With the upcoming new Intel CPU generation release there's now some decent deals going on for the comet lake CPU's.

It's been just under a decade since I last updated my CPU, motherboard and RAM, so I'm curious on anyone's personal experience with the current range of z490 chipset motherboards.

I mostly do classic gaming with the occasional newer title and thus am most interested in stability and compatibility with my hardware. I don't plan on overclocking and will likely use a i7-10700K if I do end up upgrading this cycle. I don't like upgrading often, so high quality is a must!

You say you want stability but then you also mention you want to buy the i7-10700K which is an unlocked cpu. This does not make alot of sense because you could otherwise buy a better cpu which is locked and not have the stability risk associated with having overclocking features.

Also the 11th generation Rocket Lake CPUs are available, why would you buy a Comet Lake 10700K when you could get an 11700K which supports ddr4-3200? The 10700K includes onboard HD 630 graphics with UHD Graphics 630 with 24 execution units and 192 shaders, while the 11700K has the HD 750 with 32 execution units and 256 shaders and is clocked 300MHz higher, this is a big improvement.

Look at these improvements listed on wikipedia

Rocket Lake has:
CPU
Intel Cypress Cove CPU cores
Estimated 10–19%+ increase in IPC (instructions-per-clock),[3] early previews suggest 16.2–22% for floating point loads, and 5.8–18.5% increase for integer loads.
DL Boost (low-precision arithmetic for Deep Learning) and AVX-512 instructions

GPU
Intel Xe-LP ("Gen12") GPU with up to 32 execution units
Fixed-function hardware decoding for HEVC 12-bit, 4:2:2/4:4:4; VP9 12-bit 4:4:4 and AV1 8K 10-bit 4:2:0
DisplayPort 1.4a with Display Stream Compression; HDMI 2.0b
Support for a single 8K 12-bit HDR display or two 4K 10-bit HDR displays
Hardware accelerated Dolby Vision
Sampler Feedback support
Variable Rate Shading
Integer- and nearest neighbor image scaling

I/O
Up to 20 CPU lanes of PCI Express 4.0
DDR4-3200 memory support
USB 3.2 Gen 2×2
Optional USB4 / Thunderbolt 4 when paired with Intel JHL8540 Thunderbolt 4 Controller
DMI 3.0 x8 link with Intel 500 Series Chipsets



But honestly, if you upgrade once a decade and stability is your primary concern, you should be using Xeon E-2200 or W-1200 series with ECC memory. Another great option is the W-2200 series.

No, only the top model (Core i9-11900K I think it was called) supports DDR4-3200.

Thanks for the replies! With my current build (i5-3750K) I believe, rightly or wrongly, that I got much more time without needing to upgrade simply because it is a higher quality model from that time. Not to mention, that since the i7-10700K is designed to be pushed to higher clock speeds it should be rock solid at it's intended base clock speed for many years to come. While I can't quite get the Rocket Lake CPU's here locally yet, I was waiting to see what the reviews were going to show for the new Intel offering. The early review I've seen so far doesn't look too promising, though granted, new chipset drivers may change that.

Additionally, the around $200 price drop as newegg clears out the old i7-10700K inventory is very enticing and not likely to last long! I do use a 2060 Super for my GPU, so the new UHD 750 isn't overly exciting. I have to admit I never considered the Xeon lineup. Mainly because of price. May be worth looking at though! Yes, it may be worth waiting. Especially as it looks like Intel will finally go with the 7nm CPU's in 2 years. I'm only now hitting some noticeable CPU bottlenecks in the games I play (Horizon Zero Dawn), but I do like that current $200+ price drop so I'm considering it...

compatibility you say?

every vendor has its own list of preferred components stated on their product information page. I belief ROG STRIX or maybe ASUS in general makes compatibility a selling point of their range of products but i do understand what you are aiming at since that was exactly the reason why i choose a high end B460 board to go with the i5 10600k i own. A specialized gamer board comes equipped with all of the requirements for longevity (as do corporate models ofc). Personally i choose asus since the previous equipment i used from them also ran through its course of life without any trouble. ( 11 years service on a 120 euro motherboard ) and i don't have any trouble with the lack of overclock or the limited bandwith memory speed of 2666 mhz which i don't even use. The memory used is xmp capable but with the system feeling a lot more stable with the memory running in automatic stance i forfeited the whole need for speed attitude found everywhere on the enthousiast pc user side of life. Not to mention the fact that all the games i play, even the modern ones really don't benefit at all from higher memory speeds to my knowledge.
I do have the cpu watercooled with a 280 ( 2x140 ) mm closed waterloop and of course use both M.2 disc slots which i would certainly recommend using for at least the windows drive.

So while i don't have any experience with the z line i do have ample experience with their b460 line of products and, certainly compared to zen+ experience i had the b460 shines bright like a star. Bringing the most demanding games to a good end without the numerous bugs and failures i witnessed with the amd combination i used for about a year. Also i tried different cards in the machine, from a gtx 770 a 1060 3 gb to a 2060super i'm using atm without any trouble what so ever. The gtx 770 must be the oldiest piece of hardware i used.

Recommendation from me would be either a asus prime board or a rog strix gaming board to go with the 10700k

Thank you. Yes, this is the kind of experience I've seen many times in the past and am attempting to avoid!

I currently have an older Asus motherboard and have had no complaints. Back when I worked in a computer shop in the early 2000s it was also one of our 2 brands of choice for motherboards (The other being Gigabyte) so good to hear that they're still keeping up the quality!

I personally have had some so so experiences with Asus' cheaper motherboards but the same can be said for the other brands too.

One reason to go with something that supports PCIe 4.0 is if you will change the graphics card later and that future GPU kind of needs PCIe 4.

XMP, while wildly employed and supported by motherboard manufacturers is not officially sanctioned by Intel, as it is technically a form of overclocking. And it's not without its hitches, though that has gotten significantly better over the last few generations.

Doing some research now on Mult-Core Enchancement (MCE) and how it causes instability or at least extra power draw thus higher thermals. It's pretty bad that ASUS seems to be the only manufacturer to stay within Intel's recommended limits for the default settings.

I don't mind being giving the option to overclock, but it shouldn't be the default! The fact that one has to manually change the tau and sometimes voltage to be using Intel's recommended limit is kinda sketchy. Yes I have to admit I would likely upgrade the video card a few years down the road, especially as HDMI 2.1 is taking off. (This build will continue to be a HTPC connected to the TV) Alas, none of the current motherboards officially support PCIe 4.0 with the z490 chipset so who knows how that'll turn out down the road. I'd likely pair this with some 3200 CAS 16 RAM so I'd probably at least try XMP out. But as you said, I'd expect it adds some unstability so I wouldn't continue to use it if that proves to be the case.

Intel's 500 motherboards do support PCIe 4.0 and so do the 11,000 series of processors that will be released on the 30th of March.

well xmp really seemed utterly useless during several playthroughs of the latest of the latest with fps set to 60, and graphics as high as possible. I'm also not sure about how pci 4.0 really should be the taken into account for when building a newer system if your only occupations old games gaming and dabbling around in windows. Current pci 3.0 systems are already lightning fast and certainly when coupled with a newer m.2 drive for windows and games.

the only real increasing factor i've noticed these past months is the extra usage of vram ( and certainly on 2k and ((4k i presume )) making the 2060super still pretty oke with 6 gb's of vram but is up for improvement. i check on a regular base with afterburner on screen display what the loads are on ram and vram etc and so i noticed how the vram usage really is climbing.
also do not forget that current day amd ryzen 4 complete with dedicated amd card pci 4.0 so the benefit is at its highest just barely outrun the intel nvidia systems pci 3.0 with gaming

it seems more then oke to presume any pci. 3.0 system build in the aftermath of this generation of computing will still enjoy a fairly long lifecycle

but yea, since the recommendation at this moment is to at least wait until the chips are again ample in stock so prices can come down to their regular msrp stuff and you are saving for a new p.c. you are of course smartest to wait until the new intel 7 nm desktop stuff hits the fan

XMP issues are overblown, esp. in this day and age.

Since most modern GPUs do not yet saturate the PCIe 3 16x bandwidth (even PCIe 4.0 capable ones), I highly doubt that will be an issue in the near to mid-term future. PCIe revisions are and have always been backwards compatible, save for UEFI glitches.

And SLI is now officially dead, as it were, at least as far as gaming is concerned. Marketing and distant future-proofing aside, "our list of allies grows thin" :P.

That's true - it works most of the time. There still are some corner cases with compatibility problems between some motherboard vendors and RAM sticks, but the odds of that are pretty slim if you go with the usually known brands these days.

Much thanks for everyone's comments. I did decide to push the button on getting an 17-10700K and an Asus Strix Z490-E. I've always liked buying the upper end of the previous generation as most of the bugs have been worked out and there is often a considerable discount involved! (EDIT: I was able to find my products at the MSRP or cheaper [In most instances]. Though I did have to go with a few secondary choices)

This is what I'm counting on. Though I admit, after I clicked "buy now", I did have a long moment of buyers remorse for missing out on PCIe 4.0. Realistically though, if it becomes a must have for the next generation of GPU's, that'll be a good excuse to upgrade earlier and jump into the 7nm (or smaller!) processors.