Question Z690 MBs - Is There A General Problem?

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Mantrid-Drone

Senior member
Mar 15, 2014
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The number of threads on various forums, retail and other web site reviews about Z690 MBs are starting to make me concerned. I had planned to commit to buying one for my latest build come July but I'm now getting cold feet.

The problems reported across all manufacturers seem worryingly similar: significant BIOS issues and problems with specific GPUs.

Is there some inherent design fault in the Z690? Are there any users here who've bought and are using Z690 MBs without any of these troubles?
 

Tech Junky

Diamond Member
Jan 27, 2022
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I thought that was fixed already and they did really well on responding for that issue.
They may have fixed it on the production line but, all of the boards in the wild still have the potential to fail if owners didn't swap them out. It's a significant issue to have potentially hiding in your PC of you're not keen on keeping up with this sort of thing.
 
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curryloti

Member
May 9, 2018
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I don't hear anything wrong with Asus motherboard. :)

Incredibly still unresolved with no urgency after many many months
 

siva43s

Junior Member
Sep 24, 2022
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Because they had no choice. It was an obvious manufacturing defect. Trust me if they could deny warranty claims they would, Asus is one of the worst.
Yes unless we claim the damage in 7 days, they will need us to convince them at our risk to claim the warranty. But according to their STC, they will not ask a reason if we claim the damage in the first one week.
 

Mantrid-Drone

Senior member
Mar 15, 2014
336
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So, as advised earlier in this thread I've patiently waited until the Z790 MBs to arrive before committing to anything for the the build I started last year.

I'm actually not going to know how much I can afford to spend on the MB, CPU and a NVME M2 until the end of March but I've begun looking at the Z790 MBs and, in particular, the equivalent Gigabyte Z790 UD DDR4 to the Z690 UD DDR4 I'd been considering.

All I can see is an extra £55/$67 cost for the X790 UD with the Z690 UD version now at about £20/$24 lower than it was at the start of this thread.

I'm still enthusiastic about pairing the MB with an i5-12600K and going without a GPU for the time being. But I'm wondering if waiting for the Z790 MBs only benefit was simply that the price of the existing Z690 series has gone down.
 

Mantrid-Drone

Senior member
Mar 15, 2014
336
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Just ordered a i5-13600K, GA D Z790 DDR4 and a 1TB Firecuda at the best prices I could find in the UK ATM.

Not sure the wait for the Z790s was worth it but as it wasn't an urgent need and the overall cost is practically the same as a Z690 set up would have been 6+ months ago I'm not complaining. That's mostly thanks to the Firecuda dropping by almost £40/$60.
 
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Mantrid-Drone

Senior member
Mar 15, 2014
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I've been looking at the RAM and, thanks to living like a hermit :) for most of last year I have more left of my savings put aside for this build project than I expected.

I'm probably getting a 1TB MX500 SSD and going all SSD, relegating the ITB HDD I was going to use to external backup. But I will have enough left over from that to up the RAM.

The DDR4 RAM I bought last year 16GB (2 x 8GB) CL17 Kingston Fury Beast 3600Mhz still seems good but doing some calculations it looks as though I could bump the RAM up to 64GB (4 x 16GB) with Kingston's Fury Renegade and get better speed than Fury Beast.

On paper the Fury Renegade beats the Fury Beast at 3600MHz because of its better latency. That is also cheaper than buying their 4000MHz+ support versions which don't include 64GB matched sets either.

The 32GB (2 x 16GB) 4000MHz Fury Renegade is rated at CL19 (9.5ns) and costs £50/$65 more than the Fury Renegade 3600 MHz 64GB (4 x 16GB) matched set: CL16 (8.8ns).

Whether that extra speed is going to be useful I can't even guess but with 64GB of RAM against more expensive and possibly slower 32GB it seems like a better way to spend the money.

Am I right or is there something I've overlooked?
 
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Mantrid-Drone

Senior member
Mar 15, 2014
336
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A monitor is what I found I had enough budget to add to my build even after buying extra RAM.

I went for a 31.5"/80cm Dell G3223D 'Gaming' direct from Dell (UK) at a pretty good price. Not the best for 'high-end' gaming, apparently, but still doing well enough for that type of use compared to other monitors at the same price point.

Early days and I've barely done more than a few tests myself but for other intended uses it would be an understement to say its spec is more than adequate.
 

BoomerD

No Lifer
Feb 26, 2006
62,843
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A monitor is what I found I had enough budget to add to my build even after buying extra RAM.

I went for a 31.5"/80cm Dell G3223D 'Gaming' direct from Dell (UK) at a pretty good price. Not the best for 'high-end' gaming, apparently, but still doing well enough for that type of use compared to other monitors at the same price point.

Early days and I've barely done more than a few tests myself but for other intended uses it would be an understement to say its spec is more than adequate.
Last year, I bought the Dell S3222DGM. I'm happy with it. Got it for ablut 40% off of retail.
 
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Jul 27, 2020
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Last year, I bought the Dell S3222DGM. I'm happy with it. Got it for ablut 40% off of retail.
Kinda offtopic and you can start a new thread and link to it here. Howz the PC building scene in the US military? Are there many gamers? Do soldiers buy hardened laptops with hefty GPUs to bide their time when they are posted in remote non-warzones? Is there a special group/forum where only the military personnel mingle on hardware/gaming related topics?
 

BoomerD

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Feb 26, 2006
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Kinda offtopic and you can start a new thread and link to it here. Howz the PC building scene in the US military? Are there many gamers? Do soldiers buy hardened laptops with hefty GPUs to bide their time when they are posted in remote non-warzones? Is there a special group/forum where only the military personnel mingle on hardware/gaming related topics?
Off topic? I was replying to Mantrid-Drone's comment.

A monitor is what I found I had enough budget to add to my build even after buying extra RAM.

I went for a 31.5"/80cm Dell G3223D 'Gaming' direct from Dell (UK) at a pretty good price. Not the best for 'high-end' gaming, apparently, but still doing well enough for that type of use compared to other monitors at the same price point.

Early days and I've barely done more than a few tests myself but for other intended uses it would be an understement to say its spec is more than adequate.

Not sure about your comment about PC building in the US Military. I've been out of uniform for almost 50 years.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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Off topic? I was replying to Mantrid-Drone's comment.



Not sure about your comment about PC building in the US Military. I've been out of uniform for almost 50 years.
Oh no. I meant, my question is off topic so I was suggesting you could create a new topic if you had information to share. But I didn't know you had been enjoying civilian life that long. 50 years ago, I guess people had Altairs? Who would be crazy about that? Not the general public, I'm sure.
 

BoomerD

No Lifer
Feb 26, 2006
62,843
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Oh no. I meant, my question is off topic so I was suggesting you could create a new topic if you had information to share. But I didn't know you had been enjoying civilian life that long. 50 years ago, I guess people had Altairs? Who would be crazy about that? Not the general public, I'm sure.

Beats the sh*t outta me...AFAIK, "Computers" still took up entire rooms...and were programmed via punch cards in 1973. :shrug: