiming for a 13500 or 13600, either of which uses a 1700 socket, so you can get by with a B760 chipset, save yourself a hundred bucks, and spend that money you saved on something that will make a difference to you in other ways.

Here's an example of how to better use that cash - the Z790 UD AC costs about 218 euro here where I am. A B760M board costs about 130. So that's 90 bucks left over. Where I might have planned to go with 16GB of DDR5 at 5800MTs, I go with DDR4 and double my capacity to 32GB at 3200MTs, save another ten bucks. With that extra hundred bucks I can now afford a 4TB m.2 SSD instead of a 2TB one.

Unless you're really straining the system, the difference between DDR4 and DDR5 will not be noticeable, you'll still be able to mount the same CPU and with the price savings you can expand your storage capacity and RAM capacity by double - and I think *that* is something you will notice and be glad of.

Hope this helps -

T

 

[Moondoggy]

It's been a few weeks and I wanted to let you know that after a lot of research I opted to go with a MSI MAG Z790 Tomahawk WIFI motherboard. my build and so far I'm very happy with the choice. I went with a Core I5, processor, 32 GB of DDR5 memory, a 1 TB NVMe - Gen4 PCIe SSD and my case now has 3 Noctua fans. Combined, all of these parts created a system that's incredible fast and quiet. I'm sure that I will never stress out this system based on my usage but this was what I wanted in a system and I'm very happy with the choices I made. Thanks for all the help and advice.