Best Motherboard for i7 10700k
In this article, we examine five of the best available motherboards to pair with the i7 10700k CPU
When building a PC it’s easy to get caught up in the heavy hitters, like the CPUs and GPUs, and forget the motherboards that interconnect them all. Picking a fitting motherboard is absolutely crucial to the performance of your PC. As picking the wrong one could result in one or more components ceasing to function. That brings us to the Core i7-10700K.
The Intel i7 10700k CPU is an 8-core, 16-thread processor with a memory speed of up to 5.1GHz (unlocked) and 16MB of L3 cache, based on the Comet Lake infrastructure. It has a TDP of 125W, an LGA 1200 socket, and a point to prove. On its launch, it was widely seen as a response to the wake-up call provided by AMD getting its act together after many years, and it’s a processor that’s compatible with Intel 400 series chipset-based motherboards.
There are quite a few Intel 400 series chipset-based motherboards on the market. Fortunately, we’ve trawled through them all, benchmarked the best of them, and collected them here for you.
Our Top Picks
How Do We Choose?
At WePC, we’re a team of experienced testers, analysts, and gaming experts.
We’ve seen processors and motherboards come, and we’ve seen them go. We’ve never let them go before they’ve been rigorously bench-tested, and our findings written up, because, at WePC, we live for two things – testing components, and telling people about the components we’ve tested. That’s it – that’s what we do, and we love it that way.
So we have experience of knowing what’s important to gamers in any new development, what’s interesting, and what’s flash and flim-flam.
And then we tell you about it, so you can cut to the chase, cut out some of the time spent squinting at the small print, get the right components for the build you have in mind, build it, and then lose your mind over the amazing thing you’ve made.
We’re not here to waste your time. If you have an i7 10700k processor and you’re looking for a motherboard to match, not one of the options on our list would be a ‘bad’ choice – they’ll all drive the processor in ways that blow your mind. But you know yourself, boards can be brilliant in their own right, but not quite what you personally are looking for. That’s why we’ve chosen the ones we have – there’s something here for almost everyone clutching an i7 10700k in their hands right now.
Are we the Fountain of All Motherboard Knowledge?
Well…erm…yes. Yes, we are. But as you’ll also know, Your Mileage May Vary is the fundamental building block of all knowledge. We think there’s a motherboard here for every i7 10700k owner. But if you have ideas of your own, by all means, follow your dreams and build them.
We’re just here to save you time, money, misplaced investment, and ultimately frustration. All our listed motherboards can do that for you.
Things To Consider
So, if we think we have the top 5 best motherboards for the i7 10700k, what criteria are we looking at? How have we narrowed the field for you?
Form Factor
The form factor is the genetic template of any group of boards. It tells you what the board can possibly deliver, including how many ports it has, where its mounting holes are, and so on.
It also covers the basics like the overall board dimensions, so knowing the form factor gives you the basic map of the board.
The standard form factor across all manufacturers these days is the Advanced Technology Extended (ATX). You can also get a micro-ATX version for smaller builds, and ITX boards – which are the best option if you’re looking to build particularly small rigs.
Processor Socket
The processor socket and the chipset are often dealt with together in build-dynamics. While for many years, Intel processors and the motherboards that served them used the LGA 1151 processor socket, as of 2020, the LGA 1151 was replaced by the LGA 1200, which is standard across all the motherboards we’ve collected here. The processor socket is exactly what it sounds like – it’s the way the processor and the motherboard join together.
Chipset and PCI Slots
The chipset of all the 400 series motherboards which we’ve included here is the Intel Z490 Express, with Intel Thunderbolt 3 handling onboard graphics data exchange. With AMD chipsets, the PCle 4.0 data exchange connection is being rolled out increasingly as a move to futureproof the company’s motherboards. Intel motherboard manufacturers have been reluctant to do this – or have found it complex and not worth doing as yet, as it adds little to the current capacity of their boards. Indeed, there are only occasional uses of PCle 4.0 in any of the motherboards we’ve selected for pairing with the i7 10700k, because the Intel chipset design allows for the integrated use of more in-house connectivity, so there is as yet little to be gained from adopting the PCle 4.0 standard. As such, for the most part, PCle 3.0 will be standard across Intel motherboards suitable for the i7 10700k, and is likely to remain so for some time to come.
RAM
If you’re going to have RAM, you’re going to need a slot to stick it in.
Motherboard RAM is usually DIMM RAM, and the most modern standard across the boards is DDR4 RAM. The number of slots your board has will often tell you its maximum RAM capacity. Most of the boards on our list have 4 slots and a maximum capacity of 128GB.
SATA and NVMe
The SATA 3 ports on a motherboard are its connections to additional memory storage, be it HDD, SSDs, or increasingly NVMes – data storage with ultra-fast data exchange speeds and protocols. The description of SATA ports tells you how the board functions in terms of its connections to data sources. For instance, the description of the Gigabyte AORUS includes the fact that it has 3 M.2 connectors (including SATA connectors), and then 6 additional SATA connectors, each transferring 6GB/s.
NVMes are increasingly common in motherboards, but have yet to become in any sense the norm – lots of builders are still happy with their SSD data transfer rates. If you want edge-of-your-seat next-generation data transfer, then yes, don’t settle for anything less than a board that can give you NVMe capability. But check your bank balance before you decide that’s a vital thing right here and right now, because, like all cutting-edge tech, anything that’s new is going to cost you extra.
Features
Finally, when you’re buying a motherboard, check out the extra features it carries. Maybe you’re a pure-heart and you’re only interested in the capabilities you’ve decided upfront you want your board to have.
Guaranteed, board manufacturers will have thought of things you haven’t. Sure, some of them are fripperies you’re never going to need and shouldn’t have to pay for. But check out the list in any case, in case the life-changing feature you never knew you needed is on the board you’re considering as the base for your build.
Why are motherboards important?
The motherboard is the heart of a computer, serving as the connection point for all hardware components. It acts as a central hub for communication between the CPU, memory, storage, and other peripherals. A motherboard is vital for the functioning of a computer, as it enables all the components to connect and communicate with each other.
The BIOS or UEFI firmware on the motherboard is responsible for booting the computer and managing system resources. Thus, the motherboard plays an essential role in enabling a computer to start and operate properly.
The
In-depth Review
- Storage of 10000 TB
- Memory speed of 5000MHz (boosted)
- DDR4 RAM
- Fins-array heatsink and a direct touch heatpipe
- 16-phase 90A power stages VRM
- The price. Ye gods and little fishes, the price.
The Gigabyte Z490 AORUS Xtreme motherboard is not, by any stretch of the imagination, cheap. In fact, it’s up to twice or even three times as pricey as any other board on our list. Little wonder then that it strolls off with the honors at the top of our table. To do anything less would be to add insult to financial injury.
That said, what you get for your dollars here is among the best motherboards Gigabyte knows how to make, two decades into the 21st century – which is saying a lot.
You can run the AORUS Xtreme up to 5000MHz on DDR4, assuming your i7 10700k can actually do that. If anything, the board seems over-qualified and over-spec’d, but it’s always better to have capacity and speed to spare than it is to find yourself gasping for the last licks of RAM or memory speed, right?
This being Gigabyte, the VRM game is always going to be top-notch, and the AORUS Xtreme, if anything, takes the company’s reputation for absurdly effective VRM strategies and builds, runs off with it, climbs a tree, and looks back, laughing.
We’re talking about 16-phase 90A power stages. Try to make this VRM sweat, we dare you. Finned heatsinks increase the cooling surface area a lot, and the VRM cooler also comes with a direct touch heat pipe and a thermal pad, to deliver efficient thermal transfer to the cooling pipe and the fins.
The four memory slots here are caught in a limbo of PCle peculiarity. They’re PCle 3.0, which is the current state of the art for data transfer. But they’re marked as ready for PCle 4.0 when Intel upgrades from the Comet Lake standard to the Rocket Lake standard. Rocket Lake chips will allegedly use PCle 4.0, but when they’ll hit the market is still as yet anyone’s guess.
The on board wifi is Intel wifi-6, of course, backed up by Bluetooth 5. The AORUS Xtreme also comes with a wired LAN (Intel 2.5Gb and Aquantia 10Gb).
A memory storage capacity of 10000 TB is as staggering as you’d need it to be to pay the asking price for the AORUS Xtreme, and the memory speed of 5000MHz is pretty much top of the leaderboard for i7 10700k-compatible motherboards.
Yes, you’ll pay extra for the AORUS Xtreme.
The thing you’ll marvel at is that it will be at least almost worth it.
- 10000 TB of memory storage
- Memory speed of 4400MHz
- 12 phases digital VRM, with a 50A smart power stage
- 4 DDR4 memory slots
- Two M.2 drives
- Nowhere near the price of the AORUS Xtreme
- No wifi-6 on the board as standard
The Gigabyte Z490 Vision G shares a lot of the attractive elements of the AORUS Xtreme, but costs a fraction of the price. You lose out on some of the coolest stuff for that price drop, it’s true – but whether you weep into your pizza at its loss is less certain.
Plenty of elements will be familiar – the 10000 TB of memory storage makes the step-down with no problem at all. There’s an important reduction in memory speed to 4400MHZ, but the degree to which that slows down your active gaming performance is probably less than the relief you get at not paying the AORUS price. Four memory slots are available for DDR4 RAM DIMM. And like the AORUS Xtreme, the Z490 Vision G comes with dual M.2 slots.
Being Gigabyte, you still get an insanely impressive VRM strategy – here, you have direct 12 phases digital VRM, with a 50A smart power stage. As with the AORUS Xtreme, you’d have to work ridiculously hard to get this VRM to freak out.
And you still get an advanced thermal design with a micro-block surface heatsink and a next-generation direct touch heatpipe. So far, so cool in every sense of the word.
The Z490 Vision G provides Intel HD graphics support through an HDMI port. The 2.5 G LAN makes the transfer to the much cheaper board too, so you do begin to wonder what exactly you’re paying for in the more expensive model. The answer tends towards ease – the AORUS Xtreme has the power and the capacity to stroll on by most everything in its class. But the much less expensive Z490 Vision G makes enough of a case on its own merits to stand as one of the best motherboards for the i7 10700k CPU, before we harp too much on the colossal price difference.
Sorry, did we think that, or did we say it?
- 128GB memory storage
- Memory Speed of 4800MHz
- 3x PCle 3.0 slots
- An impressive heatsink
- Twin turbo M.2 with M.2 Shield Frozr for rapid data transfer
- Significant step-down in memory storage
The MSI Mag Z490 Tomahawk takes us a little away from the heavyweight mentality of Gigabyte, and gives us a motherboard option that foregrounds other things besides the joyful, practical, but nevertheless slightly absurd quality of its VRM.
One of the things you notice immediately about the Tomahawk board is that it brings a maximum memory of 128GB to the party, with 4 memory slots for DDR4 RAM. What’s more, it restricts the maximum RAM capacity to just 64GB, which is worth remembering in any side-by-side bench testing you do.
Twin-turbo M.2, with M.2 Shield Frozr gives impressive data transfer speeds of up to 32 GB/s so your ultra-fast SSDs can react in rapid time. And the board also carries a 2.5G LAN plus Gigabit LAN.
Heatsink? Pretty impressive – there’s a finned sink here, though unlike the Gigabyte versions, there’s no direct touch heat pipe. A thermal conductivity rating of 7W/mK should be enough to keep your board cool under heavy load though.
The Tomahawk comes with 4 PCle slots, though as with other Intel-compatible motherboards, they are as yet PCle 3.0.
The temptation with the Tomahawk is to see it as an also-ran, compared to the two more market-dominating Gigabyte boards. Really though, when linked to an i7 10700k CPU, the Tomahawk will give you excellent gaming, rapid connection and data exchange, and more than a reasonable heatsink game. That’s got to make it worth recommending among the best motherboards for the i7 10700k.
- 127 GB maximum RAM
- 4 slots for DDR4 RAM
- 4600MHz maximum memory speed
- Optimized thermal design
- On board wifi-6
- Industry-leading audio option
- High power on a micro-ATX board for non-tower builds
- Price could deter some non-tower builders
We offered you a motherboard option for every kind of builder. The Asus ROG Strix Z490-G is a micro-ATX board for your non-tower options.
Maintaining the maximum RAM size from the MSI Mag, you can get 128GB of memory here from 4 slots for DDR4 RAM. It also brings a more-than-reasonable maximum memory speed of 4600MHz to your micro-ATX build.
The board helps you get the most out of your build, up-rating its power delivery and bringing a sophisticated cooling system to your game. A combination of the advanced cooling system (configurable through Fan Xpert 4) and intelligent controls lets you get into overclocking on the smaller system.
Onboard WiFi-6 (802.11ax) supports ultrafast wireless-networking speeds. And because you’ll be gaming a lot with this motherboard, there’s an industry-leading audio package, delivered through the SupremeFX S1220A codec, DTS Sound Unbound, and Sonic Studio III.
In terms of a VRM and power control, the Strix uses 12+2 power stages with the ProCool II power connector to maintain power reliability even under heavy load. And that advanced cooling system? You’re looking at an optimized thermal design: VRM heatsink, PCH fanless heatsink, M.2 heatsink, hybrid fan headers, and that Fan Xpert 4 ease of control.
If the Strix proves anything, it’s that you don’t need to have a full-sized ATX form factor motherboard to bring lots of the good stuff to your gaming build. If you have a hankering to go micro-ATX, you could do a lot worse than going with the Asus ROG Strix Z490-G as your motherboard, linked to your i7 10700k CPU.
- DDR4 DIMM RAM technology
- PCIe 4.0 for rapid data transfer
- Extended heatsink in the aluminum cover
- 2.5G Lan
- Wifi-6 on board
- Only 2 memory slots
- Price – Bar the list-leader, this is the most expensive board here.
And if you’re going right down the spectrum into the smallest builds, you’re going to need a tiny mini-ITX motherboard that still packs enough punch to justify pairing it with an i7 10700kCPU. That’s what the MSI Meg is all about.
Still bringing dual-channel DDR4 RAM to your build, the compromises of the size are inescapable – only 2 memory slots for your money, and a correspondingly smaller maximum memory storage count.
On the other hand, perhaps oddly in a range that has hung back on implementing PCle 4.0 technology for rapid data transfer, the size component here makes PCle 4.0 a useful way of delivering speedy data-transfer without throwing the whole thing out of joint.
Likewise, the nature of the mini-ITX board means it crams a lot into a restricted space – its aluminum cover includes an extended heatsink. Adding a 2.5G gaming LAN and the latest wifi-6 to the package lets the Meg Z490I offer a fully modern gaming experience within the confines of a mini-ITX board.
Final Word
If you’re buying a motherboard to match with the i7 10700k, what our list shows is that there’s something for every kind of builder.
We’ve done the easy bit – the bit we can do for you. We’ve shown you a range of motherboards, all of which will pair well with your CPU. The rest is up to you. You’re the one who has to decide what kind of build you want to make, how much you want to spend, and which features are non-negotiable in that build.
Take another look through the list, note down the features you absolutely need in your build, and they will lead you in the direction of your i7 10700k build.
Enjoy it!
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