I don’t know you personally so there’s that.
AM5 7800X3D Mobo dilemma, why do they all suck/overpriced!?
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I guess it depends on your audio setup. A lot of headsets are USB, I haven't used the audio ports on a PC in years and I'd wager a lot of people are in a similar position.
Edit: And even on my HTPC the audio goes to the AVR via HDMI. With so many alternative audio outputs, onboard sound does feel rather redundant. I'd rather have a cheaper board without it.
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Same here. I find WiFi is "good enough" and never drops out unless the external connection itself has died (in which case it's Virgin Media, so OBVIOUSLY the hub has to reboot every 5 minutes and absolutely cripple the internal network. Which it would also do on wired unless I get a dedicated switch.)
I'm also lazy and don't want to either drill a hole through my floor/ceiling, or run what would end up being a good 30 metres of cable down the stairs, across the hall, around the living room - none of which have carpets to tuck it under.
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That aside and back on topic - dammit! I had just about decided on an Asus X670 board when I foolishly read about WPBT and forced Armoury Crate installs and now I can't decide if I'm angry about that and don't want to buy anything with that kind of rootkit built in. There is of course a bios option to turn it off which I would, it's more just a principal-of-the-thing thing.
But at this point I think I've flipped from going for a good B650 to any X670 that meets my needs for m.2 and usb (and maybe optics). The price difference isn't very big vs the cost of the boards, might as well have that pci-e 5.0 graphics slot really.
Soldato
It's so hard to find a motherboard that doesn't have something I don't like.
Mood. I was about to flip flop again to the Asrock B650E Taichi... but it's got a fan on the VRMs.
Why? It's over 2000 amps of power delivery, it will not get hot with any CPU on the market today. It could possibly take the heatsinks off and still not get hot. Why on earth would they add a small fan, whose quality control will be low and potential for noise high? Is it just a mechanism to make the board be annoying in 2 years time so I buy another one?
Soldato
Yeah, they seem to either use a bad ethernet chipset or they share PCIe lanes with other things I'll potentially want to use or they don't have heatsinks on all the m.2 slots or they don't have enough fan header or the fan headers don't provide enough power or they have dodgy BIOSes, etc.
It does make you wish they could just take all the GOOD features and put them all into a single board, rather than spreading them out over different models
Think I'm going for the Rog Strix X670E-A Gaming... I really hate that uefi -> windows startup nonsense they're doing, feels like a rootkit, but I can turn that off before I even begin the install. Outside of that, it's probably the best looking and well-rounded board. All m.2s are heatsinked and well away from the GPU, and Techspot recorded just 60 degrees on the VRMs which sounds good for minimising heat output into the case.
I hear good things about the Gigabyte X670 Gaming X AX, buuuut... Gigabyte loves stuffing the m.2 drives behind the GPU - in this case up to 3 of them, depending on the size of your card. My thermal probe tells me the ambient temps behind my meagre 3060 can push 50 degrees and this just doesn't feel like a place I want to put a drive that will get load during gaming. Admittedly my current case has terrible, terrible airflow. I will be building into a new one and fully expect to drop that down a bit - but I don't know how much!
Soldato
So, any obvious issues with the AS Rock X670E Steel Legend?
One of the M.2 slots doesn't have a heatsink on it, but I only plan to populate 3 m.2 slots anyway and use the 4th to upgrade a drive if needed.
Doesn't have the Intel Ethernet as far as I can tell. Has 2 USB3.0 internal connectors (which is handy for me).
BIOS might not be the best is about the worst I've seen about it I think. Maybe poor performance on the lower m.2 drives but not seen that mentioned too much.
One of the M.2 slots doesn't have a heatsink on it, but I only plan to populate 3 m.2 slots anyway and use the 4th to upgrade a drive if needed.
Doesn't have the Intel Ethernet as far as I can tell. Has 2 USB3.0 internal connectors (which is handy for me).
BIOS might not be the best is about the worst I've seen about it I think. Maybe poor performance on the lower m.2 drives but not seen that mentioned too much.
I believe the one that doesn't is the 2nd direct-to-cpu slot, which is a little annoying. But honestly, I suspect most people wouldn't notice the difference, myself included. Especially if we don't have a full set of 7000MB/s drives to put in there. I'm not going to worry about hanging my old 1TB 970 Evo and 500GB 960 Pro off chipset slots for sure, they can just go where they'll get the least heat and reserve the premium slot(s) for newer drives later on.
My only issue with the Steel Legend right now is it's memory QVL list is a bit limited - specifically it doesn't have the G.Skill kit that I already bought on there (2x32gb Ripjaws 6000 c30). Although it did with the last bios add an identically-specced G.Skill set, which I suspect is the same DIMMs but with RGB on top. I wouldn't be surprised if it worked absolutely fine, I just don't have any particular reason to favour it over a ROG STRIX X670E-A at the same price with this memory definitively on its QVL.
Also, the Steel Legend is kind of ugly... the camo look just isn't doing it for me. I could just buy a case without a window, but where's the fun in that?
(I don't really like the "for those who dare" on the strix either, but it's a little less obtrusive and probably won't be noticeable once built and under the desk.)
Soldato
My worry with the Asus boards is the network chipset is that dodgy Intel one that seems to be causing a lot of issues.
How much slower are the m.2 slots on the chipset? I was planning on putting a couple of WD SN850X drives there.
My memory isn't on either of the QVL lists...
How much slower are the m.2 slots on the chipset? I was planning on putting a couple of WD SN850X drives there.
My memory isn't on either of the QVL lists...
The ASUS TUF X670E-PLUS WIFI has the Realtek controller if that helps (0 issues for me so far, using ethernet+wifi), and the 'better' Realtek audio than the MSI MAG X670E Tomahawk.
My only criticism is the bios, I updated to 1408 last weekend and had a whole host of issues so I rolled back. This may just be an AM5 thing, an ASUS thing, or whatever I'm not sure, but I'm all back to working good and will leave it on 1406 for the forseeable future. Memory @ EXPOII (even though it's not QVL - G.Skill Trident Z5 6000Mhz CL30), Undervolted with a -20 PBO curve on all cores and temps/wattage are perfect. It doesn't have an LED display for 'error' codes, but it does have multiple different coloured LED's that go through the 'POST' steps to at least indicate what component could be at fault.
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Soldato
More I look at these boards the more the B650 E-E Strix stands out. For £300 for all the features it has 4 nvme (two gen 5, two gen 4), post code screen, 4 Sata, quick release, 2 pcie gen 5, 6+ fan headers, 3 argb headers etc. Nothing is worth the extra £200+ for the 670 range up.
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Soldato
Doesn't the TUF use the chipset for the bottom two m.2 drives too? WiFi and audio are both of no concern as I don't use them.
TUF might be worth a look but it's no prettier than the Steel Legend, imo.
I looked at the b650e-e but the price difference between that and the X670E-F was so small (~£30 I think when I looked) that I thought I'd go with the X670 (which I believe is being delivered today, but I'll probably send it back). But now I'm concerned that they both use the dodgy Intel Ethernet chipset.
Not had any problems with the Intel Nic on the B650E-E, I only run it at 1Gb so have not tried it at 2.5Gb. Think a fix/workaround has been added to the new driver so it might not be an issue?
Soldato
I've never had a problem with my Intel Nic either on my 650 e-e. What's the difference between 670 e-f and 670 e-e?
Because the 670 e-e was/is like £200+ more expensive than the B650 e-e this morning, but the 670 e-f is only £30 more?
Because the 670 e-e was/is like £200+ more expensive than the B650 e-e this morning, but the 670 e-f is only £30 more?
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Soldato
Not entirely sure what the differences are (didn't look at it too closely due to the price), doesn't seem huge, but the X670E-F is ~£180 cheaper than the X670E-E, which makes it £35 more than the B650E-E.
Soldato
It's a risk though isn't it, when you're spending ~£400 on the motherboard to hope that the network connection is OK. Maybe it can't be fixed with a software update.
There are things I don't like about the TUF, but at least it doesn't use that network adaptor. Same for the Steel Legend really.
On the other hand I would probably be running the network at 1Gbps, at least to start with, so it may be fine. So hard to know.
I know what you mean, my plan is if it stops working, I will get a USB-C to ethernet adapter. This is why I would prefer they did not integrate everything into boards, they use the cheapest chips they can to increase margins and we have to deal with the issues.
My current dilemma is that I like the feature set of the Asus ROG Strix X670E-A Gaming WIFI - apart for the Wi-Fi not being a requirement, but finding some silver or white ram to go with it.
Seems I may need to go with a black ram sticks with RGB to suit.
Seems I may need to go with a black ram sticks with RGB to suit.
What's the current thinking on the AM5 motherboards? It seems you have to spend a lot more just to get PCIE 5 and an extra m.2 slot. I'm thinking about a B650 Gaming X and not worry about PCIE 5 at all as it will take years to max out PCIE 4.
Plan is to use my existing AM4 as a daily driver/work and have an AM5 system just for gaming to allow me to tinker a bit.
Plan is to use my existing AM4 as a daily driver/work and have an AM5 system just for gaming to allow me to tinker a bit.