Reconsidering my MOBO options

PaulW · 16 Apr 2023 at 10:51

Hi,
i have almost finished my build specs that i am happy with. i am spending quite a bit this time round, mostly thanks to Nvidia :mad:

(just considering which kidney to sell atm). However i am again looking for MOBO options to try and save some pennies to make the 4090 that little bit of less of a pill to swallow. I dont really want to spend more than £400 on a mobo ( crazy motherboard prices as well i know)
i have so far decided on the Asus ROG Strix X670E-F Gaming WIFI which seems like a good balance between features i want and cost. I am looking for options on AM5 x670 boards, not to brand fussy but would like a reliable mobo that could take full advantage of the components i want and to be future proofed.

Important
-- Optical S/PDIF out port ( need this due to my set up, if not its + £50 for a Soundcard)
-- Takes full advantage 7800X3D / 7950X
-- Takes full advantage of the RTX 4090 / 4080
-- 1x PCIe Gen 5.0 / PCIe 5.0 m.2 / X670 board
-- Supports 5600 DDR5 64gb Ram
-- Mobo for 3D modeling work / games / some video editing
-- not over £400

Some what imoprtant
-- WIFI / Bluetooth on the board
-- a good easy use Bios would be helpful

not that important
-- RGB ( dont care waste of money)
-- loads of USB connection on rear

i am Not that unhappy with still going with the Asus ROG Strix X670E-F. but id be dafted not to look for more options that i haven't considered before i buy.

This is my 500th post on here, not a big milestone at all but happy to be apart of this lovely helpful forum, so thanks again for your awesome support

Paul

Tetras · 16 Apr 2023 at 23:06

With those requirements I think you'll struggle to get a better priced board, because you're limiting yourself to X670E (to get PCI-E 5.0 graphics) and mainly higher-end boards (for rear spdif). If you were prepared to buy ASRock (Steel Legend) then you could save a bit, or more if you'd accept B650E, but the Strix B650E F doesn't have rear SPDIF (it is internal only). The B650E Steel Legend meets all your requirements and is £100 cheaper. NZXT B650E N7 does too, I believe.

If you were willing to dump PCI-E 5.0 then MSI's B650 Tomahawk would save you a bundle.

PaulW · 17 Apr 2023 at 10:30

Tetras said:
If you were willing to dump PCI-E 5.0 then MSI's B650 Tomahawk would save you a bundle.

Thanks Tetras! i really want the PCI-E 5.0 for future proofing later down the line or to have that as an option. As you rightly say dropping it would save me a packet. the only other Mobo i have considered as a B650 is the Gigabyte B650E Aorus Master. Which is roughly the same price. but i think i might as well stay with the X670 Asus.
it seems PCI-E 5.0 on any board is £100 + to the cost.

eddiew · 17 Apr 2023 at 10:45

After similar research of my own I've mostly settled on the Asus ROG Strix X670E-A - which is exactly the same as the F, only silver :cry:

My only dislike is using the motherboard to force install Armoury Crate on Windows start up - but this can be disabled and ignored thereafter.

While a cheaper B650 option is still tempting, my general conclusion was that the cheapest board that does what I want costs a lot already and the jump to something pretty loaded with next-gen goodies isn't that large in relative terms. That and I spotted 2x64 of 6000 c30 memory on a good offer a few weeks ago, and on the whole the X670 boards seem to have better support for this.

My other candidate is the Gigabyte X670 Gaming X AX, which I've seen a few good things said about and apparently has the best tuned memory timings of all manufacturers (don't quote me!), but doesn't offer the optical out you're looking for. That said, I'm still in love with my Soundblaster Z after many years together. I don't know how the "crystalliser" works, but it works really well. Personal and subjective 2p is that if you can save the cost of an SB-Z by choosing a different motherboard, the overall combination is superior for sound quality. Maybe even consider picking one up 2nd hand, since it's not exactly going to have been ragged out in a mining rig :cry:

PaulW · 17 Apr 2023 at 12:46

eddiew said:
After similar research of my own I've mostly settled on the Asus ROG Strix X670E-A - which is exactly the same as the F, only silver My only dislike is using the motherboard to force install Armoury Crate on Windows start up - but this can be disabled and ignored thereafter.

While a cheaper B650 option is still tempting, my general conclusion was that the cheapest board that does what I want costs a lot already and the jump to something pretty loaded with next-gen goodies isn't that large in relative terms. That and I spotted 2x64 of 6000 c30 memory on a good offer a few weeks ago, and on the whole the X670 boards seem to have better support for this.

My other candidate is the Gigabyte X670 Gaming X AX, which I've seen a few good things said about and apparently has the best tuned memory timings of all manufacturers (don't quote me!), but doesn't offer the optical out you're looking for. That said, I'm still in love with my Soundblaster Z after many years together. I don't know how the "crystalliser" works, but it works really well. Personal and subjective 2p is that if you can save the cost of an SB-Z by choosing a different motherboard, the overall combination is superior for sound quality. Maybe even consider picking one up 2nd hand, since it's not exactly going to have been ragged out in a mining rig

All very good points eddie, i may even get a Soundblaster Z anyway for better audio eventually. its pretty affodable. i think the 64 gb of 6000 Cl30 though is out of my price range tbh.

eddiew · 17 Apr 2023 at 13:55

PaulW said:
i think the 64 gb of 6000 Cl30 though is out of my price range tbh.

I didn't want to pay for it either, but I do want to go nuts with Cities Skylines workshop mods when I get this thing built :cry:

And since no 64gb kits are particularly cheap, I applied the same logic... if I'm going to pay a lot anyway, then 20% more for something that's as good as it can be makes some sense. And at least with Ryzen 7000 and memory speed/latency the money delivers performance - unlike motherboards, which just charge you in bodyparts while supplying some USB ports.

Honestly if motherboard+cpu pricing keeps going the way it is, it'll be another 10 years before I do another build. I will stretch this new one out until it's absolute last gasp. Which really defeats the point of artificially inflating prices to raise profits because it starves the manufacturers in the future :confused:

FredFlint · 17 Apr 2023 at 15:32

PaulW said:
All very good points eddie, i may even get a Soundblaster Z anyway for better audio eventually. its pretty affodable. i think the 64 gb of 6000 Cl30 though is out of my price range tbh.

The new 48GB(2*24GB) kits will be out soon, the new 50% denser chips are looking like they may be good and not massively more expensive. Seen a 48GB 6400 c36 kit for ~£160(out of stock). Hopefully in a month or so, they should have some cheaper 5600/6000 kits.

PaulW · 17 Apr 2023 at 18:42

eddiew said:
it'll be another 10 years before I do another build

my last build is 10 years old. so like you this might be a build for a very long time and yes prices are crazy now i hate to see it when a 4 - 5k PC isn't even top of the line.

Tetras · 17 Apr 2023 at 19:38

PaulW said:
i think the 64 gb of 6000 Cl30 though is out of my price range tbh.

If you're buying an X3D they're a lot less sensitive to memory speed than the non-X3D CPUs, so I wouldn't worry about it too much, crappy 5600 or 6000 is fine.

blueseidboy · 18 Apr 2023 at 10:56

I chose the X670E-F too after much backwards and forwards over whether I want to spend more for things like USB4
One thing I am still not sure of though is if I put my 2 pcie4 NVME in the 2 CPU connected pcie5 slots will it drop my GPU to x8 or not?
googling seems to suggest a fairly equal split of people saying yes and no. I understand my CPU has 28 lane 4 unusable but are the 4 unusable the 4 that are linked to the x670e chip or something else?
last time I built a PC none of this was a concern (showing my age and my PCs age there!)

FredFlint · 18 Apr 2023 at 17:54

blueseidboy said:
I chose the X670E-F too after much backwards and forwards over whether I want to spend more for things like USB4
One thing I am still not sure of though is if I put my 2 pcie4 NVME in the 2 CPU connected pcie5 slots will it drop my GPU to x8 or not?
googling seems to suggest a fairly equal split of people saying yes and no. I understand my CPU has 28 lane 4 unusable but are the 4 unusable the 4 that are linked to the x670e chip or something else?
last time I built a PC none of this was a concern (showing my age and my PCs age there!)

Zen 4 has up-to 44 lanes, some gen 5 and some gen 4 depending on the chipset and board. My B650E has 36(total)/24(gen 5). Think 4 are used to connect the chipset but it could be 8?

https://www.amd.com/en/chipsets/am5

w00dy85 · 20 Apr 2023 at 12:33

eddiew said:
After similar research of my own I've mostly settled on the Asus ROG Strix X670E-A - which is exactly the same as the F, only silver My only dislike is using the motherboard to force install Armoury Crate on Windows start up - but this can be disabled and ignored thereafter.

I have the Asus ROG Strix X670E-A it's a great board, I wanted F and was in desperate need of a motherboard after I bought a Gigabyte Aorus Elite that turned out to be faulty. Though the silver on the motherboard go's well with my graphics card back plate. I also think the Asus bios is a lot better then Gigabytes and I am going to buy the 650 version for my son's PC build later in the year.

GoogalyMoogaly · 20 Apr 2023 at 12:57

blueseidboy said:
I chose the X670E-F too after much backwards and forwards over whether I want to spend more for things like USB4
One thing I am still not sure of though is if I put my 2 pcie4 NVME in the 2 CPU connected pcie5 slots will it drop my GPU to x8 or not?
googling seems to suggest a fairly equal split of people saying yes and no. I understand my CPU has 28 lane 4 unusable but are the 4 unusable the 4 that are linked to the x670e chip or something else?
last time I built a PC none of this was a concern (showing my age and my PCs age there!)

I think I read (in the user manual) that this is the case for the X670E-E but not the X670E-F.
Although it might be that the E-E has a 2nd PCIe 5.0 x16 slot and it's that which is affected...

Tetras · 20 Apr 2023 at 16:45

GoogalyMoogaly said:
I think I read (in the user manual) that this is the case for the X670E-E but not the X670E-F.
Although it might be that the E-E has a 2nd PCIe 5.0 x16 slot and it's that which is affected...

X670E can't have 3x M.2 PCI-E 5.0 slots, I think that's the problem.

Asus X670E E achieves this by taking 8 lanes from the graphics card (4 for the M.2 slot), which are also allocated (4 of them) to the second full length PCI-E slot. If you use either the second PCI-E slot, or the third PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slot, then the graphics card will have 8 lanes.

The X670E F only has one full length PCI-E 5.0 slot and it only has 2 PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slots. I believe this is possible without any switches being required for X670E, but not for X670.

rare · 20 Apr 2023 at 16:49

eddiew said:
fter similar research of my own I've mostly settled on the Asus ROG Strix X670E-A - which is exactly the same as the F, only silver

Only thing to note is on the E-A the VRM is a bit of a lower spec than the E-F, that’s about the only real difference though. I have NO idea why they do that. It’s especially frustrating as it’s the only white/silver Strix board, so why give it the lowest spec VRM? It’s still more than sufficient though, just an odd choice.

Quartz · 20 Apr 2023 at 16:58

PaulW said:
Optical S/PDIF out port ( need this due to my set up, if not its + £50 for a Soundcard)

You can get USB converters. I use a £22 Cubilux USB A to TOSLINK Optical Audio Adapter to hook up my headset and it's fine; I'm not an audiophile, though.

Do you really need such an expensive motherboard? The Asrock B650M-HDV/M.2 recently got well-reviewed by Hardware Unboxed. Thread here.

GoogalyMoogaly · 20 Apr 2023 at 18:02

Tetras said:
X670E can't have 3x M.2 PCI-E 5.0 slots, I think that's the problem.

Asus X670E E achieves this by taking 8 lanes from the graphics card (4 for the M.2 slot), which are also allocated (4 of them) to the second full length PCI-E slot. If you use either the second PCI-E slot, or the third PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slot, then the graphics card will have 8 lanes.

The X670E F only has one full length PCI-E 5.0 slot and it only has 2 PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slots. I believe this is possible without any switches being required for X670E, but not for X670.

Oh yeah, that'd make sense.

eddiew · 20 Apr 2023 at 22:08

rare said:
Only thing to note is on the E-A the VRM is a bit of a lower spec than the E-F, that’s about the only real difference though. I have NO idea why they do that. It’s especially frustrating as it’s the only white/silver Strix board, so why give it the lowest spec VRM? It’s still more than sufficient though, just an odd choice.

Huh, I had not realised that. I'm fairly sure it still did ok in that one comparison I could find, like VRM temps in the low 60s or something - and that was with a 7950X. I'll just be putting a 7800X3D into it, so like... half the power draw? Mostly what I'm wanting myself is a good quality board, with no moving parts to fail, with PCI-E 5 and ideally 4x m.2, because I want to put CPUs from this gen, next gen, and if possible, the gen after, into it. Basically I want to get 4-6 years out of it.

(That said, I'm not paying over £400 for a motherboard. Just no. Honestly the only reason I'm prepared to come over 300 is that there are zero options offering everything I want below that price. The ones that look close all have poor memory QVL lists and don't officially support the 64gb 6000 c30 kit I want to run.)