AMD Zen 2 (Ryzen 3000) - *** NO COMPETITOR HINTING ***

[tamzzy]

Ryzen just needs clocks.

Indeed. We know that 1000 series was approx Haswell/broadwell IPC, and 2000 was +3% on top of that.
Will be looking forward to see what 3000 brings to the table. If I/o chip and infinity fabric can also be improved then it should be a surefire win for amd

 

[chrcoluk]

U.2 was DoA.
10Gb would be nice but that's hardly a mainstream device, and takes up already-lacking PCIe lans.
6 isn't enough? But how many ports actually exist on the chipset? Do we need to add 3rd party chips?
Niche use case.


I hear you, which is why I'm making my own single 8-pin for a custom front panel PCB, but it'll only work for my Maximus VIII Impact. But yes motherboard vendors would need to standardise their pin outs for a single keyed 10-pin connector to work. I like the idea of Asus's Q Connector, but it's bulky.

The reply was to "high end boards" not mainstream.

6 sata isnt enough no. In my PC e.g. I have 8 sata devices. In my ryzen 2 rig I have decided I want to add a second ssd to it which would be 7 sata devices but it only has 6 ports.

u.2 is most definitely not a dead format, only in the consumer space its not adopted. m.2 is inferior to u.2 and its use is baffling. m.2 was designed for compact devices like NUC's and laptops.

 

[DragonQ]

I've never understood M.2's adoption outside of mobile devices. It's terrible for cooling and even high end devices can suffer performance degradation due to throttling.

There is also definitely a need for at least one or two motherboards to have more SATA ports or 10 GbE. People just can't see outside of their own use case sometimes. 10 GbE cards are much cheaper now but still £100ish. Paying an extra £50-100 for a higher end motherboard that includes this is cost effective for those that want it.

 

[4K8KW10]

I've never understood M.2's adoption outside of mobile devices. It's terrible for cooling and even high end devices can suffer performance degradation due to throttling.

There is also definitely a need for at least one or two motherboards to have more SATA ports or 10 GbE. People just can't see outside of their own use case sometimes. 10 GbE cards are much cheaper now but still £100ish. Paying an extra £50-100 for a higher end motherboard that includes this is cost effective for those that want it.

For your first question:
The heat sinks on the gigabyte gaming 7 and 9 motherboards definitely do help in cooling your Nvme SSD up to 20 degrees Celsius cooler than without the thermal guard.
But honestly under a normal usage the difference is negligible. You'll only see the temperature improvements if you're stress testing it or moving 100 GB of data to another storage device.
Another advantage is better aesthetics of course.

http://forum.gigabyte.us/thread/1831/2-heat-shield

I don't understand why the crass Acer Nitro 5 has no two M.2 slots but instead one poor cable SATA connection and one castrated M.2 slot which works out of the M.2 specification and is limited to only SATA support.
This is the first and only M.2 slot in the world that supports SATA only.

 

[chrcoluk]

I've never understood M.2's adoption outside of mobile devices. It's terrible for cooling and even high end devices can suffer performance degradation due to throttling.

There is also definitely a need for at least one or two motherboards to have more SATA ports or 10 GbE. People just can't see outside of their own use case sometimes. 10 GbE cards are much cheaper now but still £100ish. Paying an extra £50-100 for a higher end motherboard that includes this is cost effective for those that want it.

indeed, and how scalable is m.2, 8 m.2 ports on a board anyone?

It was designed for lappies and NUC's but somehow ended up on desktop boards, madness. Even having m.2 sockets on a pcie card is better than what we have now as installation is still easier, pcie lanes arent diverted and would still have better heat management.

 

[DragonQ]

I wonder what the RAM market is going to look like by the time these chips come out. It's gotten to the point where 16 GiB of DDR4 3200 MHz CL16 RAM can be had for under £100, whereas the CL14 equivalent is still nearly £200. I'm hoping the difference between those two won't be noticeable!

 

[4K8KW10]

indeed, and how scalable is m.2, 8 m.2 ports on a board anyone?

4 or 5 can easily fit on an ATX mobo, with extension means 8 or 10 or 12.
But why do you need so many drives? Buy two large 1TB M.2 NVMe and keep them.

 

[smilingcrow]

I've never understood M.2's adoption outside of mobile devices. It's terrible for cooling and even high end devices can suffer performance degradation due to throttling.

For workstation usage the thermals can be an issue but for typical consumer workloads rarely so.
My board only supports one M.2 stick as I figured that would be fine.
I ended up buying an Asus adapter for under £10 as occasionally I want to access two at a time.
But for the vast majority of users a single M.2 slot for storage is fine I suggest and those that want more NVMe can buy adapters.
Why add cost for the majority by standardising on NVMe cards rather than sticks when it only serves a small minority?

There is also definitely a need for at least one or two motherboards to have more SATA ports or 10 GbE. People just can't see outside of their own use case sometimes. 10 GbE cards are much cheaper now but still £100ish. Paying an extra £50-100 for a higher end motherboard that includes this is cost effective for those that want it.

Maybe you can't see beyond your own use case and recognise that is a niche?
It's a competitive field with plenty of high end boards costing big bucks so when there is a strong enough demand they will build them and at a price that fits your use case.

 

[DragonQ]

Maybe you can't see beyond your own use case and recognise that is a niche?
It's a competitive field with plenty of high end boards costing big bucks so when there is a strong enough demand they will build them and at a price that fits your use case.

Yes it's a niche, that's why I said there is a need for these features to be found on 1-2 boards, not all of them. Some people just hate choice apparently.

 

[smilingcrow]

Yes it's a niche, that's why I said there is a need for these features to be found on 1-2 boards, not all of them. Some people just hate choice apparently.

There is zero need for this feature on any board as that's just your preference.
Just buy an add-in card although that is a choice you appear to hate!

 

[BongoHunter]

There is zero need for this feature on any board as that's just your preference.
Just buy an add-in card although that is a choice you appear to hate!

Yeah but buy a HBA for example on a B450 board and you might end up sacrificing the second or primary M2 slot... or find it doesn't offer the bandwidth required as the PCIEx4 slot is only gen2. This issue is somewhat mitigated on x470 at least, as long as you run your GFX card at gen 3 PCIEx8. Hopefully x570 will offer better options for expansion without the need for shelling out for Threadripper/Epyc

 

[4K8KW10]

Yeah but buy a HBA for example on a B450 board and you might end up sacrificing the second or primary M2 slot... or find it doesn't offer the bandwidth required as the PCIEx4 slot is only gen2. This issue is somewhat mitigated on x470 at least, as long as you run your GFX card at gen 3 PCIEx8. Hopefully x570 will offer better options for expansion without the need for shelling out for Threadripper/Epyc

X570 will offer at least double the bandwidth per lane, and if we are lucky more lanes.

 

[BongoHunter]

X570 will offer at least double the bandwidth per lane, and if we are lucky more lanes.

Will it though? If I get a card now that's PCIE gen2 and requires an x16 slot, can I put it in gen3 slot that's x16 mechanically but only x8 electrically? This has not worked on boards I've tried it on - will it be different for PCIE Gen4 - whereby a gen4 x16 mechanical slot that's only x8 electrically will offer full performance to a gen3 x16 device?

 

[chrcoluk]

4 or 5 can easily fit on an ATX mobo, with extension means 8 or 10 or 12.
But why do you need so many drives? Buy two large 1TB M.2 NVMe and keep them.

They struggling to fit 2 on.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

But why do you need so many drives? Buy two large 1TB M.2 NVMe and keep them.

Raid 5? - See sig.

 

[4K8KW10]

They struggling to fit 2 on.

They can remove two DRAM slots (for a total of just 2), make a more compact arrangement, and fit them as follows:



Half is done there:

 

[andy_mk3]

Some boards have M.2 slots on the back I believe?

 

[BongoHunter]

Veritical M2 slots are also a thing - like on the Asus Prime X399

 

[CuriousTomCat]

They can remove two DRAM slots (for a total of just 2), make a more compact arrangement, and fit them as follows:

Surely DRAM slots are far more important than additional M2? When 2 DRAM slots are populated, it's nice to have an extra 2 empty slots so you can upgrade at a later date. Otherwise you'd have to remove your existing memory to upgrade which is more expensive.

If you need additional M2, why not make use of a PCIe slot? PCIe slots are there for a reason but people dont want to use them anymore. You can add Wifi, 10Gb LAN etc.

 

[4K8KW10]

Surely DRAM slots are far more important than additional M2? When 2 DRAM slots are populated, it's nice to have an extra 2 empty slots so you can upgrade at a later date. Otherwise you'd have to remove your existing memory to upgrade which is more expensive.

Imagine you have a kit of DDR4 3200 2x4GB that costs 64.99 now.
You want to upgrade with a kit of DDR4 3200 2x8GB that costs 119.99 now.
Sell the old kit for 40.00 and you will need to pay 79.99 for the double capacity.

If you go for a kit of DDR4 3000 2x8GB, you will pay only 54.99.

Old memory is sometimes more expensive than the latest one.

If you need additional M2, why not make use of a PCIe slot? PCIe slots are there for a reason but people dont want to use them anymore. You can add Wifi, 10Gb LAN etc.

I have never used a PCIe slot besides for a graphics card.