Question Would you recommend pairing the MSI PRO Z790-P WiFi motherboard with an i9-12900k CPU ?

[iolly5a]

As i9 - 12900k is a high end CPU that also runs hot , would this motherboard be able to handle this CPU well? Or should I choose another motherboard that handles the i9-12900k well?

 

[Lutfij]

In all honesty, I wouldn't invest on the Intel platform, not after what they've kept hidden until Gamers Nexus did an investigation into it. If you really want to invest in Intel, then I'd suggest looking into a higher pedigree motherboard and some beefy cooling, not to mention a case that has ample airflow.

With that being said, you forgot to mention what the rest of your build looks like, what the budget for your entire build is and with that, the budget you've allocated towards your motherboard purchase and where you're located to help us narrow down a better candidate.

 

[iolly5a]

Well I was planning to buy a 14700k but due to Intel stability issues I went for i9-12900k (since this CPU has fewer known issues). I also cannot wait for Intel 15th gen because it can take a long time, and also it can have some issues like 13/14th gen , this would only waste my time.

The cooler I have chosen is Artic Liquid Freezer III , is this the good cooler for i9-12900k ? Would be able to handle all the heat of CPU?

I have still not decided the case but I want my case such that there is good airflow. My budget of case is around 60-70$ , what case do you recommend?

My budget for the motherboard is around $400. I want my motherboard to handle i9-12900k very well even after I overclock it. Which motherboard do you recommend?

 

[Eximo]

200 series CPUs are scheduled for announcement on October 10th, released on the 24th, so not too far off if everything goes well.

I would hesitate to buy a 12900K right now, though it is pretty cheap compared to the other Intel offerings. You don't need a $400 motherboard to push it, though if you are concerned about Intel I would avoid overclocking to any extreme, or go ahead and get the 13700k or 14700k and hope the microcode updates fixed everything.

Any 360mm AIO is plenty, not like you can do much better without going custom loop.

LGA1700 is maybe getting one more CPU in the form of Bartlett Lake, All P Core CPUs. Though given the current state of Intel, that may yet get canceled.

Some boards with decent VRMs.

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/f7...a1700-motherboard-z690-steel-legend-wifi-6ed5

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/9B...tx-lga1700-motherboard-mag-z790-tomahawk-wifi

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/VVC48d/asrock-z690-taichi-atx-lga1700-motherboard-z690-taichi

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/wQ...1700-motherboard-rog-strix-z690-f-gaming-wifi

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Dp...ga1700-motherboard-mag-z790-tomahawk-max-wifi

 

[iolly5a]

200 series CPUs are scheduled for announcement on October 10th, released on the 24th, so not too far off if everything goes well.

I would hesitate to buy a 12900K right now, though it is pretty cheap compared to the other Intel offerings. You don't need a $400 motherboard to push it, though if you are concerned about Intel I would avoid overclocking to any extreme, or go ahead and get the 13700k or 14700k and hope the microcode updates fixed everything.

Any 360mm AIO is plenty, not like you can do much better without going custom loop.

LGA1700 is maybe getting one more CPU in the form of Bartlett Lake, All P Core CPUs. Though given the current state of Intel, that may yet get canceled.

Some boards with decent VRMs.

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/f7...a1700-motherboard-z690-steel-legend-wifi-6ed5

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/9B...tx-lga1700-motherboard-mag-z790-tomahawk-wifi

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/VVC48d/asrock-z690-taichi-atx-lga1700-motherboard-z690-taichi

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/wQ...1700-motherboard-rog-strix-z690-f-gaming-wifi

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Dp...ga1700-motherboard-mag-z790-tomahawk-max-wifi

Well I do not want to waste no more time and build my pc as quickly as possible therefore I am buying a 12900k and not waiting for Intel 15th gen series . They would take time to arrive here in my country and also then it would take some time to get the results of premiere pro on these CPU. Also the prices would be inflated. As I would not be upgrading my i9 -12900k and would be using it for maximum of 3 years so this is also a plus point.


I do not want to buy a Intel 13th and 14th gen because of instability and oxidation issues despite them realising their microcode . There are many system out there which are still facing problem.

 

[Eximo]

I do not want to buy a Intel 13th and 14th gen because of instability and oxidation issues despite them realising their microcode . There are many system out there which are still facing problem.

Oxidation was apparently limited to early run 13th gen chips manufacturing errors. Unlikely there is still stock out there with this issue after so long.

Anyone who hasn't yet updated their BIOS yes, or who bought the CPU at launch may have degraded CPUs. If you buy a new in box CPU today and update the BIOS with flashback before you install the CPU, then there should be no issues. The bonus is you do get a 5 year warranty if you buy today. If you only plan to keep it for three years, then you are fully covered if the CPU fails or starts to misbehave.

Like saying you won't buy a 7800X3D because the early releases had CPUs burning out. They fixed it and people have basically taken them out of stock at this point. You either have to trust Intel and AMD or buy nothing if you want x86.

 

[geofelt]

You are ok.
Heat is directly related to the voltage you allow the motherboard to deliver to the chip.
The current bios'es will by default set voltages to Intel standards.
That will not require exotic cooling unless you want the last 2% of performance that the chip can give.
Chips are binned, do not expect much return from overclocking.
The default turbo mechanism works best for most.
If your main use is gaming, heat generation is much less because only a small portion of the threads will be effectively used.
You might find this article on using weaker coolers interesting:
https://www.tomshardware.com/features/intel-core-13900k-cooling-tested

 

[Eximo]

Chips are binned, do not expect much return from overclocking.
The default turbo mechanism works best for most.

Plus one to this. There is some benefit to overclocking the i7 chips, but the i9 are basically already at their top speed.

I only have a 12700KF because it was on sale (about the normal price now, but then it was quite the steal), my last chip was a locked i9, and my next chip I will likely leave at defaults (Even with custom watercooling).

I believe I have my 12700KF running at 5.3Ghz, which is only 100 Mhz more than the max boost of the 12900K.

 

[iolly5a]

Oxidation was apparently limited to early run 13th gen chips manufacturing errors. Unlikely there is still stock out there with this issue after so long.

Anyone who hasn't yet updated their BIOS yes, or who bought the CPU at launch may have degraded CPUs. If you buy a new in box CPU today and update the BIOS with flashback before you install the CPU, then there should be no issues. The bonus is you do get a 5 year warranty if you buy today. If you only plan to keep it for three years, then you are fully covered if the CPU fails or starts to misbehave.

Like saying you won't buy a 7800X3D because the early releases had CPUs burning out. They fixed it and people have basically taken them out of stock at this point. You either have to trust Intel and AMD or buy nothing if you want x86.

What about this
https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/s/eJ6M3mWWcX

Here you can see people are still facing stability issues after getting the new RMA CPU 's

 

[Eximo]

Well, Load Line Calibration has certainly always been something to be mindful of. Along with default motherboard settings. It would be nice if they weren't all aiming for some imaginary performance crown when they should leave that up to the end users to tweak.

My i7-950 liked to cook itself out of the box on an ASUS Rampage board. Ended up having to undervolt it extremely to get it stable enough just to hang out in the BIOS and finally get around to setting it up.

Having the other profiles ignore the fix is certainly a stupid call to make, but I believe that has been known since the microcode updates. At least on all the outlets I pay attention to.

It is the average user I fear for, not the people who do build requests and actually research hardware.

 

[iolly5a]

Well, Load Line Calibration has certainly always been something to be mindful of. Along with default motherboard settings. It would be nice if they weren't all aiming for some imaginary performance crown when they should leave that up to the end users to tweak.

My i7-950 liked to cook itself out of the box on an ASUS Rampage board. Ended up having to undervolt it extremely to get it stable enough just to hang out in the BIOS and finally get around to setting it up.

Having the other profiles ignore the fix is certainly a stupid call to make, but I believe that has been known since the microcode updates. At least on all the outlets I pay attention to.

It is the average user I fear for, not the people who do build requests and actually research hardware.

So in that case should I go with 12900k only because it has no such oxidation and stability issues. It heats up a lot but I am getting Artic Liquid Freezer III so I think it would be good .

Here getting a good 13/14th gen is like winning a silicon lottery which is not the case for i9-12900k.

 

[Eximo]

So in that case should I go with 12900k only because it has no such oxidation and stability issues. It heats up a lot but I am getting Artic Liquid Freezer III so I think it would be good .

Here getting a good 13/14th gen is like winning a silicon lottery which is not the case for i9-12900k.

No, I'm not really sure where you are coming from on this. 12-14th gen all run 'hot' if you look at performance per watt at the high end, they run near the ragged edge to stay competitive. The non unlocked chips are actually around average efficiency when compared to AMD.

It is not silicon lottery. The stability issues come from a software flaw that Intel admits to. And the stability was a symptom of CPU damage over time not a manufacturing defect. (Excepting early 13th gen chips)

If we believe Intel has fixed the TVB and Boost mechanisms to not over volt the cores, then that problem is solved. You would be getting a new chip and a new board. Everything else is just a matter of tweaking the BIOS properly or making sure you use the Intel profile and not the Extreme ones which may disable the new protections. Confirming that LLC is not set high is certainly something the check on, as well as monitoring your voltage under load when you first get it.

Or performing your own overclock and undervolt to make sure it can't exceed the safe values. You could always have been doing this, and if you look into it, a lot of the people that didn't have problems had done this because they wanted the most performance with the least heat output.

If you want an out of the box experience with no settings changes, then I don't know why you are buying such hardware in the first place.

12th gen is 'safer' because there is no microcode error in the first place. But essentially you are depriving yourself of some performance for past issues. No guarantee there still isn't some longevity problem, but that is also true of AMD. These parts haven't been around that long, that Intel managed to have a relatively short lifecycle due to their negligence is quite abnormal.

Though it has been recommended to update 12th gen system's BIOS as well so that they also adhere to Intel specs that many motherboards ignore.

 

[iolly5a]

No, I'm not really sure where you are coming from on this. 12-14th gen all run 'hot' if you look at performance per watt at the high end, they run near the ragged edge to stay competitive. The non unlocked chips are actually around average efficiency when compared to AMD.

It is not silicon lottery. The stability issues come from a software flaw that Intel admits to. And the stability was a symptom of CPU damage over time not a manufacturing defect. (Excepting early 13th gen chips)

If we believe Intel has fixed the TVB and Boost mechanisms to not over volt the cores, then . You would be getting a new chip and a new board. Everything else is just a matter of tweaking the BIOS properly or making sure you use the Intel profile and not the Extreme ones which may disable the new protections. Confirming that LLC is not set high is certainly something the check on, as well as monitoring your voltage under load when you first get it.

Or performing your own overclock and undervolt to make sure it can't exceed the safe values. You could always have been doing this, and if you look into it, a lot of the people that didn't have problems had done this because they wanted the most performance with the least heat output.

If you want an out of the box experience with no settings changes, then I don't know why you are buying such hardware in the first place.

12th gen is 'safer' because there is no microcode error in the first place. But essentially you are depriving yourself of some performance for past issues. No guarantee there still isn't some longevity problem, but that is also true of AMD. These parts haven't been around that long, that Intel managed to have a relatively short lifecycle due to their negligence is quite abnormal.

Though it has been recommended to update 12th gen system's BIOS as well so that they also adhere to Intel specs that many motherboards ignoree

"If we believe Intel has fixed the TVB and Boost mechanisms to not over volt the cores, then that problem is solved "

That can be the issue , are we 100% sure that Intel has fixed these issues.

"Or performing your own overclock and undervolt to make sure it can't exceed the safe values"

Even if i7- 14700k is safe . Would undervolting it leads to less performance as compared to what it was performing before this instability issue.

 

[Eximo]

"If we believe Intel has fixed the TVB and Boost mechanisms to not over volt the cores, then that problem is solved "

That can be the issue , are we 100% sure that Intel has fixed these issues.

"Or performing your own overclock and undervolt to make sure it can't exceed the safe values"

Even if i7- 14700k is safe . Would undervolting it leads to less performance as compared to what it was performing before this instability issue.

No we aren't 100% sure they've fixed the issue. Update has only been around a few months. We'll have to wait a while for results. Also trying to prove a negative, so evidence will be far harder to come by.

I don't think you quite understand what undervolting is. While it can lead to less performance, that isn't the goal of most enthusiasts. The goal is to maintain performance while reducing power requirements. The out of the box defaults from pretty much every motherboard vendor have been over the top since the Core series was launched. They are there to ensure maximum compatibility, but most CPUs don't need that much voltage to run under a full load.

For example the 253W TDP Intel specs for the 13th and 14th gen K chips means that at 1.4 volts you need 180 Amps to run the chip. If you drop that down to 1.3 volts you are looking at 234W, 1.25 225W. As temperature decreases, efficiency increases, so the CPU may be able to clock a little higher despite the reduction. You tweak it until you reach a point where the CPU is still running overclocked, but also running with less power than the out of the box experience.

As I said, the people that did this when they got their CPUs never had issues. They weren't relying on Intel's boost profile, they were either running a fixed voltage and frequency or had set up their own boost profiles at a much lower voltage using negative offsets.

 

[iolly5a]

No we aren't 100% sure they've fixed the issue. Update has only been around a few months. We'll have to wait a while for results. Also trying to prove a negative, so evidence will be far harder to come by.

I don't think you quite understand what undervolting is. While it can lead to less performance, that isn't the goal of most enthusiasts. The goal is to maintain performance while reducing power requirements. The out of the box defaults from pretty much every motherboard vendor have been over the top since the Core series was launched. They are there to ensure maximum compatibility, but most CPUs don't need that much voltage to run under a full load.

For example the 253W TDP Intel specs for the 13th and 14th gen K chips means that at 1.4 volts you need 180 Amps to run the chip. If you drop that down to 1.3 volts you are looking at 234W, 1.25 225W. As temperature decreases, efficiency increases, so the CPU may be able to clock a little higher despite the reduction. You tweak it until you reach a point where the CPU is still running overclocked, but also running with less power than the out of the box experience.

As I said, the people that did this when they got their CPUs never had issues. They weren't relying on Intel's boost profile, they were either running a fixed voltage and frequency or had set up their own boost profiles at a much lower voltage using negative offsets.

"No we aren't 100% sure they've fixed the issue. Update has only been around a few months. We'll have to wait a while for results. Also trying to prove a negative, so evidence will be far harder to come by."

So in that case I think it would be safe to get i9 -12900k or I should take a risk and get a i7 -14700k , what do you think?

 

[Eximo]

Are you prepared to monitor everything related to your CPU when you go to overclock it? Or conversely since 13th and 14th gen already clock higher and have more cache in their larger e core clusters, you could downclock those to 12th gen levels for even more safety margin.

I think it is pretty safe to get a 14th gen now. And if it does give you problems, it would be on Intel to get you a replacement or a refund.

 

[iolly5a]

Are you prepared to monitor everything related to your CPU when you go to overclock it? Or conversely since 13th and 14th gen already clock higher and have more cache in their larger e core clusters, you could downclock those to 12th gen levels for even more safety margin.

I think it is pretty safe to get a 14th gen now. And if it does give you problems, it would be on Intel to get you a replacement or a refund.

"I think it is pretty safe to get a 14th gen now. And if it does give you problems, it would be on Intel to get you a replacement or a refund"

I think in that case , playing safe I would get i9-12900k .

Also which motherboard would you recommend for i9 -12900k that handles it well. My budget is around 400$?

 

[Eximo]

I listed several choices well below $400 that have decent VRMs. There are plenty more.

What you need when looking at a motherboard is a list of features you want.

If the answer is, play it safe, and a GPU. Then a B760 board like the Tomahawk would suffice. Or one of the Z690/Z790 Tomahawks if you want the overclocking and controls.

 

[iolly5a]

I listed several choices well below $400 that have decent VRMs. There are plenty more.

What you need when looking at a motherboard is a list of features you want.

If the answer is, play it safe, and a GPU. Then a B760 board like the Tomahawk would suffice. Or one of the Z690/Z790 Tomahawks if you want the overclocking and controls.

What about these motherboards

Gigabyte mobo

Msi Mobo 1

Asus Mobo 1

Msi Mobo 2

Gigabyte Mobo 2

Msi Mobo 3

Asus Mobo 2

Msi Mobo 4

 

[Eximo]

I would say all of them but the Prime are decent. The Prime I would call adequate power wise, though it does have some nice features.

The two MSI have the same VRM layout, the third is a duplicate. 4th isn't a link to a board.

The two Gigabyte are essentially the same board.

 

[iolly5a]

I would say all of them but the Prime are decent. The Prime I would call adequate power wise, though it does have some nice features.

The two MSI have the same VRM layout, the third is a duplicate. 4th isn't a link to a board.

The two Gigabyte are essentially the same board.

So which one do you think is the best in handling i9 -12900k under lot of stress and also utilises it to the best?

 

[Eximo]

You might be able to track down some reviews, but motherboard quality hasn't really been that bad in a while. A few outright mistakes here and there like ASUS and their backwards capacitor.

For the most part, when I pick out a motherboard I look at VRM quality, the audio chipset, and I/O I might want to use. 2.5Gbps network as a minimum, usually at least one fast USB port for external backups.