Looking for Z390 mobo recommendation, for solid stable system with decent audio

[kent.brodie]

The current PC I'm running is well, getting a little long in the tooth. Asus P8P67, Intel I5-2500K , Galaxy GTX460. Yup, back in late 2011, early 2012. But it's been SOLID. At the time, I picked some really nice components. I love it when that happens.

With Coffee Lake and the specs I'm seeing, and after waiting for MANY years, I want to build a new rig. All the new toys built into mobos today, wow. It's been way too long since I last did this.

GOOD LORD have things changed. The mobos all have amazing features-- MASSIVE heatsinks etc for the voltage regulators, full RGB control, and I had to look into what the hell M.2 was. LOL. Maybe if I didn't cancel my MAXIMUM PC subscription long ago I'd have a clue as to what's going on today, ha.

Anyway, my new CPU is most certainly going to be an I7-8700K. I plan to use this next PC a long time. Love Intel. And from what I know, that processor kicks ass.

My requirements are pretty simple:
* Decent and not to horribly difficult overclocking. Does not have to push the envelope. But it should be stable. I do audio and video encoding a lot, so yeah I'll be stressing things a bit. Sometimes.
* Really good audio. Everyone say buh-bye to my Audigy 2 ZS. The drivers just aren't there anymore and I'm tired of fighting that particular battle.
* Yeah, I'll be using that M.2 slot. Nice feature.
* Quiet. I don't want a noisy system.
* No games. I'm older than you probably think, and don't really have time for gaming anymore. So GAMING-SPECIFIC features-- not needed.

While I currently have (an ancient!) ASUS board, I am not married to ASUS as a brand. I'm willing to pick whatever.

I want to avoid headaches. I don't want to deal with crappy software. The audio should be awesome. The overclocking should just... WORK.

I've perused newegg and there's a lot of nice choices. Too many, almost. And everywhere I look, I see good stuff but then this or that feature or function gets nailed in the reviews.

Help? I would appreciate any recommendations. Thanks everyone.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Maybe if I didn't cancel my MAXIMUM PC subscription long ago I'd have a clue as to what's going on today, ha.

Actually, Maximum PC has been gone for several years. It's called PCgamer now and it's totally different. What you SHOULD do is just visit HERE, Tom's hardware, once or twice a week at the main page and you've find reviews and articles on practically anything tech related you want to know about. HardOCP, TechSpot and GamersNexus are good sites for keeping up to date on PC and hardware tech as well.

ASUS is a good brand to stick with when it comes to motherboards. That hasn't changed at all.

What country are you in?

What is your full budget for all of the parts you are looking to upgrade?

What EXACT parts do you want to upgrade. Obviously, CPU, motherboard and memory are a foregone conclusion. M.2 drive is understandable however if this is a strictly or mostly gaming machine, it might be a waste of money versus a normal SATA SSD. There is very little benefit from a PCI M.2, and to be clear, there are BOTH SATA AND PCI M.2 drives, and SATA M.2 drives are no faster in any way than a standard SATA SSD.

If you aren't doing anything where you'll reap the benefits from fast sequential reads or writes, then you probably want to pass on the PCI NVME M.2 drive, although it's still a good option for eliminating a little bit of clutter in the case and you WILL likely see some benefit from the sequential speed increase on loading times. For the rest of the stuff, if you work with LARGE video files, or large 3D files, or ANY large files where saving (Writing) or loading (reading) is a common occurrence and is currently rather laggy on your system AND you have an SSD, then it might be worth having.

 

[kent.brodie]

I'm in the US.

I do not have EXACT parts list yet, other than the I7-8700K is going to be the start.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Then, loosely, something like this would be a very good starting point for a solid system that would last you many years.

The A series boards from ASUS, for practically any chipset or generation, are usually almost identical to the Hero boards by them but without the gaming centric ROG features. They typically always have very good overclocking, good VRM configurations, good storage controller options, good audio and everything you would want from a high quality board that is NOT designed for the very highest level or competitive overclocking but which you want good overclocking with good power delivery for both the CPU and memory.

MSI should be avoided IMO. Gigabyte is good quality but lacks some of the granularity and features in the BIOS that we've come to expect in the past from them and is present currently on most other motherboard brands such as DRAM voltage adjustments in .005v increments, rather than only .020v increments like I've seen on their boards for the past few generations. They also don't have as favorable of fan controls IMO.

ASRock would be my second choice next to ASUS, but I don't think you can get an ASRock board that is as good as the Z390-A for a comparable price not counting any sales that might come along. I've chosen Z390 instead of Z370 because Z390 is down to about the same prices as Z370 now PLUS it has native USB 3.1 Gen 2 support which is not present on Z370 boards AND it has improved power delivery for use with the higher core 9th gen CPUs (As well it works with 8th gen processors) so overclocking SHOULD be even more stable on one of those board and ALSO you would be able to upgrade to a 9th gen CPU at some point down the road, or now, if you wished to. Currently they are releasing some 9th gen CPUs that lack integrated graphics so you might be able to get a chip with better overclocking potential, somewhat lower thermals due to the lack of the integrated graphics being enabled on the chip and more physical cores than what is available on 8th gen models.

That is not to say that there is any reason to not go with an 8700k either, just that it is an option.

Cooling is another consideration and you didn't mention what you are using now but I suspect you may need to think about this as well depending on what your current cooling configuration looks like. Obviously, as always, the unlocked Intel processors do not come with a stock cooler and if you're overclocking your would want a MUCH better solution anyhow as even overclocking on low end processors is not recommended with a stock cooler.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i7-8700K 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor ($369.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus - PRIME Z390-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($171.77 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill - Trident Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($134.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $676.75
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-01-11 13:33 EST-0500

 

[kent.brodie]

FANTASTIC. That was exactly the kind of reply I was looking for. (anyone else?).

I really appreciate the info on what exactly the "A" boards are; I had kind of guessed but wasn't certain. Interesting comments about MSI, as I was kind of eyeing up the MSI tomahawk board. I will go take a serious look at the ASUS A-line of boards and set MSI aside for now.

M2: And on the M.2... yeah I know it's still a regular SSD drive, but I love the form factor and not having to stuff a small SSD in an ugly bracket and mounting that in the case. Ugly.

Cooling: This is a new build; I've never done anything fancy and have historically just found a really good solid and quiet cpi cooler, air.

I'm still gonna stick with the 8700K... I see that as the sweet spot for performance-versus-price right now. and if I I5-2600K has done me well since 2012.... that baby oughtts last me until Trump is a fading memory of our nations largest accident. ;-)

I'm also not in a rush. My previous build took me about a month to line up the various components JUST SO, before I pulled the trigger. This will not be any different. Once I finally decide on the mobo, everythhing else is super easy (ram, cooling, ssd, power supply). I'll either be re-using my GTX 460, or maybe just using integrated graphics at the get-go.

Thanks again- MUCH appreciated.

any other opinions?

 

[Darkbreeze]

In the past three weeks, I've seen four members and one moderator with an MSI Tomahawk board failure that required RMA. When it comes to MSI, I would only (And sparingly, perhaps only in cases where there is a deal that can't be passed up. Perhaps not even then) recommend their higher end boards. I have not known MSI to have any problems with their graphics cards but they have a very spotty history when it comes to quality control on their motherboards.

You might want to reconsider on the graphics card. There are a LOT of applications these days that allow for much faster GPU accelerated encoding or assisting, lightning encoding, etc., on video processes, and that UHD 630 graphics on the 8700k is probably actually worse than the graphics on your GTX 460 plus most graphics cards more than two years or so old don't support the newer H.265 and some other newer standards which might be something you want to have, I don't know really what exactly you do so it's hard to say. But it's worth looking at anyhow.

As far as the cooling, I agree, I'm an air cool guy myself, but you are probably going to want a significantly better cooler for this 6/12 core/thread CPU than what you could get by with overclocking on that four core with no hyperthreading configuration. Depends on what you have and whether it's compatible with the socket or not.

I'd probably recommend something like this off the top of my head.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i7-8700K 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor ($369.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-U14S 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler ($63.75 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus - PRIME Z390-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($171.87 @ Newegg Business)
Memory: G.Skill - Trident Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($134.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $740.60
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-01-11 19:10 EST-0500

So you are looking to do an SATA SSD, or a PCI NVME SSD? If you are going to pay for an M.2 SSD, it needs to be a PCI version. SATA SSD is a waste. For you, with audio and video encoding being a priority, I think the enormously faster consecutive read and write speeds of NVME M.2 will be beneficial to you especially when loading or saving large files, IF you are using it for storage of those files. Perhaps even if they are not. Cache and scratch folders will absolutely see a terrific benefit from either an M.2 or SATA SSD compared to the same process using a HDD.

That board supports two x4 PCI NVME M.2 drives, so one for the operating system and another for storage of your projects (With an additional mechanical hard drive or standard SATA SSD as a backup of those files to guard against loss) might be something you want to seriously consider.

I see about a 40-60% speed difference using Handbrake, Audacity, Audigy, anything that rips to FLAC, Vegas movie studio and Cyberlink power director depending on the size of the file and what exactly I happen to be doing with it at the time. I have a 970 EVO with a Samsung 860 EVO as storage. If I had two 970 EVOs that might even be a bigger difference.


You can go bigger on the cooler, depending on how much you plan to give the overclock, if you think you need to, but this cooler does a fantastic job of cooling my 6700k@4.6Ghz and I know it handles overclocking well on the 8700k. If you go bigger I'd look at something in a twin finstack model by Noctua, Thermalright, Cryorig or Phanteks.

 

[kent.brodie]

awesome. I'm sold on the asus board, And am gonna look into the pci m2 drives- thanks for the tip. As I said... been far too long since I did this. But I also am doing this over weeks. Research, research, research.....................

 

[kent.brodie]

I apparently need to examine cooling again. The last time I built a PC, "all-in-one closed loop" cpu coolers were NOT a thing yet. Water cooling was all DIY with kids and a jug of fluid etc. This is going to be fun. And also take me longer than I thought, hahahahahahahah

 

[Darkbreeze]

Personally, I don't like them. There are sometimes problems with leakage, not often, but often enough that I see them here occasionally and it's usually resulting in a lot of other failed hardware. Water and electricity or electronics, don't mix well. If you buy one, buy a VERY good one, and get one that is at LEAST 280mm if not 360mm.

They are also generally LOUDER than using an air cooler, as most air coolers don't run two fans, so that automatically is a significant increase in decibels, to which some would say "Yeah, but you'd have a couple of case fans there anyhow in front or on top", which is true, BUT they wouldn't be inclined to run at the same high RPM as a CPU air or radiator fan, wouldn't have the same kind of rapid response to CPU temperature because motherboard case fan headers use a much less reactive thermal diode than the one used for the CPU FAN and CPU OPT headers so radiators and heatsink fans tend to ramp up and down quickly and often.

So with two of them, rear the outside of the case, is going to be a lot more noticeable than one that's buried in the middle of the case.

Also, most really good air coolers perform as well as the majority of 240 and 280mm AIO coolers anyhow especially if you have a case with good airflow, enough case fans and few obstructions in the way of the path of airflow in, to the CPU cooler and out of the case.

Anyhow, there are arguments both ways on this but IMO the only way to do it if you are going to run a liquid cooled system is to build a custom loop and that is a major project which should be entirely it's own thing, set aside as a project rather than just another piece of the puzzle.

There are AIO coolers worth looking at though and I can give you a few recommendations if you wish based on case model and need, with need being what level of overclock you require. There is also the matter of noise. You wanted quiet. You're not going to get that with most AIO coolers unless you buy the AIO and then replace the fans with high quality Noctua, Thermalright or a very few other really good models from various companies that can move a lot of air while still being quiet. Don't get fooled by paper specs. They are rarely accurate unless the company is one that we know takes those specs very seriously like Noctua who spends YEARS developing a single fan model before releasing it, unlike Corsair, Thermaltake, BeQuiet and Deepcool (And MOST others) who might take a few months.

 

[kent.brodie]

OK, so an hour of research, NOPE- no water for me, even with AIO. I had already come to that conclusion beforew reading your post.

SO............. I am narrowing in on my build specs. Would appreciate any feedback. I did include a graphics card after all, but stayed in the affordable range - I don't need a 1060/1070-class card...................

[PCPartPicker part list](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/QvnbzY) / [Price breakdown by merchant](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/QvnbzY/by_merchant/)

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [Intel - Core i7-8700K 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/sxDzK8/intel-core-i7-8700k-37ghz-6-core-processor-bx80684i78700k) | $369.99 @ Amazon
**CPU Cooler** | [Noctua - NH-C14S 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/kykwrH/noctua-cpu-cooler-nhc14s) | $74.90 @ Amazon
**Motherboard** | [Asus - Prime Z370-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/3MJkcf/asus-prime-z370-a-atx-lga1151-motherboard-prime-z370-a) | $279.89 @ OutletPC
**Memory** | [G.Skill - Trident Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/4n648d/gskill-tridentz-series-16gb-2-x-8gb-ddr4-3200-memory-f4-3200c16d-16gtzkw) | $139.99 @ Newegg
**Storage** | [Samsung - 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/P4ZFf7/samsung-970-evo-500gb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-mz-v7e500bw) | $127.96 @ Amazon
**Video Card** | [Gigabyte - Radeon RX 570 4 GB Gaming 4G Video Card](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/tyNypg/gigabyte-radeon-rx-570-4gb-gaming-4g-video-card-gv-rx570gaming-4gd) | $149.99 @ Newegg
**Power Supply** | [EVGA - SuperNOVA G3 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/dMM323/evga-supernova-g3-750w-80-gold-certified-fully-modular-atx-power-supply-220-g3-0750) | $95.89 @ OutletPC
| *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* |
| Total (before mail-in rebates) | $1258.61
| Mail-in rebates | -$20.00
| **Total** | **$1238.61**
| Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2019-01-14 11:06 EST-0500 |

 

[Darkbreeze]

First, let's fix your previous post. When you copy and past the code from PCPartpicker you need to click the bbcode button and use that code. HTML does not work on this website for reasons of security. Too easy to insert malicious code into HTML strings. It should look like this.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i7-8700K 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor ($369.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-C14S 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler ($74.90 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus - Prime Z370-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($279.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill - Trident Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($127.96 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte - Radeon RX 570 4 GB Gaming 4G Video Card ($149.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA G3 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($95.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1238.61
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-01-14 14:41 EST-0500

 

[Darkbreeze]

You don't want that cooler unless you HAVE to use it due to having a very small case that won't support a tower cooler. Cooling capability on those "top down" style coolers is MUCH less than with almost any aftermarket tower cooler. They are fine if you have a small microATX or mini ITX case and can't use anything taller, but if you can, it's highly recommended to avoid top down coolers and use tower style single or double fin stack coolers only.

Performance is much better on 120 or 140mm tower coolers.

The rest looks REALLY really good.

 

[Darkbreeze]

These are my usual cooler recommendations for most regions. Click the spoiler box for those.

Spoiler

Below is my list of preferred CPU AIR coolers, also known as Heatsink fans (HSF).

Do not look here for recommendations on water/liquid cooling solutions. There are none to be found.

They are basically listed in order of preference, from top to bottom. To some degree that preference is based on known performance on similarly overclocked configurations, but not entirely. There are likely a couple of units that are placed closer to the top not because they offer purely better performance than another cooler which is below it, but potentially due to a variety of reasons.

One model might be placed higher than another with the same or similar performance, but has quieter or higher quality fans. It may have the same performance but a better warranty. Long term quality may be higher. It may be less expensive in some cases. Maybe it performs slightly worse, but has quieter fans and a better "fan pitch". Some fans with equal decibel levels do not "sound" like they are the same as the specific pitch heard from one fan might be less annoying than another.

In any case, these are not "tiered" and are not a 100% be all, end all ranking. They are simply MY preference when looking at coolers for a build or when making recommendations. Often, which HSF gets chosen depends on what is on this list and fits the budget or is priced right at the time due to a sale or rebate. Hopefully it will help you and you can rest assured that every cooler listed here is a model that to some degree or other is generally a quality unit which is a lot more likely to be worth the money spent on it than on many other models out there that might look to be a similarly worthwhile investment.

Certainly there are a great many other very good coolers out there, but these are models which are usually available to most anybody building a system or looking for a cooler, regardless of what part of the world they might live in. As always, professional reviews are usually an absolutely essential part of the process of finding a cooler so if you are looking at a model not listed here, I would highly recommend looking at at least two or three professional reviews first.

If you cannot find two reviews of any given cooler, it is likely either too new to have been reviewed yet or it sucked, and nobody wanted to buy one in order to review it plus the manufacturer refused to send samples out to the sites that perform reviews because they knew it would likely get bad publicity.

IMO, nobody out there is making better fans, overall, than Noctua, followed pretty closely by Thermalright. So if you intend to match case fans to the same brand on your HSF, those are pretty hard to beat. Of course, Corsair has it's Maglev fans, and those are pretty damn good too, but since they don't make CPU air cooling products, only AIO water coolers, they cannot join the party.


Noctua NH-D14 (Replace stock fans with NF-A14 industrialPPC 2000rpm)
Noctua NH-D15/D15 SE-AM4
Noctua NH-D14 (With original fans)
Thermalright Silver arrow IB-E Extreme
Phanteks PH-TC14PE (BK,BL, OR or RD)
Cryorig R1 Ultimate or Universal
Thermalright Legrand Macho RT
FSP Windale 6
Scythe Mugen 5 rev.b
Noctua NH-U14S
Thermalright Macho rev.B
Thermalright Macho (Direct, 120)
Scythe Mugen max
BeQuiet dark rock pro (3 or 4)
BeQuiet dark rock (3 or 4)
Deepcool Assassin II
Thermalright true spirit 140 (Direct, Power, BW)
Cryorig H5
Noctua NH-U12S
Phanteks PH-TC12DX (Any)
Phanteks PH-TC14S
Cryorig H7
Deepcool Gammaxx 400
Cooler Master Hyper 212 (EVO, X, RGB. I'd only recommend this cooler if no other good aftermarket models are available to you.)


It may not be obvious, but is probably worth mentioning, that not all cooler models will fit all CPU sockets as aftermarket coolers generally require an adapter intended for use with that socket. Some coolers that fit an AMD platform might not fit a later AMD platform, or an Intel platform. Often these coolers come with adapters for multiple types of platforms but be sure to verify that a specific cooler WILL work with your platform before purchasing one and finding out later that it will not.

 

[kent.brodie]

AWESOME, thanks everyone! I was worried about space (mid-tower), but I really appreciate the feedback and will go with a regular tower cooler. I already had my eye on well, ANYTHING from noctura, everything I read about them is amazing. They did not exist when I last did a build......

 

[Darkbreeze]

The NH-U14S is plenty capable of cooling that CPU AND if you care about or don't like the color of the fan, it can be replaced later with one of Noctua's black chromax fans. Personally, I have a black NF-A14 on the front of my U14S and a Noctua industrial iPPC 2000rpm black version of the NF-A14 fan on the backside of the cooler for a very efficient push pull configuration that pretty well eliminates any dead spots in the airflow through the heatsink and doesn't allow anything to escape out the sides of it either.

With that configuration I get about a 3°C lower maximum temp under load than with just a single NF-A14 fan on the front of it. That cooler comes with an NF-A15 fan, which is very good as is, but it has a particular tone I don't appreciate and which does not exist when using the NF-A14 fan.