Question Good 600 series motherboards /w bios flashback for 13th gen CPU?

[dowhopdedodo]

I've been a loyal ASUS customer over the years. Recently bought two boards promoted for Raptor builds. Asus Prime Z690-P D4 for me and mATX Asus Tuf B660 Plus D4 for wife's, which I built yesterday.

Unfortunately, I discovered that neither of these boards are Raptor capable absent a 12th gen CPU to update bios. And so, my ask is for quality/feature recommendations as alternatives to ASUS Prime & Tuf boards near +/- the $200 price point. (Wife's is mATX.)

A recent Tom's article suggests there are a good many capable of updating bios without a CPU. Hopefully, someone knowledgeable can offer good advice as I have little familiarity with MSI, ASRock, Gigabyte quality, or bang for the buck in their pricing.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-600-series-boards-for-raptor-lake

[Edit] After kvetching a bit, seems the easiest alternative is simply to buy a cheap 12th-gen and use that instead. I wouldn't mind upgrading the Z690 some if anyone has a recommendation.

 

[BoomerD]

DDR4 or DDR5?

Edit...duh, Z790 boards don't need the flashback feature...they're ready for the 13th gen.

 

[dowhopdedodo]

It's tempting to go DDR5, but it's a bit over budget. Both boards above are DDR 4, and for my content creation work better to have 64Gb of 4 rather than 32Gb of 5. Wouldn't mind stepping up from a Prime board though since it's still in the box, say ~$50 or so. Don't need WiFi.

[Expecting to face a sizable $ hit when 4060s are released as I'm mostly retired.]

 

[Tech Junky]

There are places renting ADL cpus for this exact issue. ASR boards just do it with a dedicated USB port no CPU necessary.

 

[dowhopdedodo]

Yeah, I told my wife I'd call around to local repair shops tomorrow offering to rent a CPU, or buy one. She's quite frustrated that she got to the alter so to speak (her first mentored build in decades), only to be denied. As for me, it's always something. Last time it was a mysteriously failing PSU that proved hard to identify.

 

[lopri]

I have never used such a service, but I have a feeling those rentals are not exactly cheap.

 

[Tech Junky]

I have never used such a service, but I have a feeling those rentals are not exactly cheap.

I imagine you put down a deposit for the CPU + 5-10 days of the rental fee and then when you return it you get the deposit back. Similarly in the car world if you want to borrow a ECU cable you do this sort of thing and the rental is ~$10/day to use it. Either way tenting a CPU for $10 vs spending $200 more on a RPL MOBO makes more sense. Then again you can bypass this dance with the proper board that allows flashing w/o a CPU in the socket.

 

[lopri]

If it’s $10, then yeah why not.

B660 boards may hinder MT performance of the 13th gen CPUs, btw. (Power delivery capability issue) We are talking about huge number of cores so i don’t think it’s a big deal unless the OP’s wife does those MT-intensive work. But it’s a sizable loss nonetheless. For example my 13700K on B660 produced 25K MT score when reviews showed 30K or so points (Cinebench R23).

Reviewers apparently don’t care enough to test mid-to-low end stuff these days. They are just happy with shiny new things they are provided with. The more expensive the better. And Intel of course does not say anything about it. They will tell you to talk to the motherboard vendors.

 

[Tech Junky]

@lopri

There's other differences between Z / B boards though.



More PCIE lanes to play with when adding devices.
Double the DMI bandwidth for things not direct to CPU

It's not all about the OC if you look into the details of the different things besides that ability.

For me I'm running Raid off the board so, having the bandwidth is nice to not choke out anything else. If you want to have flexibility in types of slots and their bandwidth / gen it makes a difference. My board has slots for Gen 3/4/5 where a B series might have a 5 and the rest are gen 3. At the time I wanted USB20G to be an option and then later decided that there wasn't enough accessory options and went TB4 instead with a card for $60.

It all comes down to use though on which board makes more sense. If you're data heavy then a Z makes more sense. If it's a simple setup then B makes more sense. If it's a 6-series the price difference is dwindling now that the 7-series are out with RPL with a higher price attached to them as well.

 

[lopri]

That is a spec sheet.. No spec sheet will tell you that B660 does not support the 13th gen CPUs, because it does. At the BASE clocks.

 

[Tech Junky]

That is a spec sheet.. No spec sheet will tell you that B660 does not support the 13th gen CPUs, because it does. At the BASE clocks.

I didn't say it won't support a RPL CPU.

The point was to show the other differences that matter outside of the CPU itself in which you connect other devices to the system. If you go with a B board you choke off or limit your options on what you can add. For an ITX build though a B board would be fine because you simply don't' have enough room in the case to add more than the board can handle.

If you went a little more high end and used SSD / NVME drives and want to do raid you need to use the Z board for the bandwidth or you get into some pricy options adding bifurcation cards that also restrict the bandwidth of the drives to gen3 speeds due to the PLX switches they use to mux multiple drives in the slot.