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Z690 Chipset Motherboards and Alder Lake CPU

For those that are curious, here is a link to various Alder Lake reviews:
videocardz.com

Intel 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake-S" Review Roundup | VideoCardz.com

Featured, INTEL Core 12000, News, Review Roundup Intel launches 12th Gen Core CPUs The embargo on independent reviews of the Alder Lake-S desktop series has officially lifted. Intel Alder Lake-S Reviews
videocardz.com videocardz.com
 
The Rundown:
  • Alder Lake and Z690 platform are a technological leap forward.
  • But Alder Lake performance is being compared to AMD's nearly one-year-old Ryzen 5000 series.
  • Power consumption under load is nearly twice as high as Ryzen 5000-series, and higher than Rocket Lake.
  • There are still some kinks in the Windows 11 scheduler that need to be worked out.
  • First generation DDR5 memory is expensive, hard to find, and performs worse than lower-clocked DDR4.
  • Z690 motherboards are expensive.
  • Discrete GPUs are still in scalper hell. Worthy GPUs such as AMD RX 6800XT and Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti are about 66% of the price of entry-level 14" MacBook Pro.
The Conclusion (subjective, of course):
  • Better to wait for Raptor Lake next year.
  • Let the surrounding technologies mature a bit.
The Scenario:
  • Intel i7-12700K --> $449
  • Z690 Creator-Level Board with Dual Thunderbolt 4 --> $599
  • LGA 1700 Compatible AIO Cooler --> ~$130
  • Worthy Discrete GPU (AMD RX 6800 or Nvidia RTX 3070) --> ~$850
  • 750W Power Supply --> $100
  • 27" High-Quality 4K Retina Display --> $500
  • 32GB DDR5 5200 RAM --> ~$300
  • Decent case --> ~$150
Subtotal: $3078
 
Last edited:
CaseySJ said:
I’m also leaning towards a mini-ITX system. This is a form factor I’ve never worked with before. Not concerned about thermals because well-ventilated “meshilicious” cases are abundant, and there will be plenty of CPU cooling solutions.

Having recently ordered my first Apple Silicon Mac (delivery delayed to tomorrow).
Click to expand...

Yes, I avoided mini-ITX for a long time but my last two builds use the form-factor. My caveat would be go for a standard "tower" style ITX case, not those rediculously cramped designer or HTPC examples. That way cooling is pretty easy. Not sure what heat the Z690 will radiate with what size cooler, but if it's no more than 160mm in height (air cooling) should be fine. My temps are the lowest I've seen with careful air-flow consideration. Millions of fans not required.

I'll be interested to hear what you make of Apple Silicon when it arrives. I bought back my M1 (from a friend who hated it) because though I enjoy my hack, M1 is as fast and makes no fuss never getting more than slightly warm to touch.
 
UtterDisbelief 2020
Z390 M GAMING |  i5 9600K |  Radeon Other
UtterDisbelief CL
Z370M-DS3H |  i3 8350K |  Radeon Other
UtterDisbelief KL
GA-Z270-Gaming K3 |  i3 7320 |  GeForce GTX 1050 OC
UtterDisbelief said:
...
I'll be interested to hear what you make of Apple Silicon when it arrives. I bought back my M1 (from a friend who hated it) because though I enjoy my hack, M1 is as fast and makes no fuss never getting more than slightly warm to touch.
Click to expand...
It arrived yesterday! Some early photos and impressions are posted in the thread below. To keep this thread focused on Z690, I'll confine my thoughts on new MacBook Pros to that thread.
www.tonymacx86.com

October 18th 2021 Apple Event: M1 Pro/Max MacBook Pros

a pair of 16GB DDR5 5200 MT/s modules are US$370. Memory modules in 14" and 16" MacBook Pros are presumed to be DDR5 6400 MT/s. Makes Apple's M1 Pro/Max ram upgrade prices look fairly reasonable.
www.tonymacx86.com www.tonymacx86.com
 
@CaseySJ is z690 hackintosh doable with the E cores present? thoughts on it?
 
dehjomz said:
But the 12700K seems very impressive according to reviews. Very close to the 12900K in gaming performance, especially when overclocked to 5.0 Ghz. MSRP is only $420 which is much cheaper than the 5900x. The 12700K topples the 5900x in gaming, and beats it in many (but not all) multi-threaded tasks. The 12700K's single threaded performance is thru the roof. But the downside is that it's a power consumption beast, consuming even more power than power-hungry Rocket Lake when overclocked. But I should caveat this that the 12700K's power consumption is much less when not overclocked...
Click to expand...
I think this paragraph sums it all: Intel has thrown it all, and let thermals on the loose, to gain the crown of single-threaded performance and please gamers.
Pending reviews and performance reports from actual use, Intel might have succeeded in that. But, at an official thermal power of 241W for the 12900K, it would need to post 150-200% of the performance of Ryzen (limited to a maximum of 140 W by the AM4 socket) to just match Ryzen if one considers a balance of performance and power rather than absolute performance at all costs. On this criteria, it seems to me that AMD is still the x86 winner—with last year Zen3 architecture.
And, of course, at a recorded maximum 140W (CPU+GPU) the M1 Max flies far above that (again, considering both performance and power): Any x86 CPU with a matching GPU would be a 400-500 W affair. Intel may look "king", but it seems to me that Apple made a brilliant winning move.

I'll watch this thread with interest, but for me Alder Lake is a "pass".
 
More about the E-cores that macOS's scheduler will not support (and likely must be disabled in the BIOS to avoid that they are used during normal operation).
  • Intel says manufacturers can offer the option to disable the E-cores in the BIOS.
  • "On my first system, the MSI motherboard, I could easily disable the E-cores."
  • E-Core Performance: Intel claimed that the performance was around the level of its Skylake generation of processors
  • In a lot of tests the E-core is half the performance of the P-core
  • E-cores do not support HyperThreading
  • Unless an application is RAM-limited, the eight E-cores bring a lot. Regardless of whether Adobe Premiere, Blender, Cinebench, Unreal Engine 4 or y-Cruncher: The increase is a remarkable 40 percent. Proportionally parallelized apps such as 7-Zip (+12%) or AV1-Encoding (+18%) also benefit significantly, the same applies to some calculations in Excel, as these use all 24 threads of the Core i9-12900K.
 
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