Which X870E motherboard?

Jimbo

Jimbo

Jimbo

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I've narrowed it down to 3...

Asus Rog Strix x870E-E gaming wifi.
Gigabyte x870E Aorus master
MSI x870E Tomahawk

I want to use 4 M.2 nvme gen 4 drives and don't want to lose 16X to 8x on my 4090 like my current board does. I want M.2 slots I can be sure my WD 4TB Black SN850X with heatsink will fit (see my other posts) so removable m.2 H/S on motherboard and Q-latch removable would be cool.
I will be buying a 9800X3D to go in it. Not overclocking. May undervolt 4090.

Just good and reliable. That's all really.
 
Jimbo said:
I want to use 4 M.2 nvme gen 4 drives and don't want to lose 16X to 8x on my 4090 like my current board does.
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I don't think this is possible on x870 without using an add-in card. In a situation like this, x670 is actually better than x870. The chipset is the same, but x870 reserves 4 pcie5 lanes for USB4 support, as opposed to using them for nvme storage, so even though it may feel like a backward step, check out x670 boards before making a decision.

 
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I like the Asrock Nova which offers a lot at that price point but with the issues with the x3d chips make it a uneasy reccomendation.

Although a bios update has supposedly fixed the issue.
 
Yeah ive been hearing good things about the Asrock board and im sure its fixed with bios update. Ill check it out thanks.
 
nightwish said:
I don't think this is possible on x870 without using an add-in card. In a situation like this, x670 is actually better than x870. The chipset is the same, but x870 reserves 4 pcie5 lanes for USB4 support, as opposed to using them for nvme storage, so even though it may feel like a backward step, check out x670 boards before making a decision.

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The Nova can do it because it just dumps the second M.2 slot from the CPU entirely and doesn't try to offer more PCI-E 5.0 M.2 from the GPU.

The MSI boards do it by disabling the USB ports or limiting the M.2 slot's bandwidth.
 
mickyflinn said:
I like the Asrock Nova which offers a lot at that price point but with the issues with the x3d chips make it a uneasy reccomendation.

Although a bios update has supposedly fixed the issue.
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I have this board and it's fantastic, however I share your concerns but hopefully this saga is coming to an end. So far though with my board and a 9800x3d built Feb 28th I have had zero issues
 
welshrat said:
I have this board and it's fantastic, however I share your concerns but hopefully this saga is coming to an end. So far though with my board and a 9800x3d built Feb 28th I have had zero issues
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I have recommend the nova to a few members and they like yourself love it with no problems, hopefully it's sorted now.
 
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The Asrock Nova does seem a decent board, like many that I see it still dismays me when I note the price...!
 
Vimes said:
The Asrock Nova does seem a decent board, like many that I see it still dismays me when I note the price...!
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I personally found the price not all that unreasonable when you compare the build and features to other X870E motherboards that cost more than it, some reviews seem to feel this way too.

Many of the features are simply nice to have, but most won't need them, backplate, power and reset buttons on the motherboard, 5 NVMe slots though four are Gen 4 and I believe the fith runs at Gen 3? But for an all round gaming PC for gaming and work, the amount of inputs, and NVMe's and ability to run EEC memory seems decent for a long term ownership.

It's still cheaper than some CPU's and memory choices, there are PSU's approaching that price, and many will spend more on storage alone.
 
I've got the Asus Rog Strix x870E-E Gaming, it's pretty great and i've had zero problems with it. You have to sacrifice some PCI-E lanes if you want to use all 4 x internal nvme though, I have 3 x in it, with a 4090 in the main slot. You can use 2 without losing any lanes, but the 3rd one will drop the bottom slot down to 8x, and 4th one will drop the main slot down to 8x (it's dependent on where you place them).
 
If I was going to buy an X870e board it would be the Asus Rog strix X870E-E though. £430 at minute. Only thing I'm not keen on is the weird GPU release thing but apart from that it looks great.

It's toss up between that and 9800X3D but with either way I won't notice much benefit at all really from what I already own.
 
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Jimbo said:
If I was going to buy an X870e board it would be the Asus Rog strix X870E-E though. £430 at minute. Only thing I'm not keen on is the weird GPU release thing but apart from that it looks great.

It's toss up between that and 9800X3D but with either way I won't notice much benefit at all really from what I already own.
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I can see it for £410 but that still seems like ludicrous money for a motherboard. It doesn't feel like that long ago that a decent higher-end one was £200-250.
 
I was just thinking that with so few use cases for PCIE5, most ordinary consumers would probably be much happier with more, slower lanes. x870 has 24 PCIE5 lanes - typically 16 for GPU, 4 for NVME and 4 for USB4. Other bits and pieces as well of course, but those things account for the majority of the bandwidth. For the same bandwidth, you could have 48 PCIE4 lanes.

I'm thinking of a board where you could have 6 x16 physical PCIE slots with x32 electrical lanes. Bandwidth could be split something like:
x16 x0 x0 x16 x0 x0, or
x8 x8 x0 x8 x8 x0 or
x8 x4 x4 x8 x4 x4.

Plus, 4 NVME4 x4 as well! For the same bandwidth!
 
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TheVoice said:
I can see it for £410 but that still seems like ludicrous money for a motherboard. It doesn't feel like that long ago that a decent higher-end one was £200-250.
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I'd say the £200-£250 boards are pretty good, somewhat equivalent to high-end boards of the previous gen. E.g. the B850 Tomahawk MAX is hard to beat for value. They've just pushed a lot of other features up into a premium category and the lack of lanes (on the platform) hamstrings their PCIE/M.2 capability.
 
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