Z77 extreme 4 Security Certificate 2023

If you are concerned about safety then you will want to disconnect the system
from power, press and hold the power button to discharge capacitors then swap
the battery with a new one.

Yes, you will lose your BIOS settings. Technically you can swap the battery with
the system connected to power and the settings should remain but then you run the
risk of shorting something if the battery pops out of the holder onto the board.
Not really worth the risk for the sake of BIOS settings.

Happy to help, good luck and let us know how the build goes for you

Yes, the previous board I linked supports up to 3 NVMe drives without needing a
PCIe adapter card.

As I said before, more slots = higher end board, like this one:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z890%20Pro%20RS%20WiFi/index.asp#Gallery
It will cost significantly more however. It will offer everything the previous
board I linked offers as well as more PCIe slots although you get 1 x16 slot,
2 x4 slots and 1 x1 slot instead of 2 x16 slots. The x4 slots are open ended though
so you will still be able to install x16 cards into them, they will be limited
to x4 PCIe speeds however. Only GPUs and multi NVMe adapter cards really need
more than x4 though.

Well, you won't need a slot for Wifi or NVMe on a new board (provided you get one
with Wifi included). You also won't find a new board with old PCI slots unless you
go for a workstation/server board.

If you are using the system for office/photo work etc then I would recommend an
intel platform. AMD has the crown right now for gaming but they run hotter and
use more power under lower loads. For work use the intel platform should be perfect
for you.

Depending on your budget you can go for quite a few different options. Basically
any board that has Wifi will do the trick nicely for you. Here is a good example:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/B860%20Pro%20RS%20WiFi

You probably won't need your USB 3.0 card as the board comes with a ton of USB
ports, including USB C. It comes with Wifi so you won't need that either. The
integrated graphics on a modern CPU will probably also perform well enough for
your design work too so you could even potentially skip the HD 5800 GPU. The
only issue you will have is your Firewire card, as I said before consumer boards
no longer have old PCI slots. You may need to look for a PCIe Firewire card if
that is essential to your workflow/hardware.

You will be able to connect your NVMe drive directly to the motherboard as well
as use it as a boot drive.

As for CPU you can go for whatever fits your budget from the CPU support list:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/B860%20Pro%20RS%20WiFi/index.asp#CPU

Just avoid any CPU model that ends in an "F" if you plan to use the integrated
graphics (which I would recommend as it comes with hardware encoding that could
potentially speed up your video renders more than the HD 5800 series GPU).

I wouldn't waste money on a Z890 board, for your needs the B860 chipset should
be more than adequate and save you a bit of money. Basically any B860 board
that comes with wifi paired with an intel "Core Ultra" CPU should be perfect
for you.

I would need a lot more info to make a recommendation. What platform, budget and
what will the system be used for? Do you need PCIe x16 slots or do you just mean
5 PCIe slots including the x1 slots? A board with 5 PCIe x16 (size not wired) will
be expensive and if you are looking for 5 PCIe x16 slots that are wired as x16 then
you will be looking at a lot more as well as a very expensive HEDT or server CPU.

Because of NVMe M.2 slots most newer boards have 4 or less PCIe slots, typically
2 PCIe x16 size slots and 2 x1 slots.

Here is an example of a newer board with 5 PCIe slots:
https://pg.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z690%20Phantom%20Gaming%204/index.asp

You will be looking at higher end boards as the lower spec boards have fewer PCIe
lanes to allocate. With the cost of RAM right now you may want to wait a while
longer for prices to normalize.