Skeptical about motherboard
Hello everyone, for a long time I have been on an AM4 setup. I recently purchased a 5070ti and my processor is starting to show its age and bottlenecking the GPU slightly on 1440p. Here are my current running specs:
AMD Ryzen 5700x PBO Running at -15 on all cores
Gskill 16GB DDR4 3200Mhz CL 16 Ram
Gigabyte B550M Steel Legend
Zotac Amp Extreme Infinity 5070ti
My purpose of getting the GPU was that I got it at an affordable rate and I had previously never been able to afford the older series like 3070ti or 4070ti/4070ti super so I figured why not. I quickly understood the CPU bottleneck specially in CPU heavy games that require simulation, shaders compilation time delays, even some older games with mods for example Skyrim with mods that alter the combat behavior of NPCs (This effect amps up in larger battles).
As a result of which, after doing some thinking to me LGA1700 socket seemed really good. Why? Because DDR5 prices suck. I was taking a look at processors and settled between the i5 13600k and 14600k. I settled on the 14600K because I got a good price and 14600K was mostly unavailable. Now comes the real challenge - the motherboard.
I keep seeing that to unlock the true power of K series you need to have a Z690 or a Z790 motherboard which allows overclocking. But unfortunately there are simply no boards here in my local area and online in my country which are Z790 or Z690 and also support DDR4 and not DDR5. I do not see a point in paying those ram prices. I ended up getting the only motherboard I could:
MSI Pro B760M-P DDR4
Now after checking the board I saw there is no heatsink for VRMs. And I understand the ability of overclocking can be tempting on a Z790 for example but I would rather not mess with it. I would like to run it at its factory settings and at most UV it based on temps and power draw.
What my BIG concern is that due to the motherboard being okayish - am I going to lose out on performance? Is the CPU never going to reach the boost clock due to VRM throttling? Did I make a bad decision going down this route?
Anyone who owns a similar processor and motherboard, if you could share your thoughts with me that will be great. Thanks!
I forgot to mention that I am opting to get a Arctic Freezer III Pro for cooling because I know these things run hotter than AMD. My tasks are simple gaming, I rarely use Photoshop and Blender. Its mostly just simple gaming after work.