The Intel Core i9 13900K (or the higher clocked Core i9 13900KS) is a 24-core, 32-thread number-crunching behemoth that excels at both gaming and productivity, offering strong performance in synthetic benchmarks and excellent single-core performance that dominates games in a neat package. It has been replaced bythe slightly faster Intel Core i9 14900Kin the past few months, which also touts AI overclocking profiles and Intel’s new APO scheduling enhancements as reasons to be the current de facto flagship.
Intel Core i9 14900KF 24-Core, 32-Thread CPU
How to Pick the Right Motherboard for the Intel Core i9 13900K CPU
The Core i9 13900K is Intel’s most powerful consumer-grade CPU from its 13th-generation Raptor Lake-based lineup. As a result, it also commands a significant power draw and thermal requirements to operate at its maximum potential. Users looking for a motherboard to pair with one of Intel’s fastest CPUs in 2024 need to consider the following whenselecting a motherboardfor Intel’s highest core count consumer-grade CPU to date:
Power Delivery: The Intel Core i9 13900K can require anywhere between 125W to 253W for gaming and productivity-related work with some users even pushing above its turbo power limits. This requires a motherboard with the ability to deliver stable current to avoid throttling the 13900K, especially at higher clocks where it would ideally like to deliver performance.
Future-Proofing: With Intel’s 13900K CPU catering almost exclusively to enthusiast gamers and power users alike, most of its target consumer base will also look for hardware that is relevant well beyond the next year or two when making a purchase decision. Therefore, priority would be given to Intel’s newer Z790 chipset and refreshed 14th-generation Intel motherboards, PCI-E 5.0 support (GPU and NVMe), and support for newer USB-based Thunderbolt 4 ports out of the box.
I/O and Connectivity Options: Users requiring the ability to plug in a variety of hardware into their gaming PC or workbench built around the Intel Core i9 13900K CPU would prefer having a slew of networking options (high-speed ethernet, Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 and BT 5.3 or higher) as well as plenty of USB ports in tow. Some users would also prefer having Thunderbolt connectivity via their motherboards as well as multiple USB-C ports, something that more premium motherboard options have aplenty.
Value For Money: Users might be understandably confused about what constitutes the best that they can buy in terms of price-to-performance ratios versus the best currently available. This means that while performance and budget-centric options do exist, the best value for money often exists somewhere in the middle for prospective buyers.
MSI MEG Z790 ACE MAX Gaming Motherboard
An Ace In The Hole
The MSI MEG Z790 ACE MAX supports DDR5 memory, PCIe 5.0 devices, Wi-Fi 7 connectivity, and dual 2.5 GbE LAN ports for reliable and fast network connectivity as well as faster transmission speeds.The motherboard uses an Intel LGA1700 socket compatible with Intel Core 12th, 13th, and 14th Generation processors. It also supports entry-level processors like Celeron and Intel Pentium Gold.The high-end motherboard features a 24+1+2 phase VRM that delivers robust and stable power to the processor even when overclocking heavily, making it ideal for professional gaming and other demanding applications.
The MSI MEG Z790 ACE MAX Gaming Motherboard is the highest-end motherboard MSI currently offers,apart from their overclocking-centric GODLIKE lineup. It supports Intel’s 14th generation CPUs, excellent DDR5 memory overclocking potential, and a premium design including an integrated I/O plate at the rear.
It offers PCI-E 5.0 support for both future GPUs as well as a singular M2 SSD slot even as it packs in an impressive five storage slots in total, with the latter four offering PCI-E 4.0 speeds. In addition to this, MSI offers dual ethernet ports and support for Wi-Fi 7 as well as Bluetooth 5.4, making it a cutting-edge product for networking needs.
The MSI MEG ACE MAX’s Z790 trim also comes with a robust 24+1+2 power design in addition to plenty of cooling for its VRMs. With a tool-less M2 drive install procedure on the primary NVMe M2 slot, the MSI MEG Z790 ACE MAX Gaming Motherboard is a perfect, next-generation partner for Intel’s last-generation Core i9 CPU that continues to hold its own even against most of its newer CPU releases.
For users looking for a similar motherboard but with a better price, the13th generation supporting MSI Z790 MEG ACE (Sans the MAX moniker)is still a great and viable option. It trades at a sizable $170 discount versus its newer replacement even as it shaves off some of the latest connectivity and 14th-generation support out of the box. The latter should not concern users intending to upgrade to or look for a new Intel Core i9 13900K CPU (which is supported out of the box) in any case.
The Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master benefits from multiple price cuts that see its price pushed down below $400, making it a viable consideration versus its competition which still competes for the most part at a sub-$500 price tag. It offers excellent VRMs, and PCI-E support for both the GPU and M2 SSDs, depending on which users intend to use (both share PCI-E 5.0 bandwidth currently).
With an aggressive gaming-themed design that also offers users control over the onboard LED lighting in addition to decent RAM overclocking potential as well as 10 Gigabit Ethernet as well as Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 under the hood, the Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master offers significant connectivity to an already-burgeoning I/O arsenal at a price tag that intrudes on the mid to high-end Z790 motherboard market with its price cuts understating its top-tier hardware offerings for an all-round motherboard for gamers and professionals alike.
For users needing the latest iteration of the Z790 Aorus Master, Gigabyte alsooffers a 14th-generation-ready Z790 Aorus Master X alternativethat sits at a sub-$450 price tag while offering Wi-Fi 7 support out of the box in addition to a slight redesign to the aesthetic that otherwise occupies the same size as the Z790 Aorus Master, making it an iterative improvement at best. The Z790 Aorus Master is currently only marginally cheaper than its successor on Amazon, which could make the latter an excellent choice for users looking for a motherboard with better underlying tech in 2024.
ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Formula
Power In A Beautiful Package
The ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Formula is the successor to its well-received Z690-based predecessor, offering a cleaner aesthetic and plenty of upgrades under the hood.With Wi-Fi 7 under the hood in addition to the ability to overclock RAM better than previous models thanks to DIMM Flex as well as a 5Gb Ethernet port in play, the ROG Maximus hits a nice balance between form and function thanks to its excellent OLED display that can be customized using the bundled armory crate software.
The ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Formula is a contender for both the most premium motherboard for the Intel Core i9 13900K and one of the best overclocking ones in the business that meets the needs of all but the most ardent overclockers. It offers excellent power delivery, high memory overclocking, and ASUS’s AI overclocking built into the motherboard, which happens to be one of the most user-friendly solutions for overclockers with different levels of experience.
It integrates a differential-sensing circuit to detect, account for, and rectify differences between reported and actual voltages provided to the CPU. This allows for better and more fine-tuned reporting, and by proxy, control of the overclocking process. It matches this by offering a dedicated passive and liquid-cooled solution for its VRMs, something ASUS brands as ‘HybridChill’.
With a dedicated 2-inch OLED display on the motherboard that hosts information about the entire boot process and can be configured or customized to deliver personal messages or stats depending on user needs, the Z790 Maximus Formula does have its wow factor covered with ease compared to the competition. It also delivers on the aesthetic end with ease without compromising on connectivity or functionality.
With USB 4 (Thunderbolt) support in play along with Wi-Fi 7 and support for as much as 5 Gigabit Ethernet speeds in play in addition to as many as 5 M2 SSD slots, the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Formula is a complete package, marrying the highest-end current gen tech with that of the future, making it a great future-proof motherboard that also supports Intel’s latest 14th generation CPUs from the get-go, making it a premium, but excellent choice for users looking for the best in the business.
ASUS has somewhat dialed down prices on the Maximus refresh motherboards, but the Z790 (as the ultimate offering) currently only sees a minor $25 discount. For users looking for a similar motherboard from ASUS but in black, the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero is also an excellent contender. Itcurrently trades at a larger $50 discount over MSRPversus its white sibling.
It does, however, compromise on the onboard VRM liquid cooling support, a higher bandwidth ethernet connection (5 Gigabit vs 2.5 Gigabit), and perhaps more importantly, the Livedash display that remains exclusive to the ROG Maximus Z790 Formula.
MSI B760 Gaming Plus WiFi
Powerful, budget-centric offering
MSI B760 Gaming Plus WiFi holds several PCI-E slots for adding various kinds of expansion cards at the same time. Its support for highly clocked memories, Intel’s 12th/13th/14th gen CPUs, and fast storage is commendable. At an affordable price, it is one of the few motherboards that come with EZ Debug LEDS for easy troubleshooting.
For users on a stricter budget and not looking to push the Intel Core i9 13900K higher by overclocking it, a budget B760 motherboard might just be all that is required. The MSI B760 Gaming Plus Wi-Fi Motherboard delivers that and then some with solid networking. Thanks to it supporting Wi-Fi 6E, 2.5G Ethernet, and Bluetooth 5.3, one can argue it holds its own with some of the more premium motherboards on Game Rant’s list.
It also offers decent power delivery for those concerned if it can handle something as powerful as the Core i9 13900K or its immediate successor,even as it clocks in at just $160 on Amazonat the time of writing. At the same time, it does offer limited support for DDR5 RAM overclocking, making it a great unit to pair with higher-end XMP 3.0-compliant memory. It also sees regular updates with the BIOS update being pushed out in January 2024.
At the same time, as a budget gaming motherboard, it does have its drawbacks. Users looking for upgradeability down the line or the ability to run cutting-edge SSDs might have to look elsewhere. It does not have any PCI-E 5.0 slots on the board, unlike its Z790-based counterparts. It also offers only two M2 slots, one of which takes out one of the four SATA ports functionality when in use, meaning it is probably not a great motherboard for users with the need to connect large amounts of storage down the line, even if PCI-E 5.0 is not a factor.
While gamers might not be altogether thrilled to learn that the motherboard only has a single RGB header in play, others might look at the MSI B760 Gaming Plus Wi-Fi Motherboard as a compromise, but one that heavily favors them, making it a relative no-brainer to get, especially if on a budget considering that LGA 1700 has seen its last high-performance CPUs before Intel reportedly reverts to a newer socket for its 15th gen offerings.
For users who do want a budget MSI motherboard, however,the MSI Pro Series Z790-A Wi-Fi remains an excellent alternative, clocking in just $60 more at multiple retailers while offering slightly better VRMs and overclocking support to eke out more from Intel’s 13th generation behemoth.
ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero
The Darker Hero-Knight
The ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero is the latest in a series of well-established Z790 Motherboards in the ROG lineup. It adds native Wi-Fi 7 support as one of the first motherboards in the industry to do so while throwing in better memory overclocking and power delivery.It comes with a bolder aesthetic in addition to cutting down to four available SATA ports from the original Hero with an otherwise identical arsenal as it integrates its additional M2 slots on the board itself, eliminating the need for users to get space for the ROG Hyper M2 card its predecessor uses.
The ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero is a refresh of the older Z790 Hero which offered a premium but excellent, well-rounded approach to the LGA 1700 socket with Intel’s latest consumer-grade chipset. It bakes in support of Intel’s 14th-generation CPUs while offering better connectivity upgrades in tow. It switches out the Wi-Fi 6E support for better, future-proof Wi-Fi 7 support while moving the M2 slots that the Hero once had to use a PCI-E adapter to run onto the board itself.
This is done while maintaining the Dark Hero at an ATX spec instead of its larger E-ATX alternatives, even as it upgrades its design slightly to a more aggressive look this time around. With excellent VRMs in tow, it should be able to handle Intel’s Core i9 13900K chip without breaking a sweat in multiple productivity and gaming scenarios, but gamers and enthusiasts tend to benefit more from the prominent ROG branding’s aesthetic value than most power users.
The ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero is geared towards performance and gaming enthusiasts. It has no illusions about this, even as it prices itself an additional $100 over the ROG Hero, which can be had at a small discount at retailerssuch as Amazon for as low as $550. It offers an incremental upgrade to its predecessor much like the 14th generation Intel Core processors do versus the 13th generation Raptor Lake CPUs like the 13900K.
It continues to trade at a high premium over many of its competitors but recently benefited from a price cut of $50 at multiple retailers as its target users will consider the pros of having a well-built ATX-sized motherboard that has all the goodies they need to game out of the box with a pleasing aesthetic in tow while allowing them to use it with 14th-generation Intel CPUs out of the box.
Users canalso grab the ASUS Z790 Maximus Formulaas an alternative offering a white theme and an upgrade to a higher bandwidth 5 Gigabit ethernet port. In addition to passive plus liquid cooling for its VRMs, it offers an OLED display for a more refined, slightly more expensive design than ASUS’s penultimate Maximus refresh motherboard, which is also ready for a 14th-generation CPU out of the box.
ASRock Z790 PG-ITX/TB4 Gaming Motherboard
Good Things Come In Small Packages
The ASRock Z790 PG-ITX/TB4 Gaming Motherboard is an excellent mITX motherboard that brings a host of new features including USB4, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.3 to a Z790 chipset in a compact but potent form factor while clocking in at a considerable discount to its closest Z790-based competition.
The ASRock Z790 PG-ITX/TB4 Gaming Motherboard offers a complete Z790-based Intel motherboard option that makes no compromises when it comes to functionality and expansion relative to its form factor. The mITX motherboard allows for excellent memory overclocking and has a capable 10+1+1 phase VRM solution under the hood. It also features dual USB4 ports with Thunderbolt support. This makes it one of the cheapest options with a Z790 chipset and all the underlying features expected of a motherboard that is to be paired with a powerful CPU like the Core i9 13900K.
Thanks to its form factor, the ASRock Z790 PG-ITX/TB4 Gaming Motherboard can be used in a variety of builds and Small Form Factor (SFF) PC cases. It does, however, still offer three M2 slots, a PCI-E 5.0 GPU slot, and a fair number of USB ports for an m-ITX motherboard, while also offering the latest in networking specs (Wi-Fi 6E, 2.5G Ethernet, and Bluetooth 5.3 support).
ASRock’s mITX offering does tend to have considerable advantages, however. It is a well-priced alternative to more mainstream options while retaining a smaller size that allows for more flexibility with what builds it can be used with. On the flip side, with the larger RTX 4000 series GPUs, the PG-ITX can easily be dwarfed by a significantly larger GPU cooler, something that can make it a tricky aesthetic recommendation for most gamers.
Core i9 13900K
24-Core Number Cruncher
The Intel Core i9 is Intel’s 13th generation Raptor Lake flagship processor. It promises exceptional gaming performance in addition to excellent benchmark results for a wide slew of tasks. The 24-core, 32-thread processor tends to handle these with ease while offering PCI-E 4.0/5.0 compatibility with the 700 series motherboards it works with in addition to working with 12th generation motherboards which share the same socket.
The Intel Core i9 13900K remains one of the fastest Intel-based CPUs currently available (the better-binned, but similar 13900KSbeing superseded by the Intel Core i9 14900K). It offers a whopping 24 cores handling 32 threads. This makes it a productivity juggernaut with excellent single-core performance driving its gaming prowess considerably.
It does, however, continue to demand aggressive cooling options versus the competition and high amounts of power to sustain it at full load. This results in a CPU that requires an excellent supporting cast of PC hardware including a capable cooler, memory, and a motherboard to allow it to truly shine.
Intel Core i9 14900K 24-Core, 32-Thread CPU
The Intel Core i9 14900K 24-Core, 32-Thread CPU is Intel’s highest-end 14th generation CPU and offers the highest boost clocks for a consumer-grade CPU from Intel to date, clocking in at an impressive 6 GHz natively.It succeeds the limited-release Intel Core 13900KS as the first mainstream 6 GHz CPU, even as it brings a large power draw and thermal requirement to reach said clock speed.
The Intel Core i9 14900KF 24-Core, 32-Thread CPU is Intel’s highest-end 14th generation CPU sans an iGPU and offers the highest boost clocks for a consumer-grade CPU from Intel to date, clocking in at an impressive 6 GHz natively.It trades at a small discount over the 14900K while skipping an iGPU under the hood, requiring a discrete solution for system builders and end users to provide a functional PC experience.
The 13900K’s 6GHz Successors: The Intel Core i9 14900K & 14900KF
Both the Intel Core i9 14900K and 14900KF build on the success of the Intel Core i9 13900K’s impressive performance by offering a higher clock speed, AI overclocking support, and Intel’s Application Optimization (APO) tech, making them a great alternative to users considering the 13900K as a CPU even as the latter trades as a discount currently.
The Intel Core i9 14900K and 14900KF themselves see larger price cuts during the same period in time than their predecessors, with the former being on sale on all three platforms that Game Rant tracks for the CPU. This could be due to softer demand. The 14900K is, after all, a very similar CPU to the 13900K but also because the CPUs require a considerable investment to power, cool, and run at the highest tier compared to some of their lower-powered gaming and productivity alternatives.
With Intel’s 14th generation CPUs already in play, the 13900K’s position at the top of the table is no longer in play as Intel aims to take the performance crown for gaming back from AMD sincethe Ryzen 7000 X3D CPUs launched. Given that the 14th-generation CPUs retain the same socket, they also work with the above motherboards,plus additional recommendations from Game Rant, allowing for an easy upgrade from the previous Intel king of the hill.
Is the Intel Core i9 13900K Relevant in 2024?
The advent of the Intel Core i9 14900K does not mean that the Intel Core i9 13900K should be written off. It is still Intel’s penultimate CPU offering in raw performance even as it matches its successor in the number of cores and threads on offer. It isalso often trading at a relative discountto make it a more appealing choice even as it continues to feature as one of Intel’s most powerful CPUs to date. It does come to the table with considerable power requirements, in addition to cooling requirements for the same, making most of its motherboard choices ones that are higher-end Z690/Z790 options.
Exceptionsdo exist in the form of some B660 and B760 motherboards. However, the higher-end chipset-based motherboards remain a safer choice when being paired with Intel’s 24-core juggernaut which can draw considerably large amounts of power when catering to certain workloads.
The Integrated GPU, an Intel UHD 770 series iGPU, does get the job done for entry-level gaming needs for some users. Still, the overwhelmingmajority of users will lean towards a discrete GPU for gamingand productivity use cases that need graphics horsepower. This makes a PCI-E 5.0 x16 slot an important offering for users banking on longevity, allowing for future-proofing down the line without looking at a GPU’s compatibility thanks to the backward-compatible nature of the PCI Express connector.
The Intel Core i9 13900K requires some effort from gamers and enthusiasts alike to maximize their value from Team Blue’s finest. The team at Game Rant has stepped up to talk about some of the best motherboards that can be paired with Intel’s last-generation flagship CPU to get the most out of it without compromise. Those still considering their options, should check out Game Rant’s regularly updated list of thebest gaming motherboardstoo!
FAQ
Q: What is the fastest Intel CPU?
The Intel Core i9 13900K happens to be the fastest Intel CPU on offer. A better binned version of the same (Intel Core i9 13900KS) does offer higher clocks thanks to it being a cherry-picked version of the former.
Q: What RAM is compatible with the Intel Core i9 13900K?
The Intel Core i9 13900K supports both DDR4 3200MHz and DDR 5600 MHz memory modules. It does happen to function well with XMP-enabled memory that can push as much as 8200 MHz on DDR5 RAM, depending on an accompanying capable Z790-based motherboard.
