Looking at upgrade, advice is welcomed.

[guruabyss]

I've been looking at the ASUS ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi 6E LGA 1700 and one of the things that I've been looking for is a PCIe 5.0 X4 M.2 slot with a little future proofing. The mobo also has a PCIe 5.0 X16 slot which is great for when the next gen of GPUs come out with PCIe 5.0 support. My only issue as after researching it seems the PCIe 5.0 X16 gets downgraded to PCIe 5.0 X8 if you have a M.2 in the PCIe 5.0 X4 slot. That's a bummer... does anyone know if the

ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO
ROG MAXIMUS Z790 DARK HERO (Can't tell if this is a new board/ refresh of the Z790 HERO??)
ROG MAXIMUS Z790 EXTREME

suffers from the same downgrade when using the PCIe 5.0 X4 M.2 slot?

[bobvoeh]

@Nate152 , thanks for the suggestion.  Newegg today just put up the link to preorder the Dark Hero.  FYI, It says the release is 10/9/23.

Thanks, Bob.

[guruabyss]

After looking at the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero the only difference I can see (please correct me if I'm wrong) from the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero is faster OC RAM and WiFi 7. As much as there is a HUGE leap from WiFi-6E to 7 I always CAT my main box to my router so theres less of a chance of any packet loss so don't really care about the WiFi, this particular build will have 128GB (4X32GB) 5600 MT/s and I don't see a large capacity ram set hitting 8000 MT/s anytime soon so I have a lot of room to grow before a major replacement. 

With that being said $699 (DH) vs $569 (H) a $130 difference (18.59% increase in cost). If you're NOT going to take advantage of the RAM speed / WiFi 7 might as well invest that $130 into other parts or other part upgrades. Just my $0.02.

[guruabyss]

For those who have been following this thread look at this treat: 

Intel Core i9-13900KS Desktop Processor 24 cores (8 P-cores + 16 E-cores) 36MB Cache, up to 6.0 GHz / 

-37% $459.99

Typical price: $729.99

 

https://www.amazon.com/Intel-i9-13900KS-Desktop-Processor-P-cores/dp/B0BPXCRWB2/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=...

 

IDK if they messed up on the pricing because the 13900K is $551..... enjoy ^_^