PCIe 4 support on Asus TUF b450m Pro

northun_munky · 4 Aug 2020 at 11:41

Last year, there were articles floating around that some Asus B450 and x470 boards could and would support PCIe 4 on either the main PCIe gfx slot and /or m.2.

I know that the TUF B450m pro was one of them and appreciate that more recent bios updates have now removed this support.

My question is, if you were to download an older Bios for this board, prior to the 9/9/19 update which removed the support, does it still work?

I couldn't find anything in here by searching but I reckon someone must be doing it if it's possible in here

I'm looking to upgrade my aging MSI b350 gaming pro/1600 combo on a tight budget but would really like to have a PCIe 4 nVME m.2 drive if I could to tide me over for a few years.

SonicSW20 · 4 Aug 2020 at 11:43

If you're on that tight of a budget then forget PCIe 4.0 SSD's. In the vast majority of use cases you won't notice any performance difference.

northun_munky · 4 Aug 2020 at 11:59

SonicSW20 said:
If you're on that tight of a budget then forget PCIe 4.0 SSD's. In the vast majority of use cases you won't notice any performance difference.

How so? I was under the impression the PCIe 4 ssds were hitting around 5,000MB/s? Still a bit of a jump on the current 3500MB/s isn't it?

I suppose either way, a faster m.2 drive would be an upgrade on my current one which sports speeds of up to 1300MB/s but I thought I might as well take advantage of PCIe 4 if it's there on B450.

SonicSW20 · 4 Aug 2020 at 12:35

northun_munky said:
How so? I was under the impression the PCIe 4 ssds were hitting around 5,000MB/s? Still a bit of a jump on the current 3500MB/s isn't it?

Diminishing returns, and peak transfer speeds are a small part of the whole picture and only come into play for large copy operations, or if you're reading large files like editing very high resolution video for example. If you're looking for more performance on a budget, PCIe 4.0 SSD's are the wrong place to be looking.

northun_munky · 4 Aug 2020 at 12:47

SonicSW20 said:
Diminishing returns, and peak transfer speeds are a small part of the whole picture and only come into play for large copy operations, or if you're reading large files like editing very high resolution video for example. If you're looking for more performance on a budget, PCIe 4.0 SSD's are the wrong place to be looking.

Fair enough, I think it was just more of a 'nice to have' if it was available for free so to speak.

SonicSW20 · 4 Aug 2020 at 12:50

The option is nice of course, but the few areas where such speed may be valuable like editing very high resolution video you'll want a processor with much more power than a R5 1600, and by time anything else like games really makes use of it other than giving you marginally quicker load times (which are already very fast on a regular SSD), you'll probably find everything else has moved on as well and you'd be looking at a new system to play those games that take advantage of it anyway.

northun_munky · 4 Aug 2020 at 12:57

SonicSW20 said:
The option is nice of course, but the few areas where such speed may be valuable like editing very high resolution video you'll want a processor with much more power than a R5 1600, and by time anything else like games really makes use of it other than giving you marginally quicker load times (which are already very fast on a regular SSD), you'll probably find everything else has moved on as well and you'd be looking at a new system to play those games that take advantage of it anyway.

All very valid points. I do little else with my rig other than play games. Perhaps I'll rethink my upgrade plan then and focus on maximising the use age of what I have got. Maybe a faster NVMe m.2 drive perhaps. My current boot drive is an old 128gb mSata drive in a Sata enclosure as when I went b350 i lost the mSata for m.2.....

I see in your sig you have a rocket Q. Happy with it? Seems a bargain for 100 notes and speeds twice what my current m.2 drive reaches.