Honestly, when you're talking about "pushing the limits" on a 12900K, you're basically looking at some massive power draw—we're talking 250W+ easily under heavy load. Tbh, you don't always need to spend $700 to get the stability you need, but you definitely can't cheap out on the VRM setup. You really want to look for something with high-amperage power stages and *really* beefy heatsinks over the MOSFETs so you don't run into thermal throttling on the board itself before the CPU even peaks. Just to narrow things down a bit—what's your actual budget for the motherboard? Also, are you planning on sticking with a standard AIO, or are you going for a full custom loop? That'll honestly change how much you need to prioritize extreme over-engineering versus just solid, reliable power delivery for a daily overclock.

Solid advice 👍

Exactly what I was thinking

For overclocking the Intel i9-12900K, consider high-end Z790 motherboards like the MSI PRO Z790-P WiFi, which offers robust cooling and stability for pushing CPU limits without bottlenecking.