donta1979
I personally would go with MSI, you only need a Z790 if you plan on a 13th gen and DDR5, 13th gen just runs a little more efficient on the Z790 boards. Here is the thing with DDR5 it cannot run in gear 1, you pretty much have to buy 6000mhz+ to muscle past that short coming. You can run a 13th gen i9 on a Z690 easily, and use DDR4 if you want to. If you go with DDR4 I only suggest a B-die kit of CL14"cannot buy this now at higher speed/capacity" to CL16 4000mhz Get the good stuff so you can run it in gear 1.
Sadly this set as it becomes more rare it's price has gone up...
G.SKILL Trident Z Royal Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 4000 (PC4 32000) Desktop Memory Model F4-4000C16D-32GTRSA - Newegg.com
It's all up to you on what you want. You may want to hold out a little longer to see what DDR5 the newer faster stuff coming 7000mhz+ runs on the 13th gen cpu's with ease without having to downclock it just to get it to work with what board does it better.

Epsolike
Z790 motherboards support way higher memory XMP than the previous gen ones and people that already are testing them have reported that they can boot very high MT/s kits (this also correlates to a better OC capability than Z690).
Now i'm not sure what component change happened if any or if it's just BIOS and i'm not exactly sure if the Rapor Lake processors run also better for the same reason, but regarding memory there is CLEAR improvement which already makes Z790 attractive.

Epsolike
I was talking about Raptor Lake this whole time (so there is no IMC change), only that they can boot and OC ram better in Z790 versus Z690. This is not something that needs discussing, testing, spec sheets talking about this and videos are live for a good while if you need some form of confirmation.
 
So to add to the OPs question/wondering i would recommend Z790 if he wants to use DDR5 (ASUS TuF Gaming Plus or Strix F or higher if he can afford, MSI Tomahawk or higher if he can afford).
In case of DDR4 any Z690 that came with DDR4 support (roughly the same model tiers would be good, but not absolutely necessary, although the higher Raptor Lake model you get the better VRM mobo i would recommend).

Epsolike

CraptacularOne

Epsolike
I was talking about Raptor Lake this whole time (so there is no IMC change), only that they can boot and OC ram better in Z790 versus Z690. This is not something that needs discussing, testing, spec sheets talking about this and videos are live for a good while if you need some form of confirmation.
 
So to add to the OPs question/wondering i would recommend Z790 if he wants to use DDR5 (ASUS TuF Gaming Plus or Strix F or higher if he can afford, MSI Tomahawk or higher if he can afford).
In case of DDR4 any Z690 that came with DDR4 support (roughly the same model tiers would be good, but not absolutely necessary, although the higher Raptor Lake model you get the better VRM mobo i would recommend).

You’re misunderstanding, the boards spec sheets for older products often just go without being updated or are not modified with the release of new CPUs. I can run my DDR5 at nearly 8Ghz now on my Z690 with my 13th gen i7 CPU. The previous highest memory clock I was able to achieve was just under 7000Mhz with an i7 12700K. Nothing has changed but the CPU and I’ve been granted higher memory speed headroom with the new CPU. 
 
Just because the spec sheets for Z690 boards haven’t been updated doesn’t mean they can’t do it if paired with a 13th gen CPU. That’s what I’m telling you, so to quote you as you so eloquently put it “this is something that does not need discussing or talking about” I’m verifying it to you right now as its in my possession as we speak.

I'm sorry but YOU are misunderstanding and skipping points that you don't find relevant. Once again all this information can be found from relevant OCers and other media. Regardless of whatever you have experienced yourself.
The memory clock improvements are very clear between the two generations that is the only thing i was referring to all this time, and not the OBVIOUS IMC improvement from older Intel (that i never even mentioned).
The "specsheets" that you chose to nitpick from what i said was only thrown in there because i'm not a native speaker and i had no other word for it, but nearly all material from manufacturers that pop up on their news tells you of the higher frequency capabilities as opposed to their old Z690s.
I also did not talk about specific boards like DARK KP or Classified but the general or average capabilities of Z690 and what users have experienced.
I have also read several times that people didn't have much luck booting anything above 6000-6200 MT/s, i do trust the source of those and these mentioned improvements line up with it because now several have said or Tweeted with images showing that they are booting correctly and OCing higher.
 
Please don't add anything else i have no interest in repeating what i have already said (that can also be researched) or trying to make it any clearer or correct any misunderstanding of it! Thank you.

redteamgo
CTO, is that with an XOC or ambient???