Rebuilding the beast

I've been using HEDT for a very long time only because I needed the extra PCIe lanes. I had a 10G NIC, M;2 expander and USB 3.2 expansion cards. Some of the upper end Z790 boards have 5+ M.2 slots, 10G LAN on board and plenty of USB ports. So perhaps my HEDT days are numbered. Technology finally seems to have caught up with my needs.

I have 3 systems to rebuild through out 2023 and 2024. I'm looking for guidance and advice.

I'm thinking motherboard with 10G LAN and min 4 M2 slots running at Gen4. One on CPU and the others on chipset.
64GB DDR5 - looking for recommendations here.
Intel I9-13900K CPU.
2-3 PCIe4 2TB M.2 NVMe SSDs per PC and either an 8TB or 10TB ssinner on ecah PC (I have the spinners already).

GPUs are RTX 3080 Ti's.

Used for content creation/editing, gaming, website design, offlice applications, database and HTPC like Kodi and also using Potplayer. PC Will connect to a W2012 R2 server where content is stored. Hence 10G LAN as I move lots of data around daily.

I would value the thoughts and guidance of the experts here on which components to go for. I am not a fan of ASUS as they are grossly overpriced and underfeatured - though to be honest, in Australia everything is grossly over priced.

My budget is A$3000 per PC maximum though I'd like to keep it closer to A$2000 per PC if possible. It's alot of money hence why I'm seeking input before I splurge on the parts.

Typical price of upper end Z790 motherboards here is A$1500 - A$2300.

many thanks in advance.

One thing that needs to be mentioned ,If you are going DDR5 you need to use 7600mhz to even compete with DDR4 as in latency times.
Intel systems run better on higher memory but at the end of the day a net of 8% is to be gained going DDR5 over DDR4 currently

I'm running a Z790-D4-64GB of DDR4 3600mhz Oc'ed to 3866mhz i pretty much have the same results as anyone with DDR5 7200 lol so you do the math it really isn't worth it unless you get 7800 to 8000 speeds so i would wait till next gen Intel to make that jump

Also keep in mind we have a Benchmark section that shows real world results
My rig 13900k +4080 DDR4 TridentZ Royal 3600mhz to 3866mhz
Another member has a 13900k +4090 DDR5 6500+ not sure but my results aren't far from his and you can plainly see DDR4 is fine for now but future will be outdated.

Interesting topic. I'm in the same boat as the OP as I'm possibly going to update my Ryzen 5900x system (ie. mobo\CPU\RAM) in the 2nd half of 2023. Thinking of going to Intel this time because of the very good single core performance. Not a gamer so the Ryzen 7000x3d aren't an option.

One of the issues is the price of either a decent Z790 or Z670 is very high where I live (New Zealand).

Guru3d recently tested DDR5 ram at different speeds and some DDR4 in a range of applications and games.

Core i9 13900K DDR5 7200 MHz (+memory scaling) review - Introduction

Well worth a read for anyone who is interested.

Marcus Vinicus said:

Guru3d recently tested DDR5 ram at different speeds and some DDR4 in a range of applications and games.

Core i9 13900K DDR5 7200 MHz (+memory scaling) review - Introduction

Well worth a read for anyone who is interested.

I was debating changing boards and using 7800 DDR5 but not set on it yet lol

Thank you @solarstarshines for the heads up with the RAM.
I was feeling that the DDR5 scenario, looking at timings, was going to be disappointing.

The dilemma for me is finding a 10G LAN board. There are only 3 that I can find. Two are over A$2200, the third, an ASUS ROG Maximus Extreme is A$1750. I currently have an X299 MSI Creator board with onboard 10G and it cost me A$799.

I can buy a 10G adapter for A$200, but that means I lose half of my GPU bandwidth. I also have to watch out for PCIe slot conflicts.

The problem with all of the 10G boards that I've found is that they only support DDR5.

Most vendors have adopted 2.5G as the standard. It seems crazy that I buy a 10G board for A$799 and a 2.5G Board for double that. The new Sapphire Rapids HEDT offering from Intel is a total let down. And may cost me as much as twice what it will cost to convert to Z790.

This argument that "No PC will ever need more than 20 PCIe lanes" reminds me of the days they said "No PC will ever need more than 640K of RAM". Manufacturers got on board with RAM, but Intel and AMD seem beligerent in the area of PCIe lanes. We've gon from 1150 pins to 1700 pins and we still don't have more PCIe lanes

I'm currently running my 10940X at 4.4ghz (I live in a hot area), and my G.Skill 3600-16-16-16 RAM at 3733.

I can push this out until later this year and maybe prices will drop by 2% - 3% but I don't think there'll be any new motherboards with 10G as the demand just isn't there.

I think any hope of keeping this under A$3000 is gone :)

Wobitancrawfodi said:

Thank you @solarstarshines for the heads up with the RAM.
I was feeling that the DDR5 scenario, looking at timings, was going to be disappointing.

The dilemma for me is finding a 10G LAN board. There are only 3 that I can find. Two are over A$2200, the third, an ASUS ROG Maximus Extreme is A$1750. I currently have an X299 MSI Creator board with onboard 10G and it cost me A$799.

I can buy a 10G adapter for A$200, but that means I lose half of my GPU bandwidth. I also have to watch out for PCIe slot conflicts.

The problem with all of the 10G boards that I've found is that they only support DDR5.

Most vendors have adopted 2.5G as the standard. It seems crazy that I buy a 10G board for A$799 and a 2.5G Board for double that. The new Sapphire Rapids HEDT offering from Intel is a total let down. And may cost me as much as twice what it will cost to convert to Z790.

This argument that "No PC will ever need more than 20 PCIe lanes" reminds me of the days they said "No PC will ever need more than 640K of RAM". Manufacturers got on board with RAM, but Intel and AMD seem beligerent in the area of PCIe lanes. We've gon from 1150 pins to 1700 pins and we still don't have more PCIe lanes

I'm currently running my 10940X at 4.4ghz (I live in a hot area), and my G.Skill 3600-16-16-16 RAM at 3733.

I can push this out until later this year and maybe prices will drop by 2% - 3% but I don't think there'll be any new motherboards with 10G as the demand just isn't there.

I think any hope of keeping this under A$3000 is gone :)

Have you ever thought about reaching out to Tech Yes City ?
He's an Aussie as well maybe ask him where you can score cheaper parts https://www.youtube.com/@techyescity

Wobitancrawfodi said:

Never heard of him. Thanks for that I'll check it out.

The costs are high for sure, but what isn't? The biggest issue is lack of product options. ASRock for example, don't make a single Z790 board with 10G. Even their flagship board, grossly overpriced, is only 2.5G

EDIT ---
Has gigabyte lost the plot? Their flagship model, the Z790 Aorus Xtreme has only 2 channel audio. For A$1700 you get stereo audio only... Well, I thought that was silly enough, then I looked at the Aorus master. Thought I had a winner. A$900 with 10G LAN... Then I looked at the audio, to get 5.1 sound you have to run a longer cable for the center/subwoofer to the audio jack on the front of your case. Now that's just plain stupid. These people are insane. Talk about skimping on costs. What does it save them? $1 per board? Sheesh </endrant>

Sound quality can be manipulated so can internet speed but that's when the PCI-e Lanes will be saturated with the Sound cards Network cards graphics and NVME'S