Z690 or Other Board for i9 12900KS?

[Chevron]

Casey has 2 excellent golden builds.

However, the Gigabyte Z690 Aero G board needs an add-on Thunderbolt card - and the Asus Z690 ProArt Creator WiFi board is expensive and requires pricey DDR5 RAM.

Is there a reasonably priced board that would be good for the i9 12900KS processor with onboard Thunderbolt?

 

[etorix]

If you need Thunderbolt, a GC-Titan Ridge card on a non-Gigabyte motherboard is the best choice… while supplies of the GC-TR last.
Gigabyte has removed Titan Ridge support through BIOS updates for some motherboards.
Maple Ridge only works partially (possibly no hot plug), and no longer supports Thunderbolt 1/2 devices if updated beyond NVM 31. NVM updates come through BIOS updates… and are irreversible unless the manufacturer provides a custom BIOS specially for this purpose, as Asus did for the Z690 ProArt. Z790 board may have shipped from day one on NVM 36 or later.

Thunderbolt is now a very tricky issue for Hackintoshes.

 

[Chevron]

Thanks for the info.

If I were to go with a new build with the 12900ks, I would use Gigabyte Z690 Aero G on an older BIOS and use the Titan Ridge card. Seems like the easiest path.

That said, both of those latter products may be hard to source in Europe.

 

[etorix]

The CPU seems readily available in the Netherlands, the motherboard, less so (though one retail has one, "open box"); the issue is the Titan Ridge AIC. If you go for the Aero G, do check the corresponding build thread carefully for the "good" firmware and make sure that the BIOS is not regression-locked. Asus and AsRock now seems to be easier options than Gigabyte for Thunderbolt.

 

[Chevron]

Great thank you for the info