I updated my spreadsheet with power info for the boards: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QCI_q6rdyD_8ZB1isCHt7J1t4n9qsiIj6k1kNPaabu0/

A few points:

• you get what you pay for pretty much

• Intel 11th gen was horrible for power consumption on multicore at high frequencies would throttle with a basic 11400f with a cheap board (i.e. one without VRM cooling). This is no longer the case for the non-k i5s, nor of course i3s. So you can get away with a cheaper board for anything up to about i5-12600, as the (non-K) i5s no longer use more than about 80W even with PL unlocked.

• the cheap B660 boards are typically electrically identical to H610 boards from the same manufacturer. You will typically get more features from a B660 but that's not always the case - for example the Asus Prime B660M-K has worse features than the H610M-A.

• not all boards support M.2 wifi, but you can buy the cards separately for those boards that do. AX200/AX201 is the previous gen Wifi6, AX210/AX211 is the current gen Wifi 6E, and AX411 is the latest gen (dual connect). Cards from Asrock and Gigabyte branded 'AC' are supplied with the super-slow and obsolete trash 3168 Intel card which is basically a lower tier card from 2013 and should be directly placed in the garbage. In most cases you'll get an AX201 card, which is technically obsolete for the AX211, but it's good enough if you didn't pay more than $20.

• the 12900K is an energy-hungry monster which delivers little over the cheaper and much more efficient 12700K and uses an extra 100W. In testing by TPU a board about three levels up the hierarchy (2x6 60A SPS, as found on the MSI Mortar & Tomahawak B660) could not cope with the heat put out by this beast: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/msi-mag-b660m-mortar-wifi-ddr4/15.html This does not mean that the Mortar is a bad board, just that it's absurd to overbuild a board intended for 12400Fs by making it cope with a 12900K at full load.

• The 12600K isn't really worth overclocking, but it's 10 cores, and uses a lot more power than the other i5s, so you'll want plenty of VRMs and full heatsinks on your board. The MSI Pro B660M-A uses separate mosfets, so another rank below the Mortar, but it has 2x6 stages. Though you'll probably find it bundled with a wifi card; if you don't need that card it's not a great buy. The MSI Pro Z690-P is actually worse than the B660m Mortar (the Pro Z690-A is a much better card), so a pretty bad way to spend $200.

• The Asrock boards are cheaper than others because they generally cheap out on power. That might be ok, but for example an Asrock H670 with 7 main power phases (lmost certainly 50A SiC654) is absolutely not a better board than say an Asus B660 Tuf Gaming Plus. The Asrock H670M Pro RS serves no purpose whatsoever other than marketing, because H670 has no reason to exist other than to serve users who need the full 8 DMI lanes of the Z690 but don't need the other features of that chipset, whereas the H670M Pro RS does nothing you couldn't do with a B660 (the Tuf Gaming Plus actually has better connectivity).

• IGP users wanting a cheap board will need to make sure their board has enough outputs (HDMI and Displayport) for their needs

• Very cheap boards tend to lack aRGB functionality, if that's important to you. You may also get only 1 chassis fan header and 1 CPU fan header, though the chassis header will support 4 fans.

• Very cheap boards typically have 0 or 1 M.2 NVME. You'll probably want 1 M.2 slot; if you lack a second slot then you can always add a SATA SSD if you need storage later; if you think you'll want more storage then consider that buying. H610 boards will be limited to PCIE 3.0 (which is totally fine for cheap NVMEs) for the first NVME, the second will be non-existent, or at x2, which is ok but not great. Most B660 boards will give you two PCIE 4.0x4 NVME slots.

• USB-A ports range from 4 up to about 12, including at least 2 USB 3.2 5 or 10 Gbps ports. You'll also get 1 or more USB 3.2 headers, which will support at least 2 case USB 3.2 ports. If your case is old or something and doesn't support USB 3.2, or 2 motherboard USB 3.2 ports isn't enough then it's definitely worth paying attention to that.

• 100% of boards support PCIE 4.0 x16 GPUs.

• H610 is probably fine for most budget users in that you get 3200 MHz speed by default with Alder Lake so the need for memory overclocking is less. However the general lack of ports, and the fact most boards have only 1 M.2 slot mean it's probably worth paying $10 more or whatever for a B660 board, even though that board typically does not have better power/etc.

I found out that the motherboard I was gonna buy (Gigabyte b650 aorus elite ax v2) doesn’t support ddr4 ram, whats a good motherboard that supports ddr4 ram, ryzen 5 9600x, and 9070 xt graphics card? Thanks

Hey guys, I'm upgrading my pc, I already bought a rx 9060xt 16gb and also wanna change my CPU and motherboard (I own a i5 9400f now and mostly play cs2 and other fps games), with this big bump on the RAM prices, I was thinking to get the best possible ddr4 CPU compatible so it could last long and to reuse my ram (I have 16gb 2666mhz), the 2 best option I have seen are the i5 14600k and the Ryzen 7 5800x3d-5700x3d, but I can't find this Ryzens anywhere on the market.

What are your recommendations, are there any other options worth checking out?