I was able to snag a “used” z790 Asus Strix gaming E for $220. The only thing missing was the box and the manual. Not a scratch on the motherboard and works fine. Worth a shot if you have Amazon near you to look for used stuff

I just finished a build and used an MSI Z790-P Pro wireless. All works good, was easy to setup and stable during all stress testing. Its only a few day old system but so far so good.

I’m loving the Gigabyte Aorus Elite X WiFi 7. Has an 8 layer PCB ( vs 6 on tomahawk) so might be better for DDR5 overclocking. Briefly had a ROG Apex Encore and the Elite X actually feels like a more premium board (at less than half the price).

I wish I had an answer for you. I tend to cheap out on motherboards, I bought the B760 Gigabyte Aorus Elite Ax DDR5 (I know I know, but I had just bought a 4090 and was feeling the pinch.)

And its really been not bad. There’s 3 m.2 slots which is not bad, 4 sata ports which is better than none I suppose. Memory overclocking works well. My 5600 cl36 kit is running at 6400 cl30 stable, which is a way bigger overclock than I was ever able to get stable on ddr4. I’m undervolting too, luckily my MB offered a feature to bypass the undervolt protection on b760 boards.

Doesn’t seem like there’s much performance penalty either. On cinebench 2024 my single thread score is actually slightly above expected ( 132 vs 131) and my multicore is also slightly above expected (2093 vs 2021) but it was a bit lower before the undervolt.

So really the only thing I can’t do is overclock the core. Oh well, 5.5ghz all pcore is good enough I say! This board I think was $225 cad or ~$160 US. So overall I’d say I’m satisfied. But next time I might go for a Z board, we’ll see.

Anyway sorry for the rant, I’m not saying buy a b760 board, just saying sometimes cheap boards aren’t as bad as they might appear, even if they are from a company that has some… image problems.

So I’d say, buy for the features you want. I mean if you want something that looks fancy looking there’s nothing wrong with that. But no point buying something just because its expensive. Oh, and if you want to get some of the fastest ddr5 around, it might best to get a board with 2 slots, instead of 4.

If you’re not planning on overclocking ram or using high speed (6600+) then honestly you can just buy any board you like. As long as it has features you want.

MSI Z790-A WiFi is what I chose

MSI Tomahawk is pretty good. $479 at pccasegear atm

I picked up the Asus Rog Z690 hero for my I7-14700k
Mainly because it was on sale and a lot cheaper than the Z790 counterpart.

And i’m running with G.Skill Ripjaws S5 6400mhz CL32 32gb kit

gigabyte X boards won the price/perf this gen. runs cooler than similar priced asus boards and eith faster ram too.

Check out the MSI PRO Z790-A MAX WIFI.
It’s a refresh of PRO Z790-A WIFI prepared for 14th gen launch. The new board has WiFi7 and it seems that’s the only difference.
I couldn’t find any reviews on the MAX version but I’m pretty sure both of these boards have identical VRM (16 MPS MP87670 (80A) for VCore with a MPS MP2960R PWM controller).
The only issue this board may have is with I225-V ethernet controller. But there’s a workaround:
https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/10fscft/intelr\_ethernet\_controller\_3\_i225v\_only\_reaching/

I just bought an msg edge WiFi ddr5 for 400 bucks at Best Buy and I have an i7 13700k and a 2 tb Corsair ssd and have absolutely no issues with it and the expandability is excellent

This confuses me as well. I can find articles explaining the general differences between MB. But then you see a Z790 board that is twice the cost as another one and I can’t figure out the small differences that affect the price.

MSI Z790-P WiFi (DDR5). I have that board with my 14700K. It’s a beast and it has a stable bios.

I’ve just picked up a 14700k as well and have purchased the MSI MAG Z790 Tomahawk WiFi.

I plan on putting the system together this week so will report back.

I’m not expecting any issues though.

It seemed to have a pretty solid position in terms of price and features.

I have the Z790 PG Sonic