WHILE WE INTENTIONALLY BUILT this PC using all the latest components with the aim of seeing what a state-of-the-art system is capable of, we were also aware that real-world builders may not be able to afford to go quite as far as we did. After all, if you’ve got your heart set on an RTX 4090 and you’re dropping at least $1,600 on it, no one could blame you for wanting to save a bit of money on the other components. Or maybe even reuse some of the components you already own.
Our writer Sam and I broached this subject when discussing this build. Would it be useful to look at comparing this system to one using a previous generation Z690 board, or perhaps a Z790 board using older DDR4 memory? Based on what we knew, we thought a Z690 DDR5 board would offer similar performance, but there might be more merit to comparing DDR4 and DDR5-based systems. In the end, the situation was resolved with the help of Intel, who kindly provided us with an Asus ROG Strix Z790-A Gaming WiFi D4 (pictured above right), which uses DDR4 memory. We swapped the ROG Strix out for the ROG Maximus Z790 Hero as soon as we were finished testing, replacing the memory with PNY XLR8 Gaming Rev RGB 32GB (2x 16GB) 3200MHz DDR4 RAM, but keeping all other components the same.
The ROG Strix board comes in at $380, saving $250 alone over the $630 ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero. The cheaper board lacks the aforementioned DDR5 RAM support and also doesn’t offer PCIe 5.0 storage, but with those kinds of savings, a lot of people probably won’t mind. Then there’s the cost of the PNY XLR8 Gaming RAM— at $100, that’s a 38 percent saving over the Corsair DDR5 equivalent, bringing the total savings to over $300.