DON’T BUY A Z590 BOARD! B560 Benchmarked
If you’re planning on picking up a new 11th generation Intel CPU, like an 11400F, 11600K or god forbid an 11900K, should you bother splashing out on a ludicrously expensive Z590 board, or will one of the more budget B560 options be your best choice? Well, I’ve got one of each, so let’s take a look.
B560, much like AMD’s B550 boards, are the mid tier option in Intel’s product stack. The main difference between the B and Z series chipsets is overclocking support. Intel still use the ‘take features away and make you buy them back’ approach, which means to overclock your CPU, you need to not only buy an ‘unlocked’ CPU, but also an ‘unlocked’ motherboard. Even an 11900K can’t be overclocked on a B560 board – at least using the multiplier anyway. There are also a few features missing compared to Z590. The new “Adaptive Boost Technology” feature the 11900K gets isn’t available, at least right now. You also only get 4 DMI 3.0 lanes to the chipset, so you’ll only be able to run one gen 3 SSD through it without bottlenecks – although you do have PCIe Gen 4 support with the top M.2 slot that’s directly connected to the CPU, and the two x16 slots. Technically you have a couple less USB 3.2 ports available, but otherwise it’s pretty similar.
The VRMs on these B560 boards, unlike AMD’s A520 board I checked out recently, video in the cards above, are well suited to the monsters that are 11th gen chips. This B560 Tomahawk has a 12+2+1 phase setup and chunky heatsinks so even if you drop the 11900K in, it’s not going to set your house on fire. I stress tested the board with my 11900K and the VRM temp reported around 80°c, although my IR reader read around 60°c on the heatsink, but either way it was cool enough that I’d be happy to run this setup without concern.
So, should you be picking up a B560 board instead of a Z590 one? Well, I thought I’d check if you lose any performance going with this lower end option, and to make it as obvious as possible I’ll use the i9. Now in CPU workloads, especially thanks to the limited boost options, you do lose a little bit of performance. It’s not so bad in single threaded workloads like Cinebench R20, where it’s within margin of error of the stock number, and not far behind the ABT number either.
Where it can struggle is in multi threaded, where it is a hair behind the stock figure, and thanks to the lack of ABT there’s a reasonable gap between them. In Blender and the BMW scene, it’s within two seconds of the stock figure on Z590 but again thanks to that having ABT its 7 seconds faster with that enabled. In gooseberry it’s actually a reasonable amount slower than even the stock figure, 21 seconds slower overall, and almost 40 seconds slower than it with ABT enabled.
In the Puget Bench suite for the Adobe CC suite apps, it’s pretty close to the stock figure, although again with adaptive boost enabled you get a little over 10% more performance.
What about gaming? Well that’s a lot less of an issue, in Watchdogs you drop 4 FPS at 1080p ultra settings, which wouldn’t be noticeable in games. In Cyberpunk it’s a little bigger at 8FPS average and nearly 20 FPS lower 1% numbers, that might be something you’d feel while playing but remember this is the i9, not the i5s. And in fortnite it’s well within margin of error. The 1% lows are 10 FPS less, but at 150 or 160 FPS you won’t be feeling that much.
So with the i9, you will see a difference, if in some cases only a slight one. But if you are going to spend £500 on a CPU, one don’t buy this one, and two, spending £50 more on a Z590 board is probably worth it. But for the i5s? There was no difference. I’ve tested the 11600K on a Z590 board and on this B560 and there was no performance gap at all. Since neither the 11400 or 11600 get any special boost options, and don’t draw as much power, you will not see a difference between the chipsets. The only drawback, especially if you do get the 11600K, is you won’t be able to overclock it easily. You can still use the PL1/PL2/Tau boost options in the BIOS (which don’t void your warranty unlike actual overclocking), but for those that want to try and push their K SKU chips you’ll need Z590 instead.
These B560 boards offer a much better value proposition, and now that Intel has graced us with memory overclocking here, a feature they removed to try and sell back but changed their minds, you can run as fast RAM as you like to eek out a bit more performance too (although anything faster than 3200MHz voids the warranty). If you are buying an 11400F, get a B560 board. It’s the perfect match, saves you money and offers the exact same performance and feature set as Z590 would alt least for the average gamer. If you are going with the 11600K, B560 is probably still your best bet unless you are absolutely sure you’ll be overclocking. For the i7, much like the unlocked i5, B560 is still likely fine unless overclocking is important for you.
Personally, I’m glad to see Intel heading in the right direction. I think the B series chipset should get overclocking support, or if you are ‘concerned about VRMs’ let users overclock non K SKU CPUs on Z series boards. You’ve got enough feature differentiators between the boards and chips to give that feature back to enthusiasts without cannibalising your higher end products.
