Ok, let me try - you are testing my knowledge, lol. Whilst I'm really no expert, I do like to try and help.
01) What I would do is install the motherboard support page driver first - "Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology Driver V19.5.0.1037 for Windows 10 64-bit, Windows 11 64-bit.(WHQL)". That is the one I still have installed, but I saw that MokiChU has made VMD drivers 19.5.0.1040 available. He also has his drivers in another forum and if you look here
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/drivers-intel-chipset-mei-sata-vmd-1xx-2xx-3xx-4xx-5xx-6xx-7xx.11373/ you will see that he explains the difference between these drivers since Z690 chipsets. I am not using raid, but the drivers should eliminate a Device Manager error. I recommend the official drivers for now, only because they work perfectly for me. I actually downloaded the latest ones earlier today, but I haven't tried them yet.
02.1) I have found that Armoury Crate does a good job of drivers. At least initially. You can then start to update them afterwards. So yes, leave it enabled in BIOS and it will install itself soon after installing Windows. Do an extra restart after it installs, even though it doesn't ask for that. I found that it helped it to function correctly. MokiChU's drivers should be more recent and up to date if you want the very latest ones, so personally, I would use Armoury Crate first. It's just easier.
03) Correct. The ME firmware and BIOS will still be in place, so just install the IME Windows drivers. You can always check your ME Firmware version in the Main page of your BIOS, to be sure that you still have the latest version.
04) I use the free version of Macrium Reflect and it does everything I need. I have set it to backup my OS every 3 days and keep the last 10 images. After that it deletes the oldest one automatically. I have Windows Pro and installed programs on the same drive. It is using 101GB currently and my Macrium images are about 40-50GB in size. My data and backups are then stored on other drives and I use FreeFileSynch to manage that. Another excellent piece of software to manage copies of directories (or entire drives) as you wish.
05) Yes. If your OS fails, you need a USB stick to boot from and browse to the backup image. Macrium will create that USB boot drive for you. Then you can use that to restore the latest OS image if you need to. Do a trial backup and restore so you know how to use it before you need to!
06) Yes, it's in the BIOS. I have it disabled because sometimes I boot into Linux. If it is turned on, you can only boot into Windows. Win 11 no longer requires it to be enabled, so I leave it off for full flexibility. If you are only going to use Windows, then turn on it, but make sure that the Macrium Boot USB drive will still work. Otherwise, just leave it off.
07) Bitlocker is included with Windows Pro versions for free. I find it to be very good and easy to use. I have only encrypted my data drives with it (so they can't be read if stolen). There are various guides on using it, but encrypt a drive with it when the drive is empty (or nearly empty). Otherwise it will take HOURS to encrypt a large drive. I do mean HOURS - like more than 24 hours! Use a password for the encryption (rather than keys stored on your TPM chip) and keep that very safe. The benefit is that if you need to move the drive to another PC you still just need the password. Much simpler for the future. It also gives you a decryption key for the drive when you encrypt it if you ever lose the password. Keep that very safe also (on another backed up drive). You can encrypt the OS drive too, but as I store nothing confidential there, I haven't bothered. Anyway, once a drive has been encrypted and unlocked, you just use it like normal and there is no noticeable effect on speed. You won't even know it's encrypted, apart from having to unlock it when you start the PC.
09) You can use MSI Afterburner to limit the maximum GPU power or temperature. One gets priority. You can also set up custom fan curves for the GPU as well. When I'm using Windows, I limit the power to 25%. When I'm playing games I use a different profile that keeps the GPU below 65C. My custom fan curve stops the fan turning on below 60C and I even limit the fan speed to 55% on my fan curve, unless it goes above 65C in which case the speed increases rapidly. I have other profiles which allow higher power and temperature, but I get at least 100fps in most games at the lower temperature and power settings. It keeps everything cool and I don't like hot components! It provides some graphs so if you have a second monitor, you can see exactly what's happing. Otherwise you can use the included Riva Statistics Server to give you an on screen display while playing the game. Again - lots of guides on YouTube.
Regarding "TMPIN2, TMPIN3, TMPIN5 are between 18/33/39C, but TMPIN6 is mostly down but oscillating every few seconds at 0/20/30/50/126C° is that normal? It seems crazy, spikes from 0 to 126C in the same second, goes back and forth, is that normal?"
Yes, I think it is detecting optional temperature sensing pins that are not connected to anything. Nothing to worry about. I get similar 'wrong' readings for several motherboard sensors in iCue as well.
For the PCH fan I have attached a picture below. Added a front mesh to capture dust, otherwise that dust gets deposited all over the motherboard and I clean it once a week. We have a pet dogs, so lots of dust here lol. It blows towards the PCH area (but you can't see that in the image) Actually it is two 8cm fans joined together in a 'block' that just rests below the GPU. HWInfo shows PCH temp for sure (not PHC, I think you have mis-typed it). I think your problem is that you are using HWMonitor - use HWInfo instead. If you get HWInfo, you can set up as many graphs as you want to monitor everything 'live'. It's very useful. Images of MSI Afterburner, HWInfo graphs and HWInfo information (some of it) attached as well...
One more comment on drives, I have attached another image of mine. I have 1) The OS 2) A games drive 3) My data 4) Data backup 5) OS backup images (I keep 10 of these) 6) is a copy of 5 and finally I have a temp drive which I use for VirtualBox images (like Linux that I can use within Windows). You'll notice that I have named my NVME drives so I know which slot they are in and what they are Gen3, Gen4 (G4) etc.
On top of those I have two more external encrypted drives - a 1TB NVME drive that I use to backup my most important documents daily and then a 8TB hard drive that contains a copy of everything. That is backed up once/week. The idea is that even if my PC is stolen, the important data is encrypted and I still have a backup in another location. Doing a backup onto the 8TB drive only takes 5 minutes each week because FreeFileSynch only copies any new files and deletes old ones.
Final comment - in my last post I said the driver install order isn't too important, but I think it's best to install the chipset drivers early in the process. Armoury Crate should take care of that anyway of course.
Z690 Hero, BIOS 3401, MEI 2406.5.5.0, ME Firmware 16.1.30.2361, 7000X Case, RM1000x PSU, i9 12900K, ASUS TUF OC 3090TI, 2 x 16GB Corsair RAM @ 5200MHz, Windows 11 Pro 23H2, Corsair H150i Elite AIO, 4x Corsair RGB fans, 3x M.2 NVME drives, 2x SATA SSDs, 2x SATA HDs.
