Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero - is it possible to have 2 x PCie5.0 SSD's?

[MnsoonMally]

Yes, this board is also a consideration. It actually offers more USB; but slightly slower LAN.

Still a good option though. One of the other better ones I've looked at.

 

[oweneades]

Just as a note the Strix 870E-E board does have the 3 Gen 5 slots but per the tech specs they share bandwidth with the X16 Gen slot (GPU).

ROG STRIX X870E-E GAMING WIFI | Gaming Motherboard | ASUS UK

ASUS ROG Strix X870E-E: AMD X870E, DDR5, PCIe 5.0, WiFi 7. AI Overclocking, AI Cooling II, AI Networking, Extreme ATX gaming motherboard

rog.asus.com

Won't really matter in the real world (right now) but something to factor in.

 

[SpellowHouse]

Just as a note the Strix 870E-E board does have the 3 Gen 5 slots but per the tech specs they share bandwidth with the X16 Gen slot (GPU).

ROG STRIX X870E-E GAMING WIFI | Gaming Motherboard | ASUS UK

ASUS ROG Strix X870E-E: AMD X870E, DDR5, PCIe 5.0, WiFi 7. AI Overclocking, AI Cooling II, AI Networking, Extreme ATX gaming motherboard

rog.asus.com

Won't really matter in the real world (right now) but something to factor in.

Yes, given the choices here, the better one for me would be the ASUS ROG Strix X870-F Gaming WiFi. The reason is that I would ignore M2 slot 2, which compromises the main GPU slot, and use M2 slots 3 and 4 which compromise the unused second GPU slot.
Not that this is my thread - just sayin!

 

[oweneades]

Ah if only HEDT was available at prices that don't selling more than one organ we could all have USB4, PCI-E and M2 drives for days.

 

[Tombs75]

So is there any huge gain getting a X870E board over a X670E?

I was looking at the ROG X870E Hero as currently im using 4xNvme's 2tb drives as my storage. If I cant use more than one without it halving the gpu lane theres not much point.
Currently im using aAsus hyper m.2 x16card v2 4xm.2 socket 3 on my system plugged into a pcie socket, that holds 3 nvme drives so ones on the board.

Would the 9800x3d fit into a Asus ROG strix X670E-E board and would this do pretty much the same job as the 870 board? I probably will have to use the hyper m.2 card to house my nvme's rather than have them on the board if its cutting the lane speeds.

Also the ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Hero is a possibility,all dependant on if the cpu socket is correct

​

 

[Tetras]

Would the 9800x3d fit into a Asus ROG strix X670E-E board and would this do pretty much the same job as the 870 board?

There's three primary differences between X870E and X670E that I'm aware of:
1. Mandatory USB4 on X870E (it is optional on X670E).
2. Higher stated memory speeds due to the BIOS being updated with this support.
3. WIFI7 (not sure on the details).

Assuming the BIOS is updated with the CPU support, any X670E motherboard should function with no meaningful differences with a 9000 series CPU. The 9000 series were actually released without any motherboards, so they HAD to run on the existing 600 boards.

 

[Jamin280672]

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but the reason you end up with shared lanes is because X870E USB4 steals 4 lanes from the CPU, so effectively you only end up with 20 usable, 16 for the one of the GPU and 4 for the one of the M.2 slots, any further PCI-e 5 nvme's then share lanes with the GPU slot and it gets reduced to x8 instead of x16, it gets even more confusing if you have further PCI x16 slots, some get disabled completely depending on which m.2 slots you're using and others get dropped to x4.

This is where X670 differs from X870, X670 uses the intel thunderbolt controller for USB4 if the board has it and doesnt steal any lanes, X870 uses the ASMedia controller and needs 4 PCIe Lanes, i'll stick with my ASUS X670e Gene which has 2 x gen 5 nvme slots and a gen 5 x16 GPU slot, 1 x Gen 4 nvme slot, along with USB4, nothing stolen, nothing shared, and does 8000MT/s ram on 7000 series chips and beyond on 9000 series chips, but came at a price and if you can find one, are a lot more expensive today than they were at release.

I think the closest decent board to it you can buy at the moment at a decent price which is excellent for RAM overclocks is the ASUS B650E-i, just comes back down to the 1 DPC thing, but no USB4.

It all comes down apparently to tracing, they could have run the USB4 off the chipset as it only needs 4 x PCI 4.0 lanes, but due to tracing distance, they decided to run it off the CPU instead and steal 4 x PCI 5.0 lanes instead.

 

[McCarthy]

So you can’t use 2 NVME PCIE 5.0 drives without it affecting the GPU? Will it be ok to use one PCIE 5.0 and another 4.0 on the X870 Hero?

I was planning on 2 5.0 NVME but it seems like this would be a waste of money.

Also what is the penalty of the GPU dropping to x8?

 

[Tetras]

So you can’t use 2 NVME PCIE 5.0 drives without it affecting the GPU? Will it be ok to use one PCIE 5.0 and another 4.0 on the X870 Hero?

From looking at the manual, you would need to use the chipset M.2 slots for the PCIE 4.0 drive. It doesn't matter if you use a 4.0 drive in the CPU's PCI-E 5.0 slots because the lane sharing is hardwired, so it has the same outcome.

I was planning on 2 5.0 NVME but it seems like this would be a waste of money.

For most use cases they're a waste of money anyway.

Also what is the penalty of the GPU dropping to x8?

Minimal, a few percent with a 16 lane card.

 

[McCarthy]

From looking at the manual, you would need to use the chipset M.2 slots for the PCIE 4.0 drive. It doesn't matter if you use a 4.0 drive in the CPU's PCI-E 5.0 slots because the lane sharing is hardwired, so it has the same outcome.


For most use cases they're a waste of money anyway.


Minimal, a few percent with a 16 lane card.

So as long as I install one PCIE 5.0 and the other PCIE 4.0 I make sure to avoid the other PCIE 5.0 slots I will get X16 without issue?

 

[Tetras]

So as long as I install one PCIE 5.0 and the other PCIE 4.0 I make sure to avoid the other PCIE 5.0 slots I will get X16 without issue?

Have a watch (timestamps at the bottom):

Personally, if all you want is 1x PCI-E 5.0 and 1x PCI-E 4.0, a board like that is a waste of money and I'd buy the cheapest like ASRock's Pro RS or Gigabyte's Eagle.

 

[McCarthy]

Have a watch (timestamps at the bottom):

Personally, if all you want is 1x PCI-E 5.0 and 1x PCI-E 4.0, a board like that is a waste of money and I'd buy the cheapest like ASRock's Pro RS or Gigabyte's Eagle.

Originally I wanted the 2x PCIE 5.0 but that seems like it isn’t possible without this problem.

The company building my system say that even using 2x PCIE 5.0 and going to X8 on the GPU won’t cause much loss and you have confirmed this also it seems. However I am looking if at all possible to keep X16, even if that means using one PCIE 5.0 and the other 4.0 avoiding the other slots that cause issue.

Thank you for the video.

 

[Tetras]

Originally I wanted the 2x PCIE 5.0 but that seems like it isn’t possible without this problem.

X870/X870E usually takes 4 of the CPU's lanes to provide USB4, so you'd likely need to pick X670E instead if you wanted to avoid it (though individual boards may vary).

The company building my system say that even using 2x PCIE 5.0 and going to X8 on the GPU won’t cause much loss and you have confirmed this also it seems. However I am looking if at all possible to keep X16, even if that means using one PCIE 5.0 and the other 4.0 avoiding the other slots that cause issue.

Yes, just a few percent with a 16 lane card, it has been tested a fair bit recently due to the release of the 5080 and 5090.

E.g.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 PCI-Express Scaling

The new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the first high-end graphics card that makes use of a PCI-Express 5.0 bus interface. Are you in trouble when trying to run it on PCIe 4.0? What about x8, like when an SSD is using up some bandwidth? We've also tested various PCI-Express 3.0, 2.0 and 1.1 configs...

www.techpowerup.com

Without knowing exactly what you use the PC for, it is hard to give clear advice, but for a gamer PCI-E 5.0 M.2 drives are unnecessary and offer very little benefit for the added cost.

 

[McCarthy]

X870/X870E usually takes 4 of the CPU's lanes to provide USB4, so you'd likely need to pick X670E instead if you wanted to avoid it (though individual boards may vary).


Yes, just a few percent with a 16 lane card, it has been tested a fair bit recently due to the release of the 5080 and 5090.

E.g.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 PCI-Express Scaling

The new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the first high-end graphics card that makes use of a PCI-Express 5.0 bus interface. Are you in trouble when trying to run it on PCIe 4.0? What about x8, like when an SSD is using up some bandwidth? We've also tested various PCI-Express 3.0, 2.0 and 1.1 configs...

www.techpowerup.com

Without knowing exactly what you use the PC for, it is hard to give clear advice, but for a gamer PCI-E 5.0 M.2 drives are unnecessary and offer very little benefit for the added cost.

My use is gaming, music (moving large files) some video editing and work. I was hoping to use the PCIE 5.0 for everything other than gaming, however they had a deal on at the time which made it better for me to go with two. I honestly didn’t know about this issue until googling and finding this thread after watching a YouTube video.

The company are basically saying that going with 2 of them will take from the GPU, but haven’t confirmed if going with 1 5.0 and the other as you said 4.0 making sure not to use the 5.0 slots.

This board probably wasn’t the best choice but I have always used the Hero. The Apex is coming in March and I currently have no set eta for my 5090 build so I’m wondering if this board might be better if tge build is still on hold,

 

[Tetras]

This board probably wasn’t the best choice but I have always used the Hero. The Apex is coming in March and I currently have no set eta for my 5090 build so I’m wondering if this board might be better if tge build is still on hold,

The Hero used to be more reasonably priced, but at £500-£550 I don't think they're worth it anymore for the average user. It does have 5Gb LAN, high-end audio and 5 M.2 slots (among other features), so eh.

My use is gaming, music (moving large files) some video editing and work. I was hoping to use the PCIE 5.0 for everything other than gaming, however they had a deal on at the time which made it better for me to go with two. I honestly didn’t know about this issue until googling and finding this thread after watching a YouTube video.

The main benefit of current PCI-E 5.0 drives is seen with large file transfers/copies, but outside of that, not so much.

The company are basically saying that going with 2 of them will take from the GPU, but haven’t confirmed if going with 1 5.0 and the other as you said 4.0 making sure not to use the 5.0 slots.

Yeah, they would have to use the PCI-E 4.0 slot for the second drive and I think it would be fine then. The performance loss from 8 lane isn't something I'd be too worried about.

 

[McCarthy]

The Hero used to be more reasonably priced, but at £500-£550 I don't think they're worth it anymore for the average user. It does have 5Gb LAN, high-end audio and 5 M.2 slots (among other features), so eh.


The main benefit of current PCI-E 5.0 drives is seen with large file transfers/copies, but outside of that, not so much.


Yeah, they would have to use the PCI-E 4.0 slot for the second drive and I think it would be fine then. The performance loss from 8 lane isn't something I'd be too worried about.

I appreciate this info. You have been more helpful than some other places I have asked about this.

Also from the Techpowerup you included, it really isn’t anything to worry about.

 

[Spikey]

So I've just found out having got a new gen 5 M2 T705 SSD + 5080 for a build that our Z790 MSI Carbon drops the PCIE slot down to 8X if I use the M2 gen 5 slot. Are ANY boards allowing this yet? I'm debating whether to take the hit on the PCIE 5.0 dropping to X8 over losing the SSD speed? My new SSD speeds are decent on this drive. Decisions decisions.

 

[Tetras]

So I've just found out having got a new gen 5 M2 T705 SSD + 5080 for a build that our Z790 MSI Carbon drops the PCIE slot down to 8X if I use the M2 gen 5 slot. Are ANY boards allowing this yet? I'm debating whether to take the hit on the PCIE 5.0 dropping to X8 over losing the SSD speed? My new SSD speeds are decent on this drive. Decisions decisions.

I don't believe it is possible on any 12th-14th gen motherboard, because the CPU doesn't have any spare PCIE 5.0 lanes to use for a M.2 slot.

It is possible on AM5 and 15th gen.

The performance hit is very small though, so it doesn't matter either way.

 

[Spikey]

I don't believe it is possible on any 12th-14th gen motherboard, because the CPU doesn't have any spare PCIE 5.0 lanes to use for a M.2 slot.

It is possible on AM5 and 15th gen.

The performance hit is very small though, so it doesn't matter either way.

Thanks buddy,

I'm guessing I would be better taking a hit on the X8 on the 5080 than the SSD speeds? The new SSD does up to 14500/12400 speeds so is almost "double" my secondary fire cuda SSD.

Also which AM5 boards do both?

 

[Tetras]

I'm guessing I would be better taking a hit on the X8 on the 5080 than the SSD speeds?

Generally speaking: it is only a few percent hit on the 5080, so you're not going to notice, but if your workload actually needs the speed of the PCIE5 e.g. for massive file copies/transfers, then you WILL notice that, assuming the SSD can sustain those speeds.

AM5: ughh, that's a complicated one. Generally speaking: ANY AM5 board which has a PCIE 5.0 M.2 slot (they don't all) can offer that without any impact on the GPU lanes, but when you need to use multiple M.2 slots it is very easy to get lane sharing again. Technically, AM5 CPUs can offer up to 2x M.2 slots (PCI-E 5.0 or 4.0) without any impact on the GPU, but with the latest X870/X870E boards, they usually use 4 of the CPU's 8 spare lanes for USB4, which means you may only get 1 M.2 slot that has no lane sharing.