ASUS Prime Z590M + 3080 fit

Taphead

New build around an i9-11900K and a MSI Gaming Trio Z RTX 3080 card.

Part of me wants to really wring out the capabilities of the i9-11xxx/Z590 chipset pairing with something like an ASUS MAXIMUS XIII Hero or Extreme with a new case, liquid cooling, and the works.

A more sensible part of me wants to make use of a Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 case I already have on hand; it's a great, quiet case but only fits an mATX board. The drive bays in the case are configurable enough to make room for the 3080 card, so that's not an issue. However there's a limited selection of mATX boards supporting the Z590 chipset. If I'm sticking with ASUS the Prime Z590M-PLUS seems like the best bet. However, the board layout diagram for that board (see attached) shows the PCIe 4.0 slot backing up right to the bottom of the RAM slots (red rectangle in attached is my best guess at the physical limits of the graphics card once installed).

I'm also looking at some higher-speed RAM (4400 MHz) which this board supports via overclocking. So that might be an additional heat / airflow issue to consider.

So, my question: Anyone else have this board who can attest to how well it works with a larger graphics card in a somewhat compact build? Is it as stupidly close to the RAM slots as it looks like it's going to be in the diagram? Any other comments/suggestions? Money's not a huge issue but I'm trying to keep it reasonable here. Mainly don't want to create any major bottlenecks that I'll regret later. Thx!

UPDATE 9/13/2021: See post below

ASUS PRIME Z590M fitment.png

Ian

Greetings. I see your concern here, I tried to find some pictures of completed builds on our website with that board but did not see any.

I did find some on PCpartpicker's completed build search - I went here https://pcpartpicker.com/builds/#period=1y and entered " Prime Z590M-PLUS mATX " into the search and did find some builds with a 3000-series card or 2000-series card that shows there is just enough clearance between the video card and the RAM.

This isn't a personal experience, but I hope this information with pictures of some other builds online does help!

SWolnik

Hello,

The board says that it supports the higher speed RAM however recently customers and our service department have complained they are unable to hit higher speeds (sometimes 3200MHz cannot be achieved.).

MSI and Gigabyte have fared better in terms of RAM compatibility as of recently, I would say 3600MHz CL16 or 4000MHz CL18 would be sweet spots to look into but if you want to go with faster kits you definitely can however there will be diminishing returns.

The slot is standardized and the larger issue would be more if the case can hold the card you are looking into. With certain mATX boards the RAM that has wings to it like the TForce RGB kits we carry may interfere with the graphics cards (more tradition G.Skill, Crucial, or Corsair don't have the same issues.)

Hopefully this helps!

Taphead

Thanks, accepted Ian's answer as a direct response to the question on fitment (didn't even consider PCPartPicker - thanks for that).

However big thanks to SWolnik for the additional info on challenges with higher speed RAM. I might decide to go ahead with the mATX build for now since I already have the case in hand, and go with a directly compatible (non-OC) RAM or maybe the 3600 as suggested. I think I can avoid RAM kits with crazy heat spreaders or anything since the DeepSilence is an opaque case so no reason to get fancy with it. This will at least give me a platform to quickly enjoy the CPU and GPU already in hand while I stretch out my shopping for the "perfect build".

Ian

You're welcome, please let us know if you have any other questions!

Taphead

Wanted to post an update to the fitment issue. Ended up buying the Z590M-Prime and going for it. It works fine. There is at least 1mm between the backplate of the graphics card and the physical limits of any protrusion above the surface of the motherboard from the RAM slots, and more like 7-8mm between the backplate and the RAM modules. See attached pic. Main problem I have now is that somehow I messed up and bought a 16GB kit, so I have a 32GB of the same TridentZ memory on the way, for which the main challenge will be backing out the existing modules out from under the cooling tubes and inserting the new ones. It's doable, since I already switched the sticks once for troubleshooting (auto-detects at 2133MHz), but it's a bit of in-case gymnastics. Fundamentally, everything is running well aside from needing to manually change the RAM speed to 3200MHz in the BIOS. Did a Win11 install from ISO and everything is running fine at stock clocks. Looking forward to stress-testing once I get the new sticks in.

Ian

Glad to see it worked out!