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?

[guruabyss]

@Nate152 

So just to confirm if correct, if you had a:

1) Crucial T700 2TB Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD - Up to 12,400 MB/s
2) ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX™ 4090 OG OC Edition
3) ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO

I plug the Crucial T700 2TB Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD - Up to 12,400 MB/s into the ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot. By doing so "M.2_1 shares bandwidth with PCIEX16(G5)_2. When M.2_1 is enabled, PCIEX16(G5)_2 will be disabled." 

As you said above "PCIE 5.0 x8 has the same bandwidth as PCIE 4.0 x16 at 32GB/s." does that mean that the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX™ 4090 OG OC Edition WON'T BE underpowered / not to be able to reach its full potential with 1 & 2 hardware (from above) items installed in theROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO?

[Nate152]

The RTX 4090 doesn't support pcie 5.0.

If you put a pcie 5.0 ssd in the M.2_1 slot and set it to Gen 5, the RTX 4090 would run at pcie 4.0 x8.

According to Techpowerup, there is only a 2% performance loss running a 4090 at pcie 4.0 x8 vs pcie 4.0 x16.

[guruabyss]

"The RTX 4090 doesn't support pcie 5.0." I understand that, I just wanted to make sure there wasn't a huge loss in performance when equipping a Gen 5 M.2 in the PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot. Now that I know it's only a 2% GPU hit which isn't a bad trade off for Gen 5.0 M.2 speeds.

If you look at the Fastest PCIe 4.0 M.2 as of Oct, 2023 which is the "SAMSUNG 990 PRO SSD 4TB PCIe 4.0 M.2" @ 7450 / 6900 MB/s.
Now compare that with PCIe 5.0 M.2 Speeds, Crucial T700 2TB Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD @ 12,400 / 11,800MB/s.

So for a 2% loss in GPU performance you gain a 39.91% in write speed and 41.52% in read (using the Crucial T700). Not a bad trade at all.

[guruabyss]

This question is for Nate or anyone else that could help clarify:

If I install the following:

1) Intel Core i9-13900KS
2) Kingston Technology Kingston Fury Beast RGB Black 128GB (4x32GB) 5600MT/s
3) Crucial T700 2TB Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD - Up to 12,400 MB/s (Installed into the M.2_1 slot)
4) WD_BLACK 4TB SN850X (X2 - Raid 1, installed into the M.2_2 and M.2_3 slots) 
5) ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX™ 4090 OG OC Edition (because of the M.2_1 slot being used by a Gen 5 SSD, the PCIe 5.0 goes from X16 to X8).
6) ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero (I'm assuming the Dark Hero refresh wouldn't be worth it since I'm using a large mem kit).

Besides the 2% hit to the 4090 performance will take because of the M.2_1 slot, is there any other downside to the hardware combo above where I'll run into issues?

[Silent_Scone]

Hi,

You should be fine. Regarding the T700 and 4090 @ 8x, I'm running a similar configuration on the Z790 Apex. The performance loss marginal, within 1-2%.

[Nate152]

Although you can use pretty much any Z690/Z790 motherboard with a 14th Gen processor, the ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero (and a few others) was designed for Intel 14th Gen processors.

These motherboards should have better memory clocking ability. If you're going with ultra high speed ddr5 memory, the ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero is the better choice.

[guruabyss]

Thank you @JohnAb and @Nate152 for your feedback! Now that intel did their apple like-ish event, when it comes to intel's meteor lake 14th gen chips are they still LGA 1700? Also will ASUS be making new ROG / STRIX / whatever motherboard before the launch of the  meteor lake chips in Dec?

[guruabyss]

nvm, I believe I answered my own question. These would be the lineup for the 14th gen CPUs: https://wccftech.com/asus-rog-maximus-z790-dark-hero-strix-tuf-offerings-14th-gen-intel-cpu-support-...

[bobvoeh]

@Nate152   Any idea when the z790 Dark Hero will be released for sale?

[Nate152]

I don't have an exact release date.

The 14th Gen cpu's should be available around the 17th of this month so possibly around this date.

Keep checking, you might come across a store where you can preorder.