Question Which Gigabyte Z690?

[Mantrid-Drone]

I'm confused by the range of Z690 Gigabyte MBs. I've settled on using either a i5 12600K or plain 12600 CPU as I can't afford a separate graphic card at this point. That is for the future probably not for months.

However when it comes to the MB ........ I'm not so certain what I need or what might be useful to have.

I want to stick to what I know from my previous builds: Gigabyte (Z77 and H87) but the price range I'm looking at is £190/$232 to £250/$305 and they have over a dozen different ATX MBs here with, seemingly, little obvious differences except whether they support DDR5 or DDR4 RAM and the Wi-Fi options.

BTW I'm not bothered about the latter as I use an all wired set up.

So why should I spend more on any of the higher price GA Z690 iterations rather than go for the GA Z690 UD either DDR5 or DDR4 version?

About the only ones I'm not too keen on are the Gaming X series simply because they have slightly reduced back plate connectivity with the assumption the user is going to be using a GPU too.

Enlightenment appreciated.

 

[Tech Junky]

I think it all comes down to who's paying the most for reviews these days. Just because you can pay someone w/ limited experience to sell your products doesn't mean it's going to stand up to longer than a day's worth of video shooting / use.

I don't go hunting for tube's of MOBO's though and just use good old fashioned detective work to compare them myself. I have a good idea of the features I want and narrow down the options quickly by tightening up those options.

Using reviews from different sources from real people that bought the board. Checking them against different retailers like New Egg vs Amazon vs Microcenter or even builder reviews on pcpartpicker.com. If you want to dig up the bodies on boards you'll find it.

There's always going to be one or two idiots that don't know what they're doing and give 1 star reviews though. If the majority of the reviews sound about the same it's a good chance you won't run into issues. If things are bit erratic though I tend to steer clear of those.

My gut tells me to stay away from GB / AS and MSI isn't too bad but, nothing impressive. That leaves a handful of options to pick from. It should be easy to figure out.

 

[Mantrid-Drone]

Second one (Z77) was would work fine as long as I was doing something on it. If it spent a few minutes being idle, that's when it would decide to just bluescreen or restart. Wasn't frequent but very annoying when it happened.

I have a GA-Z77 too on my other PC - in three plus years its never given me any trouble; and certainly nothing like that. The GA-H87-HD3 I also have likewise although there are a few things I find a bit odd the thing has worked without issue for six plus years.

My good experience with these two Gigabyte MBs is why I looked at their Z690 ones first.

Recently I had problems with one RAM module on the GA-Z77 PC, one of two used ones I regret now that I fitted. That started to blue screen randomly without any warning before I tracked down the actual cause with a bit of help from people here.

MemTest86 identified the culprit and so I took the prompt and upgraded the RAM to 16GB (2x8GB) Kingston Fury. Its been working perfectly ever since.

I guess you've moved on but at the time of the problem you've described I would now have suggested running MemTest86 too. At the very least it would have excluded the RAM modules as being the cause of the problem.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Recently I had problems with one RAM module on the GA-Z77 PC, one of two used ones I regret now that I fitted. That started to blue screen randomly without any warning before I tracked down the actual cause with a bit of help from people here.

MemTest86 identified the culprit and so I took the prompt and upgraded the RAM to 16GB (2x8GB) Kingston Fury. Its been working perfectly ever since.

I think my Z77's bluescreens may be related to Corsair Vengeance RAM I used it with. That same RAM gave me no end of trouble with the Z97. Guess Gigabyte boards prefer Kingston RAM which in general has never given me issues. I also got Kingston RAM for my friend's H610M and it's wonderfully stable too.

 

[Mantrid-Drone]

........................in my case the two used modules and the one that caused the problem were:
Corsair XMS3. They matched my two existing ones as exactly as they could, only the manufacturing date/no. were different. So probably just a coincidence.

The three remaining good sticks (3 x 4GB) were transferred into my other PC to give me an extra 4GB of RAM but I decided that was risky and as soon as I could afford it I upgraded to 16GB (2x8GB) Kingston Hyper Fury as well.

Back on the Gigabyte Z690 MB matter: does anyone here have any idea what the difference is between the GA-Z690 UD DDR4 (rev.1.0), its 'AX' onboard wi-fi sister MB and the two new (?) GA-Z690 UD DDR4 V2 (rev.1.0) equivalents shown on the Gigabyte web site?

I can't find anywhere in the UK selling the V2 and the information/comparison options there don't appear to help.

Z690 UD DDR4 (rev. 1.x) Key Features | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global

Lasting Quality from GIGABYTE.GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ motherboards bring together a unique blend of features and technologies that offer users the absolute ...

www.gigabyte.com

Z690 UD DDR4 V2 (rev. 1.0) Key Features | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global

Lasting Quality from GIGABYTE.GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ motherboards bring together a unique blend of features and technologies that offer users the absolute ...

www.gigabyte.com

 

[Mantrid-Drone]

I'm perplexed by something: the use of NVME PCIe M2 drives with ^ either of those MBs.

With the Gigabyte Gaming X Z690 its manual clearly identifies which SATA ports are disabled when using a NVME in the various M2 sockets it has. However those other two MBs do not appear to have anything in the manual about this.

The manual says that only PCIe SSDs are supported and they cannot be used in RAID configurations with anything in the SATA ports. But there is nothing about the use of NVMEs in any position disabling one or more of the six SATA ports provided.

Can anyone shed any light on this ie. does it mean that no SATA ports are disabled when using a NVME PCIe SSD or is it a MB manual omission?

 

[forart.it]

Hi everyone,
we're a small italian noprofit devoted to create audio/video contents for emerging artists and we're going to upgrade our main workstation (now equipped with i7-7700 / F4-3000C16D-16GISB / ASUS MAXIMUS VIII HERO / 1Tb Samsung 970 EVO+) to Intel 12th gen platform.

We already buyed 4 x Ripjaws V F4-4000C18-8GVK (~134€), a Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 (~31€) and we're watching for i5-12500 non-K.

After some evaluations, we choosed GB Z690 UD DDR4 but, even if we're not interested in overcocking (our target RAM settings is gear1/3600), someone sugested us to opt for MSI instead due to a better memory handability.

Any other help/sugestion will be very apreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Can anyone shed any light on this ie. does it mean that no SATA ports are disabled when using a NVME PCIe SSD or is it a MB manual omission?

The Gaming X has 4 M.2 slots and the fourth one is shared with SATA, that's why using it would disable the SATA ports.


The UD doesn't have a fourth slot and there's no mention of M.2 and SATA in the same line so they should be independent of each other.

 

[igor_kavinski]

After some evaluations, we choosed GB Z690 UD DDR4 but, even if we're not interested in overcocking (our target RAM settings is gear1/3600), someone sugested us to opt for MSI instead due to a better memory handability.

In my experience, Gigabyte boards can be finicky with memory. MSI, I don't have any direct experience. I do have experience with Asus H610M and that was rock solid for me, other than taking its sweet time showing the display on first boot.

 

[igor_kavinski]

We already buyed 4 x Ripjaws V F4-4000C18-8GVK (~134€), a Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 (~31€) and we're watching for i5-12500 non-K.

Bad news for you there. non-K will not work great with XMP and you will very likely not get 4000 MT/s with that RAM with a non-K CPU despite that RAM being rated for that. You may have to tune the RAM manually and see what timings are more compatible with that i5-12500. You will be lucky if you can get DDR4-3200 running without issue with the Gigabyte mobo and that RAM. DDR-3600, I would consider that a miracle if it works right away for you.

Alternatively, consider getting a Ryzen 5600G or 5700G and a B550 mobo minimum. You will have much better luck with running your RAM at around 3800 MT/s with that configuration.

If you still wanna go the Intel route and since overclocking is not something you are interested in, I would suggest this mobo: Amazon.com: ASUS Prime H610M-A D4-CSM LGA 1700(Intel 12th Gen) Micro-ATX Commercial Motherboard (PCIe 4.0, DDR4, 2xM.2 Slots,1Gb LAN, Rear USB 3.2 Gen 2 Ports, DP/HDMI/D-Sub, SPI-TPM Header, ACCE) : Electronics

Innovative moisture-resistant coating to protect the motherboard from harsh environments

That particular feature should help you get a long life from this mobo.

 

[forart.it]

Well, we finally setuped a Gigabyte Z690 UD DDR4 (updated to the latest F20a BIOS) + i5 12600 + 2 x F4-4000C18D-16GVK (total of 4 modules) @ XMP 4000 without any issue on 1st try.

Geekbench v5 results

(live usb) Linux Mint: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. Z690 UD DDR4 - Geekbench Browser
(NvME) Windows 11: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. Z690 UD DDR4 - Geekbench Browser


Then, to obtain better latencies, we've played a bit with RAM settings and here are performances results:

	XMP 4000	DDR 3200	DDR 3400	DDR 3600	DDR 3600	DDR 3600
MHz	2000​	1600​	1700​	1800​	1800​	1800​
Gear	2​	1​	1​	1​	1​	1​
CR	1​	2​	2​	2​	2​	1​
CL-RCD-RP-RAS	18-22-22-42​	18-22-22-42​	18-22-22-42​	18-22-22-42​	16-20-20-39​	16-20-20-39​
Read (MB/s) ¹	54876​	47950​	49034​	51625​	52063​	52016​
Write (MB/s) ¹	56813​	47403​	50597​	53658​	53584​	53730​
Copy (MB/s) ¹	54785​	47197​	49909​	52497​	52962​	53324​
Latency (ns) ¹	75.2​	66.8​	63.6​	61.1​	58.6​	58.0​
Read ²	1111.29​	955.25​	1012.95​	1071.78​	1081.04​	1077.83​
Write ²	1092.18​	914.08​	966.84​	1027.45​	1031.21​	1026.48​
Combined ²	1145.19​	978.53​	1040.67​	1101.66​	1117.48​	1104.75​
Memory Mark ³	3658​	3727​	3860​	3934​	4025​	4018​
Read Uncached ³	25297​	25180​	26509​	27442​	27515​	27927​
Read Cached ³	36286​	36222​	36243​	35829​	36181​	34388​
Write ³	18681​	17134​	17945​	19101​	19478​	19307​
Latency ³	41​	37​	35​	35​	33​	33​
Threaded ³	53093​	44600​	47159​	49587​	50104​	50141​
Database Operations ³	6666​	6466​	6854​	7015​	6945​	6941​

¹ = AIDA64 v6.75
² = OCCT v11.0.11
³ = PerformanceTest 10.2 x86 Build 1008

Now questions are:

1. what's the best setting for A/V editing usage in your opinion?
2. it is justifiable to trade whole system computing power for not-so-better RAMs latencies?
3. can you suggest better settings? *

Spoiler: * AIDA64 Memory module(s) propriety

Module Name	G Skill RipjawsV F4-4000C18-8GVK
Module Size	8 GB (1 rank, 16 banks)
Module Type	Unbuffered DIMM
Memory Type	DDR4 SDRAM
Memory Speed (XMP)	DDR4-4000 (2000 MHz)
Memory Speed	DDR4-2133 (1066 MHz)
Module Width	64 bit
Module Voltage (XMP)	1.35 V
Module Voltage	1.2 V
Error Detection Method	None
DRAM Manufacturer	SK hynix
DRAM Stepping	00h
SDRAM Die Count	1
Memory Timings	MHz CL-RCD-RP-RAS RC-RFC1-RFC2-RFC4-RRDL-RRDS-CCDL-FAW 2000 (XMP) 18-22-22-42 64-700-520-320-10-4-48 1066 16-15-15-36 50-374-278-171-6-4-6-23 1066 15-15-15-36 50-374-278-171-6-4-6-23 1018 14-14-14-34 48-357-265-163-6-4-6-22 945 13-13-13-32 45-331-246-152-6-4-6-20 872 12-12-12-29 41-306-227-140-5-4-5-19 800 11-11-11-27 38-280-208-128-5-3-5-17 727 10-10-10-24 34-255-190-117-4-3-5-16
Extreme Memory Profile	v2.0
Profile Name	Enthusiast (Certified)
Memory Speed	DDR4-4000 (2000 MHz)
Voltage	1.35 V
Recommended DIMMs Per Channel	2

Thanks in advance to all that can/would help.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Overall, I think 16-20-20-39 with Gear 1 and CR 2 is delivering the best balanced performance so it would be my choice for video editing or any other memory intensive task. XMP4000 is great in bandwidth but the latency seems too high.

 

[forart.it]

Thanks for your comment, do you think we can tweak other settings (RC-RFC1-RFC2-RFC4-RRDL-RRDS-CCDL-FAW) to squeeze more performances ?

In this 3ad @ overclock.net the author achieved even better timings (that we've tested on ours, but didn't work) on his platform that could inspire:

 

[igor_kavinski]

do you think we can tweak other settings (RC-RFC1-RFC2-RFC4-RRDL-RRDS-CCDL-FAW) to squeeze more performances ?

Maybe with additional voltage but I don't know for sure because I don't have a Ryzen system to play with.

 

[bigboxes]

My current mobo (Z97 chipset) is my 3rd Gigabyte mobo and first one that doesn't have any show stopping issue (this is only after I paired it with Kingston RAM).

First one was a Core 2 Quad supporting mobo that wouldn't turn on sometimes unless I took out the RAM sticks and put them back in again.

Second one (Z77) was would work fine as long as I was doing something on it. If it spent a few minutes being idle, that's when it would decide to just bluescreen or restart. Wasn't frequent but very annoying when it happened.

Z97? That's old af. I'll admit that I kept using my Z97 box until it failed. Haven't even tried to see if I could get it up and running again. I figured that at 7 years old it was time to upgrade. That was last year. Almost a year and a half. I was sporting a 4790K. What do you have in yours?

 

[igor_kavinski]

What do you have in yours?

i7-5775C. Got it and Z97 mobo shipped from China (Ali Express). Ian Cuttress's i7-5775C revisit article inspired me to get it.

 

[Furious_Styles]

Z97? That's old af. I'll admit that I kept using my Z97 box until it failed. Haven't even tried to see if I could get it up and running again. I figured that at 7 years old it was time to upgrade. That was last year. Almost a year and a half. I was sporting a 4790K. What do you have in yours?

My friend is still using a 4790k/Z97 as his main gaming machine, now with a 3060 ti. He's due for an upgrade now but I'll be damned if that thing hasn't lasted a long time.

 

[bigboxes]

My friend is still using a 4790k/Z97 as his main gaming machine, now with a 3060 ti. He's due for an upgrade now but I'll be damned if that thing hasn't lasted a long time.

I'm on the same page. Platforms can last so long these days.