GIGABYTE B650E AORUS PRO X USB4 - anyone tried it?

Minstadave

Minstadave

Minstadave

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Was planning a build using a B650E AORUS ELITE X AX ICE as it looks pretty decent and it seemed a solid B650E board.

Today the B650E AORUS PRO X USB4 was briefly on offer for very little more. It's an odd board, it devotes 4 CPUs lanes to USB 4 (single 40Gbps or 2x20Gbps). It has 4 M2 but if you use the 3rd or 4th it drops the GPU down to 8x.

Seems like an odd board, almost a test bench for the upcoming revised boards. Anyone got one?

It's only a 6 layer PCB which some people seem to suggest might reduce memory overclocking/PCI-E 5 stability.
 
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If you want USB4 then X870/X870E should be out at the end of the month.

This one looks far to expensive for what it offers and as you say a 6 layer PCB.
 
Does the 8 layer PCB actually make any difference? On X570 it helped memory clocks with dual rank DIMMS but Zen 4/5 memory speeds are pretty tepid.

It was on offer at £220 yesterday which didn't seem bad for a solid B650E board.

The 2 extra M2s supporting PCI-E 5 is interesting but takes the lanes from the main x16 PCI-E slot.

If the main slot drops from x16 to x8 PCI-E 5 but you put a PCI-E 4 GPU in does that get x16 or x8 PCI-E 4 lanes?
 
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Minstadave said:
If the main slot drops from x16 to x8 PCI-E 5 but you put a PCI-E 4 GPU in does that get x16 or x8 PCI-E 4 lanes?
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8, the lane drops are always hardwired regardless of the PCI-E version.

Minstadave said:
Does the 8 layer PCB actually make any difference? On X570 it helped memory clocks with dual rank DIMMS but Zen 4/5 memory speeds are pretty tepid.
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Personally, if I was going to run a demanding CPU like a 9950X and 4 sticks of memory, I'd get the 8-layer, but if I was going to run e.g. a 7600X and 2x16 6000, I wouldn't care.
 
Tetras said:
8, the lane drops are always hardwired regardless of the PCI-E version.


Personally, if I was going to run a demanding CPU like a 9950X and 4 sticks of memory, I'd get the 8-layer, but if I was going to run e.g. a 7600X and 2x16 6000, I wouldn't care.
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Thanks that's helpful.

The only thing bugging me about the board is the PCI-E layout. It's great it had 4 m2 slots but the fact it cuts the main slot to X8 if you use the 3rd or 4th slot is annoying.

The cheaper boards don't do that as they don't have the 4 cpu lanes going to the USB4 controller. Even my X570 board doesn't do that with 3 M2s.

I'm wondering whether the extra £30 for the X670E Tomahawk is worth it.
 
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Joxeon said:
If you want USB4 then X870/X870E should be out at the end of the month.

This one looks far to expensive for what it offers and as you say a 6 layer PCB.
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I presume the new boards will have the same issue with needing CPU lanes dedicated to the USB4 controller.
 
Minstadave said:
I'm wondering whether the extra £30 for the X670E Tomahawk is worth it.
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If you're losing the USB4 ports anyway, wouldn't the x670e gaming plus be a better price?

Minstadave said:
The only thing bugging me about the board is the PCI-E layout. It's great it had 4 m2 slots but the fact it cuts the main slot to X8 if you use the 3rd or 4th slot is annoying.
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I don't think 8 lanes of PCI-E 5.0 is likely to be a meaningful bottleneck with the new cards.
 
X670E Gaming Plus looks good, I'll have a read

The Asus TUF X670E-Plus is dirt cheap too, sub £200 with cashback and allows 4xM2 without losing PCI-E 5.
 
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Joxeon said:
Yeah although there will be more options on lane allocations as there will be many more boards to choose from supporting USB4.
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I'm can live without USB4 but I'd like to have more than 2 M2s without loosing half the GPU lanes. I'll just get the Asus TUF X670E, it seems solid sub £200 with cashback. 4 M2s/8 layer PCB/temps look OK.

I can't see the new boards offering anything other then USB4 and being priced high.
 
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