"Hi so all you need for a 7800x3d is a $125 board. Cheers." Love your stuff buildzoid, no idea what you're on about usually but this is why I watch your vids
No kidding, i lost 2 computers because of this. I got no idea whats wrong, the repair shops are far away so I never go... the ones nearby are clueless too. Shame I got a board for 450 dollars, and it didn't had a code. ;/
@@camotech1314 I never said he can't be biased towards a form factor. But form factors are not companies, they don't pay people money. Brands however are owned by companies and if he was biased towards let's say gigabyte, his recommendations would lose their value because he'd be recommending gigabyte just to promote the brand, not because the products are good. But ITX is not a fucking brand therefore ITX can't pay him money. Are you people dumb or what?
@@HuyV sadly almost no reviewers care about ITX, I'm sure that lack of competitive environment has at least some effect on the prices, ITX is so expensive
The USB4 on the B650E Taichi is more valuable than you are thinking. It allows peer to peer USB4 networking @ 40GB. With a Nas or even a server you have fantastic bandwidth. It defeats the need for complicated and more expensive networking solutions. So you can put a capture card on the Taichi and quickly move video, photo etc to the Nas and back without taking up the bottom pcie.
Exactly. I think the Taichi and especially the Tachi Lite now, are the best bang for the buck boards out there right now. They are the best future proof affordable high end boards. Their featureset is most likely the only one which will not be dated with the upcoming boards this year.
Always appreciate your content, I find your commentary to be on point, and helps cut through the marketing clutter and give us the information we need. My last three motherboards were all based off reviews and board breakdowns you put out there. Your overclocking content has helped me tremendously over the years, especially memory overclocking/timings/etc back during 1st gen Ryzen days ;)
I live in Brazil, by luck a store listed the price wrong and I got a ProArt X670E CREATOR WIFI for the price of $250 boards here. It was still not cheap compared to US (if you convert), but by ours standards it was a bargain.
Hey, nice to see my PG Lightning making it into the list. I have actually bough it for the same reason: a lot of connectivity and a lot of M.2 slots while being totally OK in all the other aspects. Sound is primitive but I have Nu audio sound card. Don't really think I would need anything more that that board. And its cheap (kinda)! P.S. Interesting how many ASRock boards are in the list. They are really making solid options!
Great overview of all the features most users are likely interested in. Also gave me a little joy that my board was on your list (lol...though when I got it right at AM5 release it was the only MATX B650 [Aorus Elite AX] I could buy ... I've been very happy with it as well). Regardless, thx for all your great work for the community!
@@Rolo4733 The coil whine kills me on the B650 variant of this board. I got two of the same model motherboards with the same issues. I'm starting to think it might be the RAM who is upsetting the motherboard, even though it is in the QVL.
@@EverywhereIgoIball Interesting. Because I have the same micro atx board in the video and am running GSkill Z5 Neo at 6000mhz CL30 with 0 problems even have pbo on to try and eek out some whine. Maybe I just got lucky idk but sorry to hear you had to RMA stuff that is always a pain in the ass
@@Rolo4733 if you didn’t had the buzzing so far, you’re clear. You RAM kit was my second choice. I’ll try to get a hold of another kit and test with it
@@666Necropsythis comment is aging well since the 7800x3d is being recognized as the 1080ti of cpu's and is actually climbing in price due to demand a whole year later
I have one of the Gigabyte B650E Master boards with the AVX issue. RAM stability was also a pain for the first couple months with XMP essentially not being useable until the March BIOS update. Credit to Gigabyte the board seems to be pretty solid running the new firmware.
It might seem weird but one of the reasons I went to X670E Taichi is that like it's X570 Taichi predecessor that I was using, it has great IOMMU groupings if you configure the BIOS correctly. I primarily use Linux with a Windows VM and single GPU passthrough for gaming and practically every PCIe device is in its own IOMMU group making passing the GPU through to the Windows VM very, very easy.
Can you elaborate on this? I ran Ubuntu for like 6 months like...16 years ago lol. But running Linux with a Windows VM for the purpose of gaming is basically the "dream" scenario for me back then overall, and im curious about how what youve described would provide an advantage over any given motherboard (id probably get a b650 or b650e)
@roberttaylor3118 so basically, in order to pass through PCIe cards such as graphics cards, you need to understand that all on board PCIe devices bundle in IOMMU groups. And with VFIO and libvirt/kvm, you need to pass through the ENTIRE IOMMU group the PCIe device is in as well as every other device in that group. Sometimes the IOMMU groupings on certain motherboards are....less than ideal for this and the graphics card or PCIe device you want may be bundled with something like the on-board memory controller of the mobo or something crazy like that and passing that through is gonna leave your PC in for a bad time and possibly crash/reboot or just act weird. Bc once you pass an IOMMU group through to a VM, every device in that group is now unavailable to the host OS. IOMMU groupings vary by mobo manufacturer because it's a grouping at the electrical level and depends on board wiring/design. The Taichi boards are great bc they have some settings underneath to reconfigure them so that pretty much every PCIe slot is its own IOMMU group with nothing else in it other than the PCIe card and any components or onboard devices directly attached to the PCIe card. Basically, the more isolated you can make the IOMMU groupings to only the devices you want to pass through, the more compatible your mobo is with VFIO. And since you can pass more than one IOMMU group at a time to a VM guest (you would just need to pass through every device in each IOMMU group passed through to the VM as well), the Taichi set up is ideal bc it lets you have more control over what gets passed through to the VM since every PCIe slot (as far as I have tested) is its own IOMMU group by itself. So in short, I can pass through the IOMMU group containing only the graphics card as well as say a separate IOMMU group only containing another PCIe card I want to pass through (like say a PCIe USB card for something like VR which doesn't play nice with USB passthrough on libvirt/kvm). This way, only those devices pass through but nothing else I don't want passes through.
NICE, I was thinking of doing this and it's great to hear a comment that found it successful. For the record, I haven't built the PC yet, I'm still drafting the parts list on pcpicker.
B650E Taichi is a phenomenal board for single GPU use. External IO is better than many 670 boards, pretty much all other 650 boards, has really good greater than 6000 DDR5 support. Boot times are down to sub 15 seconds from cold boot to desktop with a 4.0 nvme, still slower than good x570/Intel boards but better than many AM5. Things it's notciably missing that would be nice and are somewhat xpected at this price level: Vcore offset for x3d (can be reenabled by ambitious overclockers though) Safeboot/POST fail autorecovery 2 pin thermistor input 4th M.2 via chipset Fractional Eclk speeds eg 100.2, 100.4 etc instead whole steps eg 100, 101, 102. PS: Everyone should boycott Asus until at least Zen5 drops. Asus needs a fiscal lesson in not being shit.
@@skrajina8037 dude it's overkill for that lol. Basically every board here is, if you don't care about featureset and are only talking vrm performance.
I’m leaning this way too. What memory have you been running? I’m thinking about really pushing the limits of stability here and going with like a 6600 because I’ve heard the ASRock tend to be quite a bit more stable than some counterparts including those from Asus
Some more VRM testing video's would be cool, just to see how stable they are making them this generation. 25:45 The shut down issue is a bit concerning there for a mid-end high priced board, they ask these high prices but many boards have concerning issues.
ASUS does not need a postcode, it is useless if the board fries the cpu because the smell and look of a burned cpu + mobo can be diagnosed without the need of codes, they are misunderstood geniuses!
Cheers man! Lots of good info here. Asus doesn't really even remotely tempt me sadly with the shit going on over there these days but a nice insight to AM5 boards!
Using that B650E Riptide board, it's been a dream with Hynix A-die kit. Kept my Z97 Haswell system for almost a decade, so with Zen 5/6 compatibility that means I will almost certainly keep this board for a decade by which time a future GPU generation might actually benefit from the PCIe 5.0 slot.
Same here! Running a B650E Riptide with a 7700x with a G-Skill 32gb 6000mhz kit. Upgraded from a Z87 I7-4790K system that I used for almost 8 years. Glad I went with mobo that dosent pump 1.4v VSOC into my CPU 🤣
Same, though I actually took the steel legend. A micro ATX one would have been nice though. Problem is if you want a small b650e you already gotta go Mini ITX which is more expensive again.
@@aliasonarcotics 12 years ago boards were still on PCIe 2.0 slots. You'd see a tangible performance hit plugging a 4090 into one of those... PCIe bus bandwidth also matters when the GPU has insufficient VRAM.
@@HeavyGun1450 Exactly what I did myself, just with Z97 instead. Just be sure to update to UEFI 1.24. ASRock was running the CLDO_VDDP unnecessarily high. Mine dropped from 1.10 to 0.95v with no change to stability, and it even tightened some of the subtimings.
This is such a great video on AM5 motherboards. The HDV/M.2 is great to have there at the "bottom" but still being perfectly capable. So like you said, one has to have a specific reason to need anything more than that.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the reasoning for the B650E Aorus Master being priced so high is due to its limited availabilty...because it's discontinued. I don't think it ever had a proper restock.
Here in my country (Germany) they have a few B650E Aorus Master in stock (5+ in one shop ~400€, and more in other shops ~430€+) and new ones arrive in a few days. I had ordered a X670E Hero but didn't even look at it and sent it back. Have a B650E Aorus Master here and I'm curious what's this is all about (still waiting for new case and PSU so I can test). When looking at the serial number I think the manufacturing date is February 2023 (SN2308XXXX). I really hope it does not have any issues otherwise I have to rethink which one to get. Will be paired with a 7800X3D + G.Skill 6400 SK Hynix (without EXPO).
@@Z-e-r-o I'm in Austria, we can order it here too. I had ordered it but later I have decided to cancel the order and go for another board. Even if it could be fine at the beginning I feared issues would pop up later down the road, and I just didn't want to risk it.
I'm sure there are some consumers out there that purchase their motherboards purely based on aesthetics. I know that you BZ have mentioned before that you bought a certain motherboard because you were attracted to how fantastic it looked!
lol i'm still using my old Sound Card... the Software is just superior to all the Motherboard stuff i've seen... the Hardware isn't even the important part, just using optical port for my 5.1 System... and apparently a lot of modern boards don't even have a optical port anymore, so it seems like this is becoming more of a need again.
For the dual GPU config, putting 2 4090s is possible, you get a PCIE4.0x16 extension and plug it into the upper GPU slot, and then let duct tape to do the magic work🎉
Love the round up. I was really considering the ProArt but ended up going with the Ace. I use a 10gb fiber card now on my last two PC's but now that PCI slots are getting fewer and sharing bandwidth I wanted 10gb built in this time to keep those PCI slots free. Loving how many USB ports we have now, I use two usb hubs to handle all my gear as a tech/creator so hoping to reduce the number of things off a hub. Both of these boards share bandwidth with USB and the last PCI slot, but the Asus also shares bandwidth with one of the M2 slots. Though Asus has one dedicated video out for intergrated graphics, while MSI you have to sacrifice a USB port to use intergrated (matters when you have 4 monitors like me and want to keep one dedicated gpu spot open for a PCVR headset) I figured the ACE is going to do better with memory, has a bit more future expandability with PCI Gen 5. Just it will be a tight fit on the NV7 case I am building with. I do feel the ACE is overpriced, the Asus was as cheap as $450 and has USB4 but when already spending so much I went and spent the extra to not regret missing a couple of things the Ace has later on, especially as I do plan to upgrade to the 8000 series later. I admit I did kind of let aesthetics be one of the tie breakers, normally I do not do RGB and flashy. I go more workstation, quiet, stable but for some reason I am on this Cyberpunk kick and using a big window case so the Ace will look better in that setting.
After everything that happened with asus I was going to get a b650e-e for my 7800x3d. Ended up saying forget that and saw the msi x670e carbon on sale for 440 and went with that instead. Asus definitely needs to learn from what they did and I've heard some decent things on msi so I'll give em a shot.
bought myself b650e Aorus Master and MPG x670e Carbon, decided to stay with MPG x670e Carbon pci-e layout, port layout and good things I've heard about mobo prevailed
@@Avareee. that's pretty common in the industry nowadays. If it's something even remotely serious I believe they'll just roll keys/certs, should not be a big deal for consumers.
I bought the B650 live mixer despite only two sata ports cause it's pretty much the only fitting board that offers two x4 expansion slots... my plans are to install a sata controller in the wifi M.2 E key slot and SATA port multipliers if that works.
Big thanks, it was a needed full guide and i watched it about 2 times until i choose a motherboard but worth it since i had a big confusion about motherboards and their differences
ProArt: I expect the reasoning behind the PCIe slot spacing is that if they moved the second x8 down you wouldn't be able to fit a second graphics card anyway in most cases because it'd run into the PSU shroud (or case bottom). AFAIK Buildzoid tends to run all his in open bench so this is not a factor for him but I expect very few Creator boards are used that way. Not having optical out might be a bummer but AFAIK most that could care have long since transition either to Thunderbolt or USB connected audio equipment so again, might come down to knowing their target market. Thunderbolt: I expect it's a trademark/certification issue - at least earlier Intel refused to allow to use the name Thunderbolt and logos on AMD. Officially this was due to the Intel's driver not implementing "memory protection" on AMD. IE, Thunderbolt is PCIe so unless the driver sets things up "just right" it's possible to read any memory on the system via TB, often including things that even the OS can't read like Intel/AMD firmware TPM areas! My understanding is that this potentially could allow BitLocker bypass and "modify windows while running to accept any password". IIRC this requirement was added in TB4, a lot of earlier (TB1-3) drivers tends to not allow TB PCIe devices until you manually "approve" them in the OS due to this... This provides SOME protection but if the user had approved any external devices it wouldn't be hard to clone the PCI IDs and then use that on an attack device to bypass this, so the requirement makes sense, the issue is that Intel makes the TB chips and thus the DRIVER for it, and at least at that point has only bothered to implemented this on newer Intel CPUs. The fact that none of the AM5 motherboards mention Thunderbolt hints that this may still be the case.
I have the ProART whilst its not exactly thunderbolt what I was looking for was the transfer speed of 40/gbps I downloaded the thunderbolt intel controller directly from intel and my thunderbolt devices started working. Its great.
If you use the "ProArt X670E CREATOR WIFI" for professional audio, you have a dedicated soundcard, and it might even use the thunderbolt port. so this makes sense. It might also be a decent board for a hackintosh
The insanity of motherboard manufacturers makes me want to barf. $700 for a $350 motherboard. $700 is high end HEDT pricing (note - high end, not halo).
@Blue My current board is an Asrock X99 Taichi. 8 layer PCB, 40 PCIE lanes and quad channel memory. It launched at $220. Inflation adjusted, $280. I'd hope that a a consumer socket CPU with half that would cost much less.
The reason you’d want more lanes for PCI Gen 5 is for NVMe raid or similar use cases, one of the reasons I’m looking at motherboards now, I’m running out of space on AM4.
I waited for a while I finally bought my PC upgrade yesterday, the EU prices are pretty high and a lot of card are not in stock anyway wanting an ATX board I was going to go for a B650 Livemixer but the 2 sata port and the 250€ changed my mind. In the end I went for something in my budget with the IO I wanted, a gigabyte B650 gaming X AX. My purchase is arriving on tuesday so I hope all goes well.
a bit more on the ASUS ROG B650E-E Gaming Wifi: It does have a Thunderbolt "Header" on the Board that you can connect some cheap I/O slot port Card thingy to (Manual Page 1-20). You don't get it on the rear I/O but if you really need it, that sounds like an OK way to get it, i think. ...that header might even be present on lower cost Boards, i have not checked for that. Speaking of Headers, i was also really mad about so many AM5 Boards not having an Optical Port for Sound on the rear I/O anymore (my 5.1 System needs that), but then i noticed there is a SPDIF Header and you can just connect a optical port there, stuff is like 10 bucks... the functionality is there, just not as convenient to access. If you install a M.2 SSD into slot "B" (that is the one between the 2 lower PCIE Slots) it cuts PCIE_X16_1 from x16 to x8 (Manual: Page XI "connectors with shared bandwidth" ...this seems to be the only shared lanes though.) ...and of course that is one of the two M.2 PCIE 5.0 ports, not one of the 4.0 ports. So you probably want to use the 3 other M.2 Ports before touching this one. And can somebody please explain to me, why they aren't putting screwholes into Motherboards for M.2 2230 drives? I got a Steam Deck with a 512GB 2230 drive (the new ASUS ROG Ally also uses 2230), one day that device will die or get too old to bother with and i may want to throw the storage into one of my PCs... do you want me to glue it down with tape?! Is that one screw seriously saving you money? With 4 ports you'd think they add some variation between the less used lengths. ...and why are we putting all the M.2 SSDs behind the GPU anyway? If your SSD craps out, now you have to disassemble half the PC to get to it instead of just pulling out a SATA and Power cable... i'm not sure i'm a fan of M.2 being done this way. I'd rather just have a plugin card for one of the PCI-E ports instead. ...and more PCI-E ports in general. I am also not a fan of the reduction of PCIE ports in general. First they take the 3.25" drive bays out of cases ... now PCIE slots get reduced to the bare minimum. ...PCs are getting less and less modular in design and without those slots being available there are going to be less companies attempting to put innovative stuff in there. I want the crazy days back when they made cigarette lighters for the 5.25" bays, manual Fan Controllers and drive bays... now i need to plug everything into USB and have it awkwardly dangling around... so boring.
The B650 Livemixer is also interesting because besides the x16 slot one of the x4 slots is connected directly to the CPU. This can be beneficial with capture cards or audio.
37:33 Thunderbolt and USB4 are not quite the same. That and potentially a trademark concern is why I think mb manufacturers shy away from calling it TB4. Even if that intel chip is a TB4 controller, I think there are platform specific differences. Level1techs did a video about thunderbolt networking and there was a difference between amd systems and intel systems.
You should add a temp sensor header to your list of features. A lot of motherboards don't seem to like adding 2 pins that cost barely anything to motherboards and Asus has been removing that from a lot of their boards lately. Doesn't sound like that big of a deal but it's very, VERY nice to have for custom loop builds, so you don't have to have your fans constantly ramp up and down for short loads that isn't going to affect the water temperature. I know you can add it via external fan controllers, but those things are ass to work with, break every 2 weeks, and don't work on linux for us neeks who like having an OS that respects it's users.
I've never had a motherboard with that feature, but it could work well for air coolers and AIOs too. Just thermal epoxy the sensor to the heatsink base or the radiator inlet manifold. My fan control script uses CPU die temperature, and I'm kind of "guessing" at package temperature with a thermal load line and a lowpass filter.
When I was checking around the Linux kernel with Gentoo I found out there is aquacomputer drivers ready for it, so if you have their external devices it will work under gnu+linux(kernel 5.10+) with your favourite temperature monitoring software. However I deal with itx often and trying to find a itx board with those headers is a pain in the butt.
this.. i have an x470 c7h and love the feature. Found the middle tier gigabyte b650 board.. the auros pro? to be the cheapest option to have a temp sensor. The german proce compare site geizhals has a connector layout of every motherboard in the product photos. Fastest way to find a motherboard with this feature.
Being a first time builder, it really gives me a peace of mind to see Buildzoid giving a recommendation on the B650E PG Riptide 😊. Thanks! Just wondering how this board can stand the test of time as I planned to use this for >10 years with upgrades along the way
There's really no failure points on a motherboard and as long as VRMs aren't at 110°C (which they aren't on your board, they are really good on yours) it just runs forever.. If you have an AIO you will need to buy a second one halfway through those 10 years though.
@@imnotusingmyrealname4566 yeah like my budget pc from 2009 still works and it has something like Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H for like 80/90$ .. mobos will not end your pc, just prolly avoid shitty ones ( Asus Prime mostly lately)
Nice roundup. I went with the proart x670e. Stability has been an absolute mess, but made the decision for pretty much the exact reason mentioned; the combination of i/o (especially dual x8 + thunderbolt). The ProArt b650 also has DP in btw, and I think there may be another one or two boards out there supporting this. Unfortunately I've still not had success getting my silly LG 5k 27MD5KLB working at native resolution through it (tb3 input *only*). Was also having issues with the wireless drivers crashing so swapped that out for an intel 6e adapter. Plus of course all the asus bs currently going on. As for the comments on why someone might have so many m.2 drives - IMO a real use case is keeping multi OS installs separate. No need to worry about updating GRUB or windows doing weird stuff when it detects another os or another windows boot drive present at time of installation. Real data goes on a separate drive, and I don't have to worry when it comes time to nuke a boot drive and install something else. Less cables is a nice little bonus too if you're constantly screwing around adding/removing random hardware too..lol
I keep reading that stability on the ProArt X670E is terrible and there are also a bunch of issues getting high amounts of RAM working. What are the primary issues you're facing WRT stability? Would be very eager to hear as I was rather tempted to get this board eventually. Thanks for taking the time!
I too have the X670 Proart. The only issue I've had so far (after latest official BIOS) is the iGPU driver eventually crashing in Windows. I haven't been booted into Linux for long enough periods of time to notice any issue there. It's been rock solid if I use my 6800XT. I don't rely on the wireless at all though, and sparingly use the BT. I typically dual boot Windows and Linux, and use virtualization inside both. My machine also acts as a NAS server with Truenas in a VM in both, so a 3rd M.2 could be used as a L2 ARC. Pretty much any other native booting is fine with externals or PXE. I think the bigger part of him questioning the 4 M.2 is that they are all Gen 5. There aren't really many use cases to have that much gen 5 storage. You're either moving data in/out/around or processing it some way. Thunderbolt is the fastest external interface, but no one makes a NVME enclosure actually capable of maxing out even a Gen 3 NVME. 10Gbe is only 1250MBps. The fastest a 7950X(3D) can decomp with 7zip is around 2.9GBps, and compression is only ~150MBps. Outside of AES encryption, most everything else you could ask of the CPU isn't going to have the throughput for even chipset bottlenecks to actually matter. Typical activity barely needs more than sata throughput.
With the MSI carbon. If you are running only one GPU, but 2 m.2 SSDS. Will you get gen 5 x16 on the GPU and gen 5 x4 on both m.2s? So no cutting on PCI lanes?
B650e aorus master has been flawless so far I got one when i picked up the 7950x3d at launch. I got it for $350 at microcenter, on paper the asrock taichi has a better vrm setup but the master seems to run cooler from the test I’ve seen but that was the boards i was looking at when i did my build. I seen no reason at all to get an X board this time around. Also really like having a backplate on the motherboard makes it fill more premium. My main things were good vrm and a post code reader.
Can you give me any updates? I am planning to buy the same board but I am scared of the negative reviews about it having black screens and all that. Thanks 🙏
@@zenithchan1646 Just buy it if you want it. _Every_ board is gonna have 1 star negative reviews saying they arrived DOA or massive glitches. People who wouldn't leave a review if the board worked fine will leave a bad review if it doesn't work, because anger is a strong motivator and this phenomenon leads to skewed reviews. Basically, just ignore negative reviews on motherboards unless you see evidence that actually indicates a widespread problem. Look to see if there's forum threads or reddit posts about it, if not, then it's just somebody who got a lemon and got pissed enough to leave a bad review.
I'm setting up a USB4 aic on the riptide 650E to connect to a mitx Nas that will be using the Asus 670E-I giving me 40gb transfers and a small footprint. Not sure if I can bond the two 40s into an 80. Microsoft didn't mention it on their page. Now the negative is that you can't do an internal capture card with that setup.
Great Video Buildzoid! For me the bottom line of a motherboard is not having an Intel network chip. I've had too many strange behaviors including random lag spikes and disconnects with realtek ones (at alt-tab for example but you could trigger it in many, many ways) likewise a close parent that's also in this hobby for many years, same thing, random disconnects. (An extra: They were mainly by far bad experiences with network but not restricted to it, i have also one Asus Rampage Gene 4 X79 with Intel lan working flawlessly but they used a realtek chip controller to extend the sata ports of the board, this controller, right now is nothing but fully dead from long ago, at least 4 years now, the board works but without those satas) The Realtek latency measured by the DPC Latency (Deferred Procedure Calls) due to the bad drivers are also not good (there's a good article by PCGamer called "Motherboards with 'Killer' network adapters aren't worth your money", it's a few years old but they did a good work there). Unfortunately Asrock due to this "Dragon Killer" brand network (that is mostly just a realtek rebranding with makeup) use it in all their mobos. Others manufacturers tends to reserve it for the cheaper boards like Asus that have been using Intel network controllers in all their boards at Strix level and up (and some TUF). Gigabyte the same, starting usually at Ultra and some PRO. MSI at top boards at top chipsets like Z690+ and X670 with all GodLike, ACE and Unify models and they various versions, except when they use the Marvel 10G lan instead in a board that provides only with 1 lan.
@Buildzoid... one pet peeve, which led me not to buy the MSI X670E Carbon are the onboard GPU connectors. The DP connector is a hoax. It does no support the bandwidth necessary to be called version 1.4... but MSI claims is it. I'm used for many motherboard manufacturers cheating on the HDMI port (stating 2.1, but only 2.0 bandwidth). MSI is afair the only vendor cheating on the DP. My choice for X670E is the ASRock X670E Pro RS. Apart from one strange M.2 connector (x2 / SATA) everthing else is directly connected to the CPU / chipset with no switched or extra controllers.
Thank you for the video. I never buy a motherboard without watching a Buildzoid review of it. Wish you'd use time stamps or chapters though for a little easier navigating.
2:35 - Wendell from L1Techs reviewed the ASRock Phantom Gaming B650E PG-ITX wifi recently and it did not have a BIOS Flashback button, labelled USB port or any reference to such functionality in the manual or UEFI - is this feature truly mandatory, even on tiny boards like mini ITX? 13:20 - Man that Asus ProArt is a dissappointing board. It's great in so many ways (Displayport alt mode on the USB-C AND Displayport IN?!) but feels very 'prosumer', even more so than earlier generations. I don't think the missing POST code segmented display is a coincidence or cost optimisation.
Another nice overview with some interesting points made. Funny, I thought the best quality mobo ASUS produced was on the ITX format, as everyone seemed to be compalaining about their ATX boards. Not sure ASUS AM5 mobos will be on anyones list now after the recent warranty voids from using their own BIOS. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
@@kennethpereyda5707 AMD took responsibility and patched it out with the new agesa version quickly. Asus on the other hand has been pretty dodgy and shady and even their beta bios doesn't fix the absurd soc voltages that can fry your cpu.
Requirements: 2 USB3 headers for 4 front USB3 + 1 type C , heaps of Fan headers, Postcode, wifi, and dont care about other pcie slots ...have a monster that makes them useless. And I like something that looks good and doesnt have problems ie Rog Hero 670e btw: does the future AMD6 ?? cpus will require all the extra power stages etc ? btw2: would love to see motherboards with no SSD's .... dont use them and its so good for cabling
TWO x16 PCI slots AND a Gen 4 x4 slot! All usable at the same time, available on two Asus boards: PRIME X670E-PRO WIFI and TUF GAMING X670E-PLUS WIFI (nearly identical boards). I don't think any other X670/E boards on this list can do that. Few AMD boards period can do that. Why would you want it? GPU, 10Gbe port(s), + specialty card like video capture, or for me, an Optane card for cache use. I'd be fine with a x16 and two x4s, but even that is hard to find on AMD. More better slots are really helpful on Workstations and probably a more common use case than OPs 2 x8 for testing platforms.
10gbe and thunderbolt are relevant for video production people who use a NAS and handle lots of large files. Audio engineers use interfaces that connect through usb, which then goes out to mixing monitors via xlr.
I just want to know which boards will give me the fewest headaches. Meaning: will this die on me before I'm done using it; will the features and stuff I plug into it work; will the system be stable. I'm rather sick of motherboard headaches.
I know its not possible to cover all AM5 boards in a video, so maybe two videos, one for B650 and another for X670 could have been done. I feel Buildzoid missed the best $300 X670E board, which is the Asrock X670E Pro Rs. Its maybe $20 more than PG Lightening, but has 1 PCIEx5 NVME, 3 PCIEx4 (1 from CPU) NVME, 1 NVME/SATA Hybrid, 6 SATA Ports, Optical out, WIFI, and no bandwidth sharing among any of the IO/ports (like many of the Asus boards). The downsides are no Post LED, only one x16 PCIE5 slot (2 PCIE4 x1 slots), no CMOS Reset Button (you have to short a jumper) and no eCLK OC.
My requirements when I picked my AM5 motherboard were -Lots of USB's -atleast 1 Gen 5 M.2 slot -atleast 3 M.2 slots total -Optical audio and everybodys faveorite.... colour :P Maybe I should care about the external clock generator for my 7800 X3D though, woops.
Aah not enough tea yet this morning. I was confused looking at the Aorus Elite thinking, mine looks different what the hell... I have the full size B650 (non M) version. I'm happy with it. And yeah the M.2 cooling plates are good, they actually dissipate heat. The M.2 plates on my X570 Aorus Master seemed to be more like a nice looking cover. Perhaps the drives just weren't getting as warm.
I just got the X670E Steel Legend from Asrock, and I wish It had the code thing, cus it cost like 450 euro here... pricy. Also, i wish it had a bios reset button. With those 2 exceptions, the board is amazing and i love it. The cheapest i could get here. I dunno why suddenly motherboards cost an arm, but that's life.
@@skrajina8037 The 7800X3D was 600 euro here, that's how much I had to give them, with tax and all. Its supposed to be 450-500, but here its way more :P
Regarding the 4 x PCIe gen 5.0 slots, some workloads are bottlenecked by storage speed (ex: when a model is much bigger than VRAM), but you can have several M.2 drives in parallel.
Sadly I bought one. I'm praying it's just confirmation bias and it isn't that prevalent. But in the event it fails I'm getting another ASRock. The build I made for my partner has a pg lightning and it's going strong.
@@JorgeFabrizio Just don't update to the latest BIOS it provides till you know from the community that it's safe to flash otherwise it will not only kill your motherboard but your expensive CPU also & it's asus so bye-bye to your warranty because you flash their bios which will void the warranty 😂.
i totally agree that a lot of usb connectivity is good, but... i don't understand why. it's just an inherent sense. i gotta ask, what do you use 8+ usb ports for
Really? There are so many devices USB devices one might want to use, LIke: DAC(s), Mic, Mouse, Keyboard, Numpad, Streamdeck(s) / Marcopad(s), Drawing pad, Game controller(s), External drive(s), USB-Hub, etc, etc. It shouldn't be hard to imagine a use case where 8 ports is a minimum requirement.
I watched the HUB B650 mobo roundup and was leaning towards the Aorus Pro AX, and the PG Lightning. These seem to be a decent price, good VRMs, 3x m.2 slots. This video is good to get some context. E.g. the 7k series don't really need beefy vrms cos they are not power supply limited. Good to know. I think i would still get something with decent VRMs in case 8k or 9k series need it cos my plan is to upgrade to AM5 7800x3d from an i7 3770k and when AM5 is end of life, get whatever the latest X3D cpu is at the time and be good for another 4r5 yrs. So keeping in mind some features to future proof.
Which board did you ultimately choose? I am in the same position, looking for a "future proof" board which last until the very last generation of AM5 X3D CPUs (zen6/9000 series?). Thank you!
If there is anything you should learn from this video is that you should not overspend. Spending a lot of money on a board with a PCIe gen5 M.2 slot is useless if you are using a gen4 SSD, don't buy 7200 MHz DDR when your processor can only provide 5200 MHz. My current,cheap, motherboard had some bad reviews because it does not have PCIe gen5, only 5 USB3 ports, no 5.1 or digital audio and no blinkenlights. But it has all I need, allowing me to buy more memory and a one level better GPU card which is great since I use this system for 3D scanning which is memory and GPU hungry
I know this isn't exactly timely, but I'd love to see a list of motherboards for AM5, or even intel boards, that have more "legacy" IO layouts. (or at least some tips on what might serve my niche use-case I work in audio engineering and VFX, and the "normal" (meaning not m.2 slot) PCIe situation is pretty dire right now, whether you get intel or AMD. I'm forced to run a GPU, an SDI monitoring/playback card, a multichannel ADAT/SP-DIF interface, 6+ SATA ports for dozens of terabytes project hot-storage, and a ram intent cache card to ensure that storage isn't slow. This is necessary for my work, there's no getting around having this hardware built-in unless I fork out a ton of money for extremely fast network storage, or a bunch of outboard gear for AV switching. Because of this, I've been stuck on an old processor with an old chipset, because until the last year or two, it handled what I needed it to without complaining. FP audio, native 6k+ source footage that need HFR 4k timelines, etc. have changed that. The problem is, now that I need to migrate to a new platform, there doesn't seem to be anything that will even let you plug in 5 PCIe devices, much less run them at the same time. I used to be able to do the above just fine on a cheap Z270 board. Building out something on a workstation chipset ends up being as expensive as the other options, and I'd really like to avoid that too. Thanks for all your analysis of this topic, I find your content very useful in informing my own decisions.
0:28 B650M HDV/M.2
4:54 B650M AORUS ELITE AX
6:55 B650E Riptide WIFI
9:50 B650 LiveMixer
13:12 ProArt B650 CREATOR
16:50 X670E PG Lightning
20:38 ROG STRIX B650E-E GAMING WIFI
24:50 B650E AORUS MASTER
29:06 B650E Taichi
33:01 MPG X670E CARBON WIFI
36:40 ProArt X670E CREATOR WIFI
41:54 X670E Taichi
44:45 MEG X670E ACE
47:36 Final thoughts
RIP no Mini ITX boards lmao.
@@ShadowbannedAccount there's 5 of them. Not exactly hard to compare the spec sheets yourself.
Wow the Aorus b650e elite ax has a com header. That’s interesting lol
@@ShadowbannedAccountI got the B650i Aorus Ultra because its the only one with 3 m.2 slots
@@tommyboi4872 I got the ASRock B650E PG ITX because it's the cheapest one that has a 10-phase VRM with a PCIe 5.0 x16 AND a PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2.
"Hi so all you need for a 7800x3d is a $125 board. Cheers."
Love your stuff buildzoid, no idea what you're on about usually but this is why I watch your vids
Every motherboard regardless of price should have a freaking post code. It's one of the most basic features.
literally just bought an expensive ass mobo and it doesnt even have post codes. wtf? like my $50 mobo from 2010 had post fucking codes.
No kidding, i lost 2 computers because of this. I got no idea whats wrong, the repair shops are far away so I never go... the ones nearby are clueless too. Shame I got a board for 450 dollars, and it didn't had a code. ;/
This is exactly why I can't even upgrade from my MSI B550 Unify for a year or two. It has a post code.
High-end motherboards that are like 2 generations old I found them at 100 dollars on eBay when they originally costed around 250 dollars. Crazy.
@@ezlef2 Or the manufacturer could put the $5 of parts to have a freaking post code like they freaking should.
I love the way you are not biased towards any brand and you are representing all boards objectively. Another great video as expected.
But he's biased against itx 😢
@@HuyV ITX is a form factor, not a brand.
@@fy7589 you can be biased towards anything.
@@camotech1314 I never said he can't be biased towards a form factor. But form factors are not companies, they don't pay people money. Brands however are owned by companies and if he was biased towards let's say gigabyte, his recommendations would lose their value because he'd be recommending gigabyte just to promote the brand, not because the products are good. But ITX is not a fucking brand therefore ITX can't pay him money. Are you people dumb or what?
@@HuyV sadly almost no reviewers care about ITX, I'm sure that lack of competitive environment has at least some effect on the prices, ITX is so expensive
The USB4 on the B650E Taichi is more valuable than you are thinking. It allows peer to peer USB4 networking @ 40GB. With a Nas or even a server you have fantastic bandwidth. It defeats the need for complicated and more expensive networking solutions. So you can put a capture card on the Taichi and quickly move video, photo etc to the Nas and back without taking up the bottom pcie.
Exactly. I think the Taichi and especially the Tachi Lite now, are the best bang for the buck boards out there right now. They are the best future proof affordable high end boards. Their featureset is most likely the only one which will not be dated with the upcoming boards this year.
Always appreciate your content, I find your commentary to be on point, and helps cut through the marketing clutter and give us the information we need. My last three motherboards were all based off reviews and board breakdowns you put out there. Your overclocking content has helped me tremendously over the years, especially memory overclocking/timings/etc back during 1st gen Ryzen days ;)
I live in Brazil, by luck a store listed the price wrong and I got a ProArt X670E CREATOR WIFI for the price of $250 boards here. It was still not cheap compared to US (if you convert), but by ours standards it was a bargain.
great. You can now provide displayport input to the motherboard so you can output it with thunderbolt 4. Great futures.
BRO I'm so jealous what the hell LOL
Hey, nice to see my PG Lightning making it into the list. I have actually bough it for the same reason: a lot of connectivity and a lot of M.2 slots while being totally OK in all the other aspects. Sound is primitive but I have Nu audio sound card. Don't really think I would need anything more that that board. And its cheap (kinda)!
P.S. Interesting how many ASRock boards are in the list. They are really making solid options!
Like mine to. It was a gamble because there were no reviews of it when I bought it
What about Asrock's BIOS? Is it good?
@@geeker9545 its OK. Not great not terrible. It has all the needed stuff but organization could have been better
Great overview of all the features most users are likely interested in. Also gave me a little joy that my board was on your list (lol...though when I got it right at AM5 release it was the only MATX B650 [Aorus Elite AX] I could buy ... I've been very happy with it as well). Regardless, thx for all your great work for the community!
No coil whine?
I have that Gigabyte b65pm Aorus Elite AX and love it. Handles my 7800x3d and ram tuning with ease. Really happy that I went with it.
Same. Everyone says the board has terrible coil whine but I haven't noticed any coming from my B650M Aorus board. Been solid
@@Rolo4733 The coil whine kills me on the B650 variant of this board. I got two of the same model motherboards with the same issues. I'm starting to think it might be the RAM who is upsetting the motherboard, even though it is in the QVL.
@@EverywhereIgoIball Interesting. Because I have the same micro atx board in the video and am running GSkill Z5 Neo at 6000mhz CL30 with 0 problems even have pbo on to try and eek out some whine. Maybe I just got lucky idk but sorry to hear you had to RMA stuff that is always a pain in the ass
Should also mention I've only had the board for 2 months now so time will tell
@@Rolo4733 if you didn’t had the buzzing so far, you’re clear. You RAM kit was my second choice. I’ll try to get a hold of another kit and test with it
Just about to make my build and been waiting on this forever, perfect timing for me
1st mistake, going with AM5
@@666Necropsy lmao sure buddy 😂
@@666Necropsythis comment is aging well since the 7800x3d is being recognized as the 1080ti of cpu's and is actually climbing in price due to demand a whole year later
I have one of the Gigabyte B650E Master boards with the AVX issue. RAM stability was also a pain for the first couple months with XMP essentially not being useable until the March BIOS update. Credit to Gigabyte the board seems to be pretty solid running the new firmware.
Hi Bro, I'm confusing with this motherboard ... (AXV, EXPO, Black screen issues..)
How way to bypass AVX issue ?
Which is Bios version right now ?
@@duycuong7693 I'm using BIOS F4 released March 22
@@doilookwasted2u AVX issue persists with last firmware?
@@NovoRei I've only seen it when running Prime95
It might seem weird but one of the reasons I went to X670E Taichi is that like it's X570 Taichi predecessor that I was using, it has great IOMMU groupings if you configure the BIOS correctly. I primarily use Linux with a Windows VM and single GPU passthrough for gaming and practically every PCIe device is in its own IOMMU group making passing the GPU through to the Windows VM very, very easy.
Can you elaborate on this? I ran Ubuntu for like 6 months like...16 years ago lol. But running Linux with a Windows VM for the purpose of gaming is basically the "dream" scenario for me back then overall, and im curious about how what youve described would provide an advantage over any given motherboard (id probably get a b650 or b650e)
@roberttaylor3118 so basically, in order to pass through PCIe cards such as graphics cards, you need to understand that all on board PCIe devices bundle in IOMMU groups. And with VFIO and libvirt/kvm, you need to pass through the ENTIRE IOMMU group the PCIe device is in as well as every other device in that group. Sometimes the IOMMU groupings on certain motherboards are....less than ideal for this and the graphics card or PCIe device you want may be bundled with something like the on-board memory controller of the mobo or something crazy like that and passing that through is gonna leave your PC in for a bad time and possibly crash/reboot or just act weird. Bc once you pass an IOMMU group through to a VM, every device in that group is now unavailable to the host OS.
IOMMU groupings vary by mobo manufacturer because it's a grouping at the electrical level and depends on board wiring/design.
The Taichi boards are great bc they have some settings underneath to reconfigure them so that pretty much every PCIe slot is its own IOMMU group with nothing else in it other than the PCIe card and any components or onboard devices directly attached to the PCIe card.
Basically, the more isolated you can make the IOMMU groupings to only the devices you want to pass through, the more compatible your mobo is with VFIO. And since you can pass more than one IOMMU group at a time to a VM guest (you would just need to pass through every device in each IOMMU group passed through to the VM as well), the Taichi set up is ideal bc it lets you have more control over what gets passed through to the VM since every PCIe slot (as far as I have tested) is its own IOMMU group by itself.
So in short, I can pass through the IOMMU group containing only the graphics card as well as say a separate IOMMU group only containing another PCIe card I want to pass through (like say a PCIe USB card for something like VR which doesn't play nice with USB passthrough on libvirt/kvm). This way, only those devices pass through but nothing else I don't want passes through.
NICE, I was thinking of doing this and it's great to hear a comment that found it successful. For the record, I haven't built the PC yet, I'm still drafting the parts list on pcpicker.
B650E Taichi is a phenomenal board for single GPU use. External IO is better than many 670 boards, pretty much all other 650 boards, has really good greater than 6000 DDR5 support.
Boot times are down to sub 15 seconds from cold boot to desktop with a 4.0 nvme, still slower than good x570/Intel boards but better than many AM5.
Things it's notciably missing that would be nice and are somewhat xpected at this price level:
Vcore offset for x3d (can be reenabled by ambitious overclockers though)
Safeboot/POST fail autorecovery
2 pin thermistor input
4th M.2 via chipset
Fractional Eclk speeds eg 100.2, 100.4 etc instead whole steps eg 100, 101, 102.
PS: Everyone should boycott Asus until at least Zen5 drops. Asus needs a fiscal lesson in not being shit.
Bro would you say this MOBO is good for 7950x if I wanna render 24/7 on my PC?
Thanks
@@skrajina8037 dude it's overkill for that lol. Basically every board here is, if you don't care about featureset and are only talking vrm performance.
@@miniweeddeerz1820 what would u recommend for rendering 24/7?
I’m leaning this way too. What memory have you been running? I’m thinking about really pushing the limits of stability here and going with like a 6600 because I’ve heard the ASRock tend to be quite a bit more stable than some counterparts including those from Asus
Is that sub 15s boot with or without MCR? Leaning towards ASRock myself but a friend has like 3+ mins boot with MCR off :/
After two, 4+ hour streams, you post your shortest RUclips video in recent years lol 👍
Some more VRM testing video's would be cool, just to see how stable they are making them this generation.
25:45 The shut down issue is a bit concerning there for a mid-end high priced board, they ask these high prices but many boards have concerning issues.
Is there an updated 2024 version of this?
Thanks for this. I've never seen your channel and I'm buying a motherboard for the 7950x that I just got. Very helpful and actually I learned a lot.
ASUS does not need a postcode, it is useless if the board fries the cpu because the smell and look of a burned cpu + mobo can be diagnosed without the need of codes, they are misunderstood geniuses!
Cheers man! Lots of good info here. Asus doesn't really even remotely tempt me sadly with the shit going on over there these days but a nice insight to AM5 boards!
Using that B650E Riptide board, it's been a dream with Hynix A-die kit. Kept my Z97 Haswell system for almost a decade, so with Zen 5/6 compatibility that means I will almost certainly keep this board for a decade by which time a future GPU generation might actually benefit from the PCIe 5.0 slot.
Same here! Running a B650E Riptide with a 7700x with a G-Skill 32gb 6000mhz kit. Upgraded from a Z87 I7-4790K system that I used for almost 8 years. Glad I went with mobo that dosent pump 1.4v VSOC into my CPU 🤣
Same, though I actually took the steel legend. A micro ATX one would have been nice though. Problem is if you want a small b650e you already gotta go Mini ITX which is more expensive again.
there is no way in hell gpus will even come close to saturating a pcie gen4 x16 slot within the lifespan of your am5 motherboard
@@aliasonarcotics 12 years ago boards were still on PCIe 2.0 slots. You'd see a tangible performance hit plugging a 4090 into one of those... PCIe bus bandwidth also matters when the GPU has insufficient VRAM.
@@HeavyGun1450 Exactly what I did myself, just with Z97 instead. Just be sure to update to UEFI 1.24. ASRock was running the CLDO_VDDP unnecessarily high. Mine dropped from 1.10 to 0.95v with no change to stability, and it even tightened some of the subtimings.
The best objective review I seen before!
This is such a great video on AM5 motherboards. The HDV/M.2 is great to have there at the "bottom" but still being perfectly capable. So like you said, one has to have a specific reason to need anything more than that.
Yup, after watching this review Im going to get the asrock HDV board, and pump the extra money to gpu.
I’m been waiting for this one video :)
Thank you, this is much needed info trying to decipher all the options out there.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the reasoning for the B650E Aorus Master being priced so high is due to its limited availabilty...because it's discontinued. I don't think it ever had a proper restock.
Yes, but there are multiple reports of this shutting down under load.
Probably has it's issues, and that's why it got discontinued
Here in my country (Germany) they have a few B650E Aorus Master in stock (5+ in one shop ~400€, and more in other shops ~430€+) and new ones arrive in a few days.
I had ordered a X670E Hero but didn't even look at it and sent it back.
Have a B650E Aorus Master here and I'm curious what's this is all about (still waiting for new case and PSU so I can test).
When looking at the serial number I think the manufacturing date is February 2023 (SN2308XXXX).
I really hope it does not have any issues otherwise I have to rethink which one to get.
Will be paired with a 7800X3D + G.Skill 6400 SK Hynix (without EXPO).
@@Z-e-r-o I'm in Austria, we can order it here too. I had ordered it but later I have decided to cancel the order and go for another board. Even if it could be fine at the beginning I feared issues would pop up later down the road, and I just didn't want to risk it.
I'm sure there are some consumers out there that purchase their motherboards purely based on aesthetics. I know that you BZ have mentioned before that you bought a certain motherboard because you were attracted to how fantastic it looked!
These are good info and thanks!. I'm actually resarching and scratch my head to understand the differences.
X670E Taichi does not do passthrough, but it does have the Thunderbolt ports connected to the iGPU so video out is possible.
I love your motherboard reviews. 👌🏼
I just plug a gpu into my motherboard but it's cool to hear what power-users look for in a purchase. Thanks BZ
lol i'm still using my old Sound Card...
the Software is just superior to all the Motherboard stuff i've seen... the Hardware isn't even the important part, just using optical port for my 5.1 System... and apparently a lot of modern boards don't even have a optical port anymore, so it seems like this is becoming more of a need again.
Great format for a video! Really enjoyed it.
For the dual GPU config, putting 2 4090s is possible, you get a PCIE4.0x16 extension and plug it into the upper GPU slot, and then let duct tape to do the magic work🎉
Galaxy brain
Bro’s knowledge from mcdonalds
Yay! Thank you! I have been waiting for this!!
I think it's worth mentioning the Taichi also has thunderbolt support.
Both B650E and X670E
Love the round up. I was really considering the ProArt but ended up going with the Ace. I use a 10gb fiber card now on my last two PC's but now that PCI slots are getting fewer and sharing bandwidth I wanted 10gb built in this time to keep those PCI slots free.
Loving how many USB ports we have now, I use two usb hubs to handle all my gear as a tech/creator so hoping to reduce the number of things off a hub.
Both of these boards share bandwidth with USB and the last PCI slot, but the Asus also shares bandwidth with one of the M2 slots.
Though Asus has one dedicated video out for intergrated graphics, while MSI you have to sacrifice a USB port to use intergrated (matters when you have 4 monitors like me and want to keep one dedicated gpu spot open for a PCVR headset)
I figured the ACE is going to do better with memory, has a bit more future expandability with PCI Gen 5.
Just it will be a tight fit on the NV7 case I am building with.
I do feel the ACE is overpriced, the Asus was as cheap as $450 and has USB4 but when already spending so much I went and spent the extra to not regret missing a couple of things the Ace has later on, especially as I do plan to upgrade to the 8000 series later.
I admit I did kind of let aesthetics be one of the tie breakers, normally I do not do RGB and flashy. I go more workstation, quiet, stable but for some reason I am on this Cyberpunk kick and using a big window case so the Ace will look better in that setting.
always love the round ups, even if normally buy something completely different lol just lots of info on what to look for and pay attention to
After everything that happened with asus I was going to get a b650e-e for my 7800x3d. Ended up saying forget that and saw the msi x670e carbon on sale for 440 and went with that instead. Asus definitely needs to learn from what they did and I've heard some decent things on msi so I'll give em a shot.
bought myself b650e Aorus Master and MPG x670e Carbon, decided to stay with MPG x670e Carbon pci-e layout, port layout and good things I've heard about mobo prevailed
Well MSI got hacked recently, lost their keys or something.
@@Avareee. that's pretty common in the industry nowadays. If it's something even remotely serious I believe they'll just roll keys/certs, should not be a big deal for consumers.
I bought the B650 live mixer despite only two sata ports cause it's pretty much the only fitting board that offers two x4 expansion slots... my plans are to install a sata controller in the wifi M.2 E key slot and SATA port multipliers if that works.
Did it work?
Big thanks, it was a needed full guide and i watched it about 2 times until i choose a motherboard but worth it since i had a big confusion about motherboards and their differences
Which did you go with just curious
ProArt: I expect the reasoning behind the PCIe slot spacing is that if they moved the second x8 down you wouldn't be able to fit a second graphics card anyway in most cases because it'd run into the PSU shroud (or case bottom). AFAIK Buildzoid tends to run all his in open bench so this is not a factor for him but I expect very few Creator boards are used that way. Not having optical out might be a bummer but AFAIK most that could care have long since transition either to Thunderbolt or USB connected audio equipment so again, might come down to knowing their target market.
Thunderbolt: I expect it's a trademark/certification issue - at least earlier Intel refused to allow to use the name Thunderbolt and logos on AMD. Officially this was due to the Intel's driver not implementing "memory protection" on AMD. IE, Thunderbolt is PCIe so unless the driver sets things up "just right" it's possible to read any memory on the system via TB, often including things that even the OS can't read like Intel/AMD firmware TPM areas! My understanding is that this potentially could allow BitLocker bypass and "modify windows while running to accept any password".
IIRC this requirement was added in TB4, a lot of earlier (TB1-3) drivers tends to not allow TB PCIe devices until you manually "approve" them in the OS due to this... This provides SOME protection but if the user had approved any external devices it wouldn't be hard to clone the PCI IDs and then use that on an attack device to bypass this, so the requirement makes sense, the issue is that Intel makes the TB chips and thus the DRIVER for it, and at least at that point has only bothered to implemented this on newer Intel CPUs. The fact that none of the AM5 motherboards mention Thunderbolt hints that this may still be the case.
I have the ProART whilst its not exactly thunderbolt what I was looking for was the transfer speed of 40/gbps I downloaded the thunderbolt intel controller directly from intel and my thunderbolt devices started working. Its great.
It’s surprising to me that Asrock managed to make a solid, non-trash hdv board at a great price.
same here! more suprising biggest competiton to their own 125$ board is another rock solid 140$ Asrock B650M Pro RS board 😁
You are doing the god's work here, mate.
If you use the "ProArt X670E CREATOR WIFI" for professional audio, you have a dedicated soundcard, and it might even use the thunderbolt port. so this makes sense.
It might also be a decent board for a hackintosh
I love the look of the live mixer. I don’t know what it would go with but I like that’s it’s not just black
So what do you think about the actual Asus AM5 issue, which GN covered these days?
I never visited this channel, before. Thanks for the video i learned a lot, I will be back
The insanity of motherboard manufacturers makes me want to barf. $700 for a $350 motherboard. $700 is high end HEDT pricing (note - high end, not halo).
@Blue My current board is an Asrock X99 Taichi. 8 layer PCB, 40 PCIE lanes and quad channel memory. It launched at $220. Inflation adjusted, $280. I'd hope that a a consumer socket CPU with half that would cost much less.
The reason you’d want more lanes for PCI Gen 5 is for NVMe raid or similar use cases, one of the reasons I’m looking at motherboards now, I’m running out of space on AM4.
I waited for a while I finally bought my PC upgrade yesterday, the EU prices are pretty high and a lot of card are not in stock anyway wanting an ATX board I was going to go for a B650 Livemixer but the 2 sata port and the 250€ changed my mind. In the end I went for something in my budget with the IO I wanted, a gigabyte B650 gaming X AX. My purchase is arriving on tuesday so I hope all goes well.
7:43 Guess what linus tech tips just did XD
a bit more on the ASUS ROG B650E-E Gaming Wifi:
It does have a Thunderbolt "Header" on the Board that you can connect some cheap I/O slot port Card thingy to (Manual Page 1-20).
You don't get it on the rear I/O but if you really need it, that sounds like an OK way to get it, i think. ...that header might even be present on lower cost Boards, i have not checked for that.
Speaking of Headers, i was also really mad about so many AM5 Boards not having an Optical Port for Sound on the rear I/O anymore (my 5.1 System needs that), but then i noticed there is a SPDIF Header and you can just connect a optical port there, stuff is like 10 bucks... the functionality is there, just not as convenient to access.
If you install a M.2 SSD into slot "B" (that is the one between the 2 lower PCIE Slots) it cuts PCIE_X16_1 from x16 to x8 (Manual: Page XI "connectors with shared bandwidth" ...this seems to be the only shared lanes though.)
...and of course that is one of the two M.2 PCIE 5.0 ports, not one of the 4.0 ports.
So you probably want to use the 3 other M.2 Ports before touching this one.
And can somebody please explain to me, why they aren't putting screwholes into Motherboards for M.2 2230 drives? I got a Steam Deck with a 512GB 2230 drive (the new ASUS ROG Ally also uses 2230), one day that device will die or get too old to bother with and i may want to throw the storage into one of my PCs... do you want me to glue it down with tape?!
Is that one screw seriously saving you money? With 4 ports you'd think they add some variation between the less used lengths. ...and why are we putting all the M.2 SSDs behind the GPU anyway?
If your SSD craps out, now you have to disassemble half the PC to get to it instead of just pulling out a SATA and Power cable... i'm not sure i'm a fan of M.2 being done this way.
I'd rather just have a plugin card for one of the PCI-E ports instead. ...and more PCI-E ports in general.
I am also not a fan of the reduction of PCIE ports in general.
First they take the 3.25" drive bays out of cases ... now PCIE slots get reduced to the bare minimum. ...PCs are getting less and less modular in design and without those slots being available there are going to be less companies attempting to put innovative stuff in there. I want the crazy days back when they made cigarette lighters for the 5.25" bays, manual Fan Controllers and drive bays... now i need to plug everything into USB and have it awkwardly dangling around... so boring.
The B650 Livemixer is also interesting because besides the x16 slot one of the x4 slots is connected directly to the CPU. This can be beneficial with capture cards or audio.
37:33 Thunderbolt and USB4 are not quite the same. That and potentially a trademark concern is why I think mb manufacturers shy away from calling it TB4. Even if that intel chip is a TB4 controller, I think there are platform specific differences. Level1techs did a video about thunderbolt networking and there was a difference between amd systems and intel systems.
Thank you for posting this video!😊
37:55 I have that exact board.
It does show errors on startup, but it uses colored LEDs to do so
The B650 Proart also has the Displayport passthrough. Found out when trying to connect 2 displays to the igpu.
i believe its to do with thunberbolt
We need a round-up of just motherboards that include two PCI-Express 5.0 x8 slots. Bring the real contenders to the front.
You're wrong about the post codes, the reason you don't need post codes on Asus boards is Asus boards never fail to post 🤣🤣
I thought they just used smoke signals instead 😉
Why do i need an external clock gen? When buying an 7800x3d for example there is no real OC headroom anyways. Or is it for Ram OC aswell??
You should add a temp sensor header to your list of features. A lot of motherboards don't seem to like adding 2 pins that cost barely anything to motherboards and Asus has been removing that from a lot of their boards lately. Doesn't sound like that big of a deal but it's very, VERY nice to have for custom loop builds, so you don't have to have your fans constantly ramp up and down for short loads that isn't going to affect the water temperature. I know you can add it via external fan controllers, but those things are ass to work with, break every 2 weeks, and don't work on linux for us neeks who like having an OS that respects it's users.
Just keep adding radiators till you can run the loop pretty much passive :P
I've never had a motherboard with that feature, but it could work well for air coolers and AIOs too. Just thermal epoxy the sensor to the heatsink base or the radiator inlet manifold.
My fan control script uses CPU die temperature, and I'm kind of "guessing" at package temperature with a thermal load line and a lowpass filter.
When I was checking around the Linux kernel with Gentoo I found out there is aquacomputer drivers ready for it, so if you have their external devices it will work under gnu+linux(kernel 5.10+) with your favourite temperature monitoring software.
However I deal with itx often and trying to find a itx board with those headers is a pain in the butt.
this.. i have an x470 c7h and love the feature. Found the middle tier gigabyte b650 board.. the auros pro? to be the cheapest option to have a temp sensor. The german proce compare site geizhals has a connector layout of every motherboard in the product photos. Fastest way to find a motherboard with this feature.
I use one of the temp sensors of my B650E Aorus Master to control the fan pointed at the memory sticks (4x 32GB).
Highly recommend Gigabyte b650 boards. They use thick pcbs
Being a first time builder, it really gives me a peace of mind to see Buildzoid giving a recommendation on the B650E PG Riptide 😊. Thanks!
Just wondering how this board can stand the test of time as I planned to use this for >10 years with upgrades along the way
There's really no failure points on a motherboard and as long as VRMs aren't at 110°C (which they aren't on your board, they are really good on yours) it just runs forever.. If you have an AIO you will need to buy a second one halfway through those 10 years though.
@@imnotusingmyrealname4566 yeah like my budget pc from 2009 still works and it has something like Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H for like 80/90$ .. mobos will not end your pc, just prolly avoid shitty ones ( Asus Prime mostly lately)
Nice roundup. I went with the proart x670e. Stability has been an absolute mess, but made the decision for pretty much the exact reason mentioned; the combination of i/o (especially dual x8 + thunderbolt). The ProArt b650 also has DP in btw, and I think there may be another one or two boards out there supporting this. Unfortunately I've still not had success getting my silly LG 5k 27MD5KLB working at native resolution through it (tb3 input *only*). Was also having issues with the wireless drivers crashing so swapped that out for an intel 6e adapter. Plus of course all the asus bs currently going on.
As for the comments on why someone might have so many m.2 drives - IMO a real use case is keeping multi OS installs separate. No need to worry about updating GRUB or windows doing weird stuff when it detects another os or another windows boot drive present at time of installation. Real data goes on a separate drive, and I don't have to worry when it comes time to nuke a boot drive and install something else.
Less cables is a nice little bonus too if you're constantly screwing around adding/removing random hardware too..lol
I keep reading that stability on the ProArt X670E is terrible and there are also a bunch of issues getting high amounts of RAM working. What are the primary issues you're facing WRT stability? Would be very eager to hear as I was rather tempted to get this board eventually. Thanks for taking the time!
I too have the X670 Proart. The only issue I've had so far (after latest official BIOS) is the iGPU driver eventually crashing in Windows. I haven't been booted into Linux for long enough periods of time to notice any issue there. It's been rock solid if I use my 6800XT. I don't rely on the wireless at all though, and sparingly use the BT. I typically dual boot Windows and Linux, and use virtualization inside both. My machine also acts as a NAS server with Truenas in a VM in both, so a 3rd M.2 could be used as a L2 ARC. Pretty much any other native booting is fine with externals or PXE.
I think the bigger part of him questioning the 4 M.2 is that they are all Gen 5. There aren't really many use cases to have that much gen 5 storage. You're either moving data in/out/around or processing it some way. Thunderbolt is the fastest external interface, but no one makes a NVME enclosure actually capable of maxing out even a Gen 3 NVME. 10Gbe is only 1250MBps. The fastest a 7950X(3D) can decomp with 7zip is around 2.9GBps, and compression is only ~150MBps. Outside of AES encryption, most everything else you could ask of the CPU isn't going to have the throughput for even chipset bottlenecks to actually matter. Typical activity barely needs more than sata throughput.
I think the ProArt is pretty underrated, because it has no gaming related name, because I cant see were it is lacking.
With the MSI carbon. If you are running only one GPU, but 2 m.2 SSDS. Will you get gen 5 x16 on the GPU and gen 5 x4 on both m.2s? So no cutting on PCI lanes?
B650e aorus master has been flawless so far I got one when i picked up the 7950x3d at launch. I got it for $350 at microcenter, on paper the asrock taichi has a better vrm setup but the master seems to run cooler from the test I’ve seen but that was the boards i was looking at when i did my build. I seen no reason at all to get an X board this time around. Also really like having a backplate on the motherboard makes it fill more premium. My main things were good vrm and a post code reader.
Can you give me any updates? I am planning to buy the same board but I am scared of the negative reviews about it having black screens and all that. Thanks 🙏
@@zenithchan1646 Just buy it if you want it. _Every_ board is gonna have 1 star negative reviews saying they arrived DOA or massive glitches. People who wouldn't leave a review if the board worked fine will leave a bad review if it doesn't work, because anger is a strong motivator and this phenomenon leads to skewed reviews. Basically, just ignore negative reviews on motherboards unless you see evidence that actually indicates a widespread problem. Look to see if there's forum threads or reddit posts about it, if not, then it's just somebody who got a lemon and got pissed enough to leave a bad review.
Very informational, along with "Lively Editorial Comment"! Thank you, Buildzoid...🇺🇸 😎👍☕
A ton of valuable info here 🙏
You missed the Thunderbolt 4 AIO port options on the X670E PG Lightning and the PCI slot spacing works perfectly with sensible GPUs 🙂🤷♂️
I'm setting up a USB4 aic on the riptide 650E to connect to a mitx Nas that will be using the Asus 670E-I giving me 40gb transfers and a small footprint. Not sure if I can bond the two 40s into an 80. Microsoft didn't mention it on their page. Now the negative is that you can't do an internal capture card with that setup.
thank you now i know for sure which asus motherboards to avoid
Great Video Buildzoid! For me the bottom line of a motherboard is not having an Intel network chip. I've had too many strange behaviors including random lag spikes and disconnects with realtek ones (at alt-tab for example but you could trigger it in many, many ways) likewise a close parent that's also in this hobby for many years, same thing, random disconnects. (An extra: They were mainly by far bad experiences with network but not restricted to it, i have also one Asus Rampage Gene 4 X79 with Intel lan working flawlessly but they used a realtek chip controller to extend the sata ports of the board, this controller, right now is nothing but fully dead from long ago, at least 4 years now, the board works but without those satas)
The Realtek latency measured by the DPC Latency (Deferred Procedure Calls) due to the bad drivers are also not good (there's a good article by PCGamer called "Motherboards with 'Killer' network adapters aren't worth your money", it's a few years old but they did a good work there).
Unfortunately Asrock due to this "Dragon Killer" brand network (that is mostly just a realtek rebranding with makeup) use it in all their mobos. Others manufacturers tends to reserve it for the cheaper boards like Asus that have been using Intel network controllers in all their boards at Strix level and up (and some TUF). Gigabyte the same, starting usually at Ultra and some PRO. MSI at top boards at top chipsets like Z690+ and X670 with all GodLike, ACE and Unify models and they various versions, except when they use the Marvel 10G lan instead in a board that provides only with 1 lan.
@Buildzoid... one pet peeve, which led me not to buy the MSI X670E Carbon are the onboard GPU connectors. The DP connector is a hoax. It does no support the bandwidth necessary to be called version 1.4... but MSI claims is it. I'm used for many motherboard manufacturers cheating on the HDMI port (stating 2.1, but only 2.0 bandwidth). MSI is afair the only vendor cheating on the DP. My choice for X670E is the ASRock X670E Pro RS. Apart from one strange M.2 connector (x2 / SATA) everthing else is directly connected to the CPU / chipset with no switched or extra controllers.
Thank you for the video. I never buy a motherboard without watching a Buildzoid review of it. Wish you'd use time stamps or chapters though for a little easier navigating.
"Bought it for the colour scheme" isn't something I expect to hear on a Buildzoid video!
2:35 - Wendell from L1Techs reviewed the ASRock Phantom Gaming B650E PG-ITX wifi recently and it did not have a BIOS Flashback button, labelled USB port or any reference to such functionality in the manual or UEFI - is this feature truly mandatory, even on tiny boards like mini ITX?
13:20 - Man that Asus ProArt is a dissappointing board. It's great in so many ways (Displayport alt mode on the USB-C AND Displayport IN?!) but feels very 'prosumer', even more so than earlier generations. I don't think the missing POST code segmented display is a coincidence or cost optimisation.
Have the HDV, great board for everyday use. From boot to windows is quick too.
Another nice overview with some interesting points made. Funny, I thought the best quality mobo ASUS produced was on the ITX format, as everyone seemed to be compalaining about their ATX boards. Not sure ASUS AM5 mobos will be on anyones list now after the recent warranty voids from using their own BIOS. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
lol they removed the void warranty xD some hours ago lmao ggs consumer win
Yeah. ASUS should be off peoples radar at this point. Make these SoB companies learn their lesson.
@@Ja_Schadenfreude So AMD has no responsibility ? really
I'd just avoid AMD altogether - problem solved
@@kennethpereyda5707 AMD took responsibility and patched it out with the new agesa version quickly. Asus on the other hand has been pretty dodgy and shady and even their beta bios doesn't fix the absurd soc voltages that can fry your cpu.
"this board does board things". Truly a board of all time
Love the AMD content :)
MSI is the way to go right now.
Hope my MAG Tomahawk will serve me good
Dual x8 pci-e was like the default until very recently, it's baffling they cost $260 and then $400
Requirements: 2 USB3 headers for 4 front USB3 + 1 type C , heaps of Fan headers, Postcode, wifi, and dont care about other pcie slots ...have a monster that makes them useless. And I like something that looks good and doesnt have problems ie Rog Hero 670e
btw: does the future AMD6 ?? cpus will require all the extra power stages etc ?
btw2: would love to see motherboards with no SSD's .... dont use them and its so good for cabling
The B650 PG lightning is the most standout there within B series mobo IMHO. It actually soldout anywhere at my country.
TWO x16 PCI slots AND a Gen 4 x4 slot! All usable at the same time, available on two Asus boards: PRIME X670E-PRO WIFI and TUF GAMING X670E-PLUS WIFI (nearly identical boards). I don't think any other X670/E boards on this list can do that. Few AMD boards period can do that. Why would you want it? GPU, 10Gbe port(s), + specialty card like video capture, or for me, an Optane card for cache use. I'd be fine with a x16 and two x4s, but even that is hard to find on AMD. More better slots are really helpful on Workstations and probably a more common use case than OPs 2 x8 for testing platforms.
10gbe and thunderbolt are relevant for video production people who use a NAS and handle lots of large files.
Audio engineers use interfaces that connect through usb, which then goes out to mixing monitors via xlr.
I just want to know which boards will give me the fewest headaches. Meaning: will this die on me before I'm done using it; will the features and stuff I plug into it work; will the system be stable. I'm rather sick of motherboard headaches.
I know its not possible to cover all AM5 boards in a video, so maybe two videos, one for B650 and another for X670 could have been done. I feel Buildzoid missed the best $300 X670E board, which is the Asrock X670E Pro Rs. Its maybe $20 more than PG Lightening, but has 1 PCIEx5 NVME, 3 PCIEx4 (1 from CPU) NVME, 1 NVME/SATA Hybrid, 6 SATA Ports, Optical out, WIFI, and no bandwidth sharing among any of the IO/ports (like many of the Asus boards). The downsides are no Post LED, only one x16 PCIE5 slot (2 PCIE4 x1 slots), no CMOS Reset Button (you have to short a jumper) and no eCLK OC.
I think he did cover it in his specific ASRock video and noted the features. It is an underrated board.
Is there a video where the external clock gen stuff is explained? And is it a way to get around the AMD gimping of clock speeds on the 7800x3d?
My requirements when I picked my AM5 motherboard were
-Lots of USB's
-atleast 1 Gen 5 M.2 slot
-atleast 3 M.2 slots total
-Optical audio
and everybodys faveorite.... colour :P
Maybe I should care about the external clock generator for my 7800 X3D though, woops.
Aah not enough tea yet this morning. I was confused looking at the Aorus Elite thinking, mine looks different what the hell... I have the full size B650 (non M) version. I'm happy with it. And yeah the M.2 cooling plates are good, they actually dissipate heat. The M.2 plates on my X570 Aorus Master seemed to be more like a nice looking cover. Perhaps the drives just weren't getting as warm.
Audio workstations tend to use USB or Thunderbolt interfaces, so optical out is almost never used.
I just got the X670E Steel Legend from Asrock, and I wish It had the code thing, cus it cost like 450 euro here... pricy. Also, i wish it had a bios reset button. With those 2 exceptions, the board is amazing and i love it. The cheapest i could get here. I dunno why suddenly motherboards cost an arm, but that's life.
where the hell did you buy it? Lol...in Serbia and Montenegro is around 320 euros
@@skrajina8037 I guess my country is the Brazil of Europe lol, cus tech in Brazil is just as expensive LOL.
@@Starfals thats crazy how much money they take from you guys
@@skrajina8037 The 7800X3D was 600 euro here, that's how much I had to give them, with tax and all.
Its supposed to be 450-500, but here its way more :P
@@Starfals thats insane price bro lol! How much is 7950x?
Gigabyte 670 Elite AX, which I got one for slightly over for $250, has an external clock, 4 m2, 12 rear usb and no post code.
The MSI X670E carbon wifi seems perfect... lack of eclk is really dissapointing. How much will an Eclk overclock impact on games ?
Regarding the 4 x PCIe gen 5.0 slots, some workloads are bottlenecked by storage speed (ex: when a model is much bigger than VRAM), but you can have several M.2 drives in parallel.
No more Asus motherboard.
Too late.. already bought one. But if/when it breaks I'm going MSI
Sadly I bought one. I'm praying it's just confirmation bias and it isn't that prevalent. But in the event it fails I'm getting another ASRock. The build I made for my partner has a pg lightning and it's going strong.
@@JorgeFabrizio Just don't update to the latest BIOS it provides till you know from the community that it's safe to flash otherwise it will not only kill your motherboard but your expensive CPU also & it's asus so bye-bye to your warranty because you flash their bios which will void the warranty 😂.
@@avyam7509 it looks like the latest "stable" is 1303 I have an x3D chip so it might not even post if I don't hit do that at least.
@@avyam7509 1515 went live. No issues so far. It's running ok
i totally agree that a lot of usb connectivity is good, but... i don't understand why. it's just an inherent sense. i gotta ask, what do you use 8+ usb ports for
Really? There are so many devices USB devices one might want to use, LIke: DAC(s), Mic, Mouse, Keyboard, Numpad, Streamdeck(s) / Marcopad(s), Drawing pad, Game controller(s), External drive(s), USB-Hub, etc, etc. It shouldn't be hard to imagine a use case where 8 ports is a minimum requirement.
Mo sockets mo problems.
I watched the HUB B650 mobo roundup and was leaning towards the Aorus Pro AX, and the PG Lightning. These seem to be a decent price, good VRMs, 3x m.2 slots. This video is good to get some context. E.g. the 7k series don't really need beefy vrms cos they are not power supply limited. Good to know. I think i would still get something with decent VRMs in case 8k or 9k series need it cos my plan is to upgrade to AM5 7800x3d from an i7 3770k and when AM5 is end of life, get whatever the latest X3D cpu is at the time and be good for another 4r5 yrs. So keeping in mind some features to future proof.
Which board did you ultimately choose? I am in the same position, looking for a "future proof" board which last until the very last generation of AM5 X3D CPUs (zen6/9000 series?). Thank you!
If there is anything you should learn from this video is that you should not overspend. Spending a lot of money on a board with a PCIe gen5 M.2 slot is useless if you are using a gen4 SSD, don't buy 7200 MHz DDR when your processor can only provide 5200 MHz.
My current,cheap, motherboard had some bad reviews because it does not have PCIe gen5, only 5 USB3 ports, no 5.1 or digital audio and no blinkenlights. But it has all I need, allowing me to buy more memory and a one level better GPU card which is great since I use this system for 3D scanning which is memory and GPU hungry
I know this isn't exactly timely, but I'd love to see a list of motherboards for AM5, or even intel boards, that have more "legacy" IO layouts. (or at least some tips on what might serve my niche use-case
I work in audio engineering and VFX, and the "normal" (meaning not m.2 slot) PCIe situation is pretty dire right now, whether you get intel or AMD. I'm forced to run a GPU, an SDI monitoring/playback card, a multichannel ADAT/SP-DIF interface, 6+ SATA ports for dozens of terabytes project hot-storage, and a ram intent cache card to ensure that storage isn't slow. This is necessary for my work, there's no getting around having this hardware built-in unless I fork out a ton of money for extremely fast network storage, or a bunch of outboard gear for AV switching.
Because of this, I've been stuck on an old processor with an old chipset, because until the last year or two, it handled what I needed it to without complaining. FP audio, native 6k+ source footage that need HFR 4k timelines, etc. have changed that.
The problem is, now that I need to migrate to a new platform, there doesn't seem to be anything that will even let you plug in 5 PCIe devices, much less run them at the same time. I used to be able to do the above just fine on a cheap Z270 board. Building out something on a workstation chipset ends up being as expensive as the other options, and I'd really like to avoid that too.
Thanks for all your analysis of this topic, I find your content very useful in informing my own decisions.