This mainboard probably would not be below 2000-3000$, I would even guess closer to 10k. Niche board, not many (or only a handful) of buyers. Totally unnecessary for 99.9% of the users.
@@johnscaramis2515 They could not sell it for that kind of money. You're getting into HEDT with that price. The appeal of this mobo would be that it is using a consumer chipset and CPU to it's fullest potential, so you dont have to splurge on an HEDT setup for either a 3-4-way SLI/Xfire, or NVME NAS setup
But no -- they'll intentionally cut some of these features so they can release their "flagship, limited edition" $1200 model boards! Complete with a useless monoblock for a CPU that consumes, at most, 150w.....
At some point you just gotta build a separate nas computer and get a motherboard that already has 10Gbe or just go threadripper with more pcie lanes. Though I do agree finding a board that supports a full pcie4 x16 gpu and the elgato capture card at pcie 2x4 was surprisingly challenging. (Most of the boards I was looking at only had an additional pcie3x2 slot, would take away from my second m.2 game drive, or would bifurcate the x16 to two x8 slots). I ended up choosing the x570s master with my gpu in the top slot and my capture card in the bottom.
@@christophergriffis7019 is the x570s master a good board for the time you've had it. i've watched builzoid's recent video about it i just wanna make sure before i pull the trigger on it
@@christophergriffis7019 Yeah, I have my file storage in a separate Windows file server (Thank goodness for VIP-SCDKey) but I still have a Dell H830 sitting in a box doing nothing that I'd like to use, just because. I have my main machine equipped with the GPU and 10Gbe, and I guess that's enough, but I never have been good at "enough".
"I'm not aware of anything that converts pcie 4.0 lanes down into more pcie 3.0 lanes" The irony is that the commonly used chip that does do that.. is amd's IO die when configured as the X570 chipset
On the ASUS X570 WS Pro ACE the bottom slot can be ran at x8 3.0 speed (actually it was x7 3.0 due to latency tested with a GTX 1080) or at x4 4.0 because of the X570 magic. It is so tragic to see the x570 chipset so underutilized.
That will be a throttling problem when transferring large files. Those SSD that have read/write speeds over 3GB/sec will throttle very fast as the SSD controller hit 70 Celcius without a heatsink attached. Since it is at the back of the motherboard, mounting a heatsink risk shorting the motherboard .
@@fleurdewin7958 it'd be fine. 70c is weak, my old SM951 didn't start throttling until like 85c and that took like 3 minutes of constantly writing like 250GB to get to. Besides if you mount a heatsink to a (commonly single sided) m.2 drive it would face away from the motherboard in the stand-off space between the board and the motherboard tray. Thats why it's done so often on ITX boards like the.... Strix X570-I, B450 I AORUS PRO, B550I AORUS PRO, STRIX B550-I, X570 I AORUS PRO, B560I GAMING EDGE, Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac, B550I GAMING EDGE MAX, X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3, B550I GAMING EDGE, B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ax, Z590I VISION D, Z590I AORUS ULTRA And about 30 others.
@@tomstech4390 ineo has an m.2 heatsink with a 20mm fan on it, it quite small so you can put them on the back if your motherboard mounting plate has a cutout, and it cools well even in a hotbox. Just put some kapton tape over it
Choice is expensive. It's far cheaper for the board makers to make the choices for you. And since 99% of people want an M.2 slot, those who don't get to be unhappy. A full PCIe board would never sell. Not in the consumer market. Not in numbers great enough to make it economically viable.
@@LadyEmilyNyx I respectfully disagree. When a consumer goes into a car dealership they frequently want to know what the vechicle costs FULLY LOADED. This is called bragging rights and it isn't all that surprising how much a customer is willing to pay for those rights. As for economically viable that is an argument that falls flat on its face. People love their options. The option to run M.2 where and when one wants is a big plus. The demand for modular building has never disappeared because it is so popular, flexible, and handy.
Maybe I missed it but I think you need to redo this. The ryzen socs have actually 32 pcie lanes but on the am4 socket only 24 are exposed, you need a soldered down "epyc but it's a desktop die" skus for the full shebang. Then 4 are taken by the chipset, 4 by the top m.2 slot (usually) and THEN the remaining 16 are what is split or whatever. But it doesn't need to be like that. The 4 lanes from the m.2 can be easily taken and technically, while we are pipe dreaming we could just build an "AMD PRO 500" board with no chipset (also seen as X300 and "knoll activator chip") to get the full 24 lanes out of the AM4 socket completely free to toy around. The chipset is actually a pcie switch in itself and gets you 1x lanes to the NIC and SATA and then x4 lanes to another m.2 slots and usb controllers etc, even more on the Intel side where you get stupid setups like 3x m.2s routed through the chipset's 4 lane "DMI"->4x pcie on "high end" motherboards.
uh, that's the IO die, and EPYC/TR have a different IO die. 4 lanes also are strictly for NVME, so, eh. correct on the 4 for the chip-set, again, those are dedicated. the chipset is a bit finicky, in that you lose SATA ports and USB ports as you peal away more lanes for PCIe slots, so not sure you realy want to even mess with that unless the only thing you care about is only having the PCIe slots. the extra M.2 slot would be cool alongside the dedicated M.2 off the CPU. Hmmm. it's be great if they made a 40+TaraByte M.2, however last I checked there more expensive than a car and over 30cm long, so multiple SATA drives realy are better for that angle, along side the M.2 boot drive.
Had the same thought with the x300 style board, then run a PLX chip instead of a chip set. Alternately run a second x570 off of the 4 lanes for the m.2. This stuff really makes me miss the early days of the AMD HyperTransport. There were motherboards with almost every imaginable configuration. Sun actually sold a system under their Java workstation line where the motherboard was in 2 parts so that the chipset could be upgraded to switch from AGP to PCIe.
@@Zarcondeegrissom Not "desktop epyc". Just a zeppelin die before, and whatever they call it now, looks like your regular am4 desktop cpu but it has 32 lanes. The zeppelin die on zen/+ and I/O die+CCD zen2> are fully capable of running without a motherboard chipset and have 2sata&plenty of usb.
@@P4GrAnGeR oh, zen1 Epyc Embedded 3000, before the zen2 core chiplets and IO dies? ruclips.net/video/RerGTNTEzr4/видео.html would make for an interesting system, even tho it's not zen3, with 5nm zen4 somewhere on the horizon (2020 put a hell of a damper on that I guess). Hmm. I still have yet to try to make a 3D model of that thing, and I've seen nothing of that 'embedded' line since. For what BZ wants, zen1 sucked for LN2 HWbot benchmarking, it was better than FX, it still wasn't a 9900k killer, lol. may as well just use TR at that point.
17:35 "... And that's my ideal motherboard!" *Half of the video remains* Never change, BZ. I look forward to buying a Buildzoid motherboard to go with my future Kingpin graphics card. 😉
"Smart" products are only as smart as the person who wrote the logic for them. Which is usually whomever bid the lowest for the job. (Or done in-house where you KNOW they're not paying for top tier talent) After all, they only have to be smarter than 99% of people, to be useful. And given the warning labels that things need... 99% of people are dumber than a post.
no, it's not just you. it's the "paperclip maximizer" problem with "not so"-Smart stuff, that and something called "the alignment problem" with neural AI network stuff.
@@LadyEmilyNyx warning labels are mostly to avoid legal trolling. In countries where legal system is very slow or the judges just laugh and throw out such bs lawsuits, there are normal warning labels about things that might actually not be obvious. No "warning, falling hazard" stickers on windows here.
A couple of notes: * You didn't mention 4 extra PCIe lanes from CPU, that are normally reserved for NVMe or SATA. I'm pretty sure nothing really stops you from using them as general purpose lanes. * Your SLI x3 setup hangs completely from one x8 set of lanes. I'm pretty sure you could shift the layout around to balance the load. * Microchip released PM42100 (gen4) and PM50100 (gen5) switches, a 100 lane devices that support non-transparent bridging like PLX chips do. You could stuff the whole 20 lanes from CPU into it and split it into 5x16 or however you want to slice it.
This looks like exactly what I was looking for in a motherboard. I have a 5950x, I want to use as much of the bandwidth as I can. Problem is I can't split the PCIe Gen 4 lanes into Gen 3. This would solve that. I would totally pay like $350 for a board like this. This would give me a ton of expansion, far more storage, networking and graphics all in one system. Although I'd like more supported memory, but the added expansion might still persuade me.
OK so if the M.2 eliminated the single screw and went with a simple clip design would it have more appeal? i love M.2 because its a clean install , no wires
@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking The major downside of PCi-e add-in cards is they disrupt the intake of an air-cooled graphics card. Especially if you're lucky enough to have a case with some kind of viable bottom intake.
Ataching M.2 SSDs with a screw on the motherboard is very conveniant! You can save cables going to SATA SSDs! And also you can have faster loading in games and SAM (Smart Access Memory) from the SSD to the GPU.
Egh it's designed for a very niche use. The modal gamer doesn't need any Pci-e slots past the first as Crossfire/SLI are dead and motherboards are super feature-rich. And the modal gamer favours M.2 NVME drives much more than Buildzoid.
@@stevewatson6839 Low level APIs (i.e. DirectX 12 and Vulkan) killed dual GPU gaming. Unless the industry turns thier back on them, dual GPUs will not return.
any thoughts on why hasn't any manufacturer already collaborate with someone with brains and made something like this? they already pulled some crazy (expensive, limited and HOC oriented) stuff, but for some reason never really reasonable thing
7:40 i disagree screws are great for attaching coolers and heat sinks to the motherboard why not put the M.2 slots on the back? yea is sucks to access them but that is a case design problem we have cuts out for cpu backplates... you forgot to specify where the extra power plug (pcie/molex/sata) goes for the pcie power you know if someone did make this you are gonna get it under slot 7 so better say where it goes
Didn't you forget about the 4 lanes from the CPU for the NVMe SSDs, in addition to the 16 lanes you have discussed? Won't this allow you to have 1 M.2 PCI-E gen 4 slot from the CPU and say 1 gen 3 from the chipset, both say at the back? The way mini ITX boards do it?
the thing is I just don't really care about M.2s. If there's still space left for M.2 slots on the board afte I get my stack of PCI-e slots there can be M.2 slots but otherwise the PCI-e gets priority. I guess I could've gone XL-ATX and added an X4 PCI-e slot at the top or bottom.
realy sure that 4x set of lanes, can only be used for a NVME drive, don't think a single motherboard has even attempted to peal it off for the "on board" WiFi dongle things, so it's use is not realy worth talking about, it does one thing and one thing only. And like BZ, I only care about PCIe slots for Tesla compute cards, well sort of like BZ anyway, lol.
@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking I think the trick here is that those 4 lanes from the CPU can only be used for the NVMe drive and while you can use a PCI-E 4 lane slot for those I think you may as well just slap two M.2 on the back side, from the CPU and the chipset. I mean they would be out of sight and out of mind (like the chipset M.2 slots for the mITX gigabyte boards) for those who use open test benches with a bazzilion of SATA devices ;) This way those boards could cater to a broader variety of enthusiasts. And maybe considering how this is future looking prepare for those new direct storage things, etc,
I really just wish most mATX boards had a better PICE layout. I don't want/need this crazy board X4 from the chipset for networking or PCIE SSDs X16/X8 blank X8
I have a board similar to that except the top on is m.2 only. If you are going to do this, move the x4 from the top to the third slot, and put the x16 on top. That way SLI/CrossFire is possible with the right chassis, you still get the x4 with a dual slot GPU, and you do not choke your GPU in a four slot case. The other upside is that you could put a 3080 Aorus Xtreme in mATX this way. Asus, please make a Z690 Gene so my wishes can be real!
@@amyfranchuk6704 you don't want the X4 slot below the topic PICE slot because GPU makers are moving to 2.5+ slot cards even on midrange ones. and dam it I want my 10gb+ nics
If the DIMM slots can be place on top of the motherboard just like recent EVGA Dark series motherboard, that will be perfect. Longer GPU sits right next to the DIMM slots. It radiates too much heat to the RAM which can affect stability.
all the more reason for the primary 16x slot being the second one down. B) looks are also deceiving, sure that EVGA board with the rotated CPU section, is just missing slot 1, it only has slot 2(x16) 6(x16) and 7(x4).
Manufactures: How many layers do you want? Buildzoid: Yes. @I would be worried about signal integrity with that many layers... Especially on the PCI-E 4.0 slots since 4.0 is very sensible to interference.
there are 128 lane server boards. If the server boards can find the space to route 128 lanes then this B550 with 48 lanes should be doable. It won't be cheap but the PEX8747 already kinda made sure that the board can't be cheap since it's a 100USD chip.
The one thing I really wish Motherboard manufacturers would do is publish the datasheet and register map for the SuperIO chip they use, so many $500+ motherboards have absolutely no software access to sensors and controls because of this, only low end cheap high volume motherboards where the community has reverse engineered the communications have this.
Tell me you have not worked with gigahertz speeds without telling me you have not worked with gigahertz speeds. You want the traces at an exactly defined distance from ground
For M.2. I strongly prefer U.2. On boards that do not have U.2, I just install a M.2 to U.2 adapter, and install NVMe in 3.5 inch bay somewhere. The unfortunate thing about U.2 is that cables are pretty stiff and expensive. And I do not know if there is U.2 connectors and cables that work with PCIe 4 over similar distance. EDIT: Yes, there are adapters and U.2 cables working with PCIe 4.0, and same distances. Nice. And you can find some cheaper ones too. I guess I overpaid for mine.
For what I have seen the chipset is actually a secondary FCH. The main one is the io die. So the secondary FCH is more a PLX than something else. For what I've seen a Ryzen CPUs might boot without a chipset. The chipset would free 4 more pcie lanes. My x99 server MB have a similar pcie allocation. But the CPUs have 40 lanes and i don't need a PLX. The Mac Pro PLX chip also contains switches and can reduce the lanes on some slots if another is populated. You also need a PLX with pcie 4.0 upstream port and 3.0 downstream ones. in this way you have full bandwidth capability. Not sure if a part like that exists. Probably ASmedia have something since they designermd the and FCH. The io die handle both the LPC and the spi bus to read the bios and boot the system via the PSP. The CPU also have the SMbus, the fan controller for the cpu and some generic gpios. And a USB 3.0 controller pinmuxed with a sata controller! Remember that you need a x1 for the Ethernet. So a chipset like the pro 500 would be a good choice. But I'm not sure if it uses the other X4 bus.
I appreciate the intent of this and Gigabyte should take note! No more smart BIOS switching. Give me 1 m.2 slot for boot drive, which I'd be willing to swap for a 2-way SLI setup. This would be highly marketable & simpler switching!
this mobo is a pipe dream... there in practice it would probably suck, most of the time you have PLX chips used they are on things like GPUs that don't actually suck that much bandwidth, however if you stuck an SSD down this chain it would literally hang your system during high IO.
USB I/O has been an issue for decades. Evidently Buildzoid likes to have his options. He is not alone. One of my pet peeves is why motherboard manufacturers insist on limiting the board to two physical onboard headers for USB 2.0. When one considers the plethora of devices that still run USB 2.0 (controllers, card readers, power supplies, to name a few) this negligence baffles me. Instead the user has to dig deep into their pockets for some dubious 3rd party device that may or may not compromise their system board just to get more pin outs for USB 2.0. That's just wrong.
To get 4 GPU's to use as much power as possible for the sole purpose of benchmarking, sounds like a more stupid hobby than bitcoin mining. Soundcards and multible M.2's sounds sane to me in comparison ...
This channel is called "Actually Hardcore Overclocking". Not "Actually Sane and Productive Things". Competitive overclocking is as stupid as any other sport. But people like stupid things. It's just that normies want to run after a ball on a grass field and geeks want to make computer components run faster (presumably because they're too lazy to run themselves). The objective is the same though: To reach the top of the score board.
The exclusion of m.2 makes sense with this layout. I’d prefer the choice of using Pcie to m.2 adapters instead of having a x4 I can only use for storage.
Noob in: OC, signal integrity and soldering here. Is the "dumb" dual bios with a switch, as simple as just switching the physical bios chip? Like when the bios chips were easily user-replaceble? Would it be possible to solder wires to where the bios chip resided, and feed the wires in to a breakout-board/box with a physical switch connected to the two bios chips? If I had soldering skills like BZ and everything working fine with the bios chips hanging of the pcb in 30cm wires, I would say it is possible, but I have never heard/seen something like that, so there is probably a catch somewhere.
I think There is a small chance you will have some minor issues. You would probably want smaller wires. There is a chance that the induction of the longer wires would affect the serial connection. It could also create some RF interference (but almost s insignificant amount).
@@thomasb1521 Nah, you don't mess with the serial wires at all, they go to BOTH chips, plain and simple. And yes OP above, they are just two separate 25c-series flash chips. You only switch the /CS pin aka Chip Select (inverted). Since there's nothing else on that QSPI bus AT ALL, it goes to its dedicated spot, the CS line is not at all connected upstream, it just goes to ground on a normal mainboard i think. I don't know how Gigabyte does its Dual BIOS solution now, but the way they used to do this, they have a microcontroller (actually in those old boards, it's an embedded 8051 processor inside the ITE SuperIO controller), which checks the BIOS checksum before allowing the CPU to boot, and would also monitor past boots that they get past POST by spying on the POST codes on the LPC bus that SuperIO is connected to the rest of the system with, and if everything is fine, it pulls the main BIOS chip CS low; if it's not and it has to engage Dual BIOS, then it pulls CS low to the second chip! The other chip, CS is high, weak pullup or active high i don't care. If it was a mainboard design, you can have the switch be connected to flash chip CS lines, and you should ideally have an RC filter on the path there, and from pushing the power button, one would insert a delay between that and the CPU being powered on, in the SMC/SuperIO firmware, they can make that delay long enough for the filter constant, like maybe 50ms if we're generous, you can avoid all issues from it being a janky switch, and this delay will usually fully hide inside the PWR_OK latency imposed by the PSU. If you insisted on it being even less possible to mess up, just read the switch in the firmware for the SMC/SuperIO, and control CS lines from the firmware. First you can only evaluate the switch once, but once all POST codes have scrolled by, you can have the controller read the switch regularly. The BIOS chip contents is actually shadowed in RAM, and then the chip is no longer used by the system, but you still need a way to flash the first and the second BIOS chips independently, so either you need a way to tell the SMC from the software to go switch the chips, or you simply foresee some way for the switch to keep working after the system has booted. If you want to make a Dual BIOS yourself, i suggest devising a little board that goes in place of the BIOS chip, and allows you to place two BIOS chips on it, it'll be cheap from any proto service due to diminutive size, and super simple. All the lines except CS are connected to both chips, then you add a weak pullup to both chips' CS pins, and a little SMD slidey switch, or a pinheader, that grounds the one or the other. If you have a pinheader, you can then attach an external switch to it, or just use a jumper, like the goode olde times. I remember my first mainboard had a dozen jumpers, and my first soundcards had even more! I'm a little nostalgic tbh. I don't have a thought off the top of my head on how to make it super universal but still nice, as there can be junk around the BIOS flash chip on the board, and you don't want to collide with it, otherwise a board with a castellated piece would be good, castellations connect to the original footprint of the flash IC, that goes into a wider section with two chips on it. If you're designing around a specific mainboard, you just drill the holes in the PCB design to avoid the junk that you want to avoid. Signal integrity? Well CS is effectively not a signal line. If you constrain yourself to a few square centimetres of layout space, and have a vaguely clean and sensible layout, you don't have to worry about data to the flash chips themselves, they're like 50MHz at most if that, maaaaybe 100MHz at uppermost? You don't have to length match the traces, at least not within a cm or so. Oh and looks like Gigabyte decided to deem it good to give each chip a 1pF NP0 capacitor on the CS lines and 1uF X5R on VCC so you probably want to copy that more or less, placed directly at the chips, you can beef the CS cap up since you're not using software controlled pins for that, but a switch.
@Buildzoid about the no audio support, I have a Asrock Rack X470D4U AM4 server motherboard that has no audio! I was surprised when I couldn't connect the front audio connector. So I guess it's possible! :D
That motherboard will be an overclockers delight This makes me realize that the case i want is possible. Basically an O11 but the motherboard sits horizontally. I just need the 500k to do the prototype and production, and anydees is willing to listen.
I had B550 tomahwak for HDD farming and it also involved a lot of CPU processing, the mobo had solid VRM and so it was good to run 3950x. BUT I had tried to run both m.2 NVMe, one raid card and dual 10G SFP+ network card. Nope forget about it, you plug one thing it disables other PCIe slots, then even if you occupy slots such that plugged stuff doesn't get disabled, you get bandwidth limitations and when both NVMe-s are asked to run 100%, one is running at 60% of what it should. Very bad PCIe situation. Made me regret the consumer grade approach, should've went for a server instead...
It is situational. I like that the Tomahawk disables PCIe lanes that I don't need instead of SATA ports like some other mobos, so I can have my 6 drives running.
Based on my humble and small CAD experience, motherboard market understanding and good knowledge about mass manufacturing, this motherboard would simply NOT cost less than $900, the amount of layers needed for the absurd amount of shielding you'd need for all those pci-e and to keep your 200mhz blck stable with all of that EMI going on in the lower half of the board.... Man that would be one, EXPENSIVE and HEAVY motherboard....
this is pretty much a modern take on 8 layer boards like the GIgabyte Z77X-UP7 or the Z87/97 Xpower. UP7: static.gigabyte.com/StaticFile/Image/Global/9e06b62d4078900a974b6f9ddb04c0f5/Product/6676/png/1000 Z97 Xpower: static.techspot.com/images/products/2014/motherboards/org/1312187171_1840435288_o.jpg
@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking The "then" and "now" are a bit different my fellow hardware enthusiast, those boards did not needed the excessive shielding pcie 4.0 and the high bclk + the ddr4 topology requirements for the high clocks you want to reach, an modern board with those features under pcie 4.0, several switchers for your pcie 3.0 plan, the bclk stability you'd want, I mean you already know that the more 'pointy' ends the board has, the more susceptible to EMI it is, pcie slots are also, just like RAM slots, 'pointy' ends, I believe you already know this because you are pushing for an 2 ram slot board, but, the same applies to pcie slots, for the stability to not fall apart from all that EMI susceptibility we'd need very good shielding and grounding internally on the pcb layers, based on the same experience I posted above I would put your motherboard project at an minimum of 12 layers. The RAM traces for example would greatly benefit from being shielded by ground fills and being on their own layers on an SMD slot. Accommodating the traces for all that pcie switching would be an devil of it's own hahah Well anyway there's a reason we kind of don't see boards like that anymore, the materials cost, tooling and manufacturing would require an too great price for the end consumer, it's sad but the days of those good boards are, perhaps forever behind us.
There PLX chips for PCIe4: Broadcom ExpressFabric PCIe Gen4, PEX series. Microsemi, Microchip, and Avago also produce many models of PCIe4 switches (actual switches, not muxes). Some with very high PCIe lane count, but they also produces smaller ones. All of them available for over a year now. Asmedia does not have one yet, but it will probably change in a year or two.
What ruined modern motherboards is M.2 slots. They eat up PCI lanes like crazy and you get fewer actual PCIe slots. M.2 is a laptop standard. It would have been much better to keep the PCIe slots and have people use add in board SSDs if they need it instead. M.2 is simply dumb on a desktop. Because of M.2 you have to buy a HEDT platform if you want things like high performance networking or RAID controllers as there is simply nothing left on mainstream platforms after one x16 to graphics card and one x1 for maybe a sound card and one x8 (which drops the graphics card slot to x8 as well) for some kind of capture card. Also onboard 10GbE eats lanes too and higher end gaming boards now come with dual LAN by standard. Some people have their own network cards and don't need onboard connectivity. It simply doesn't matter how many lanes a mainstream socket and chipset combo has if motherboard manufactures waste them on all kinds of integrated crap.
truth be told, putting something on to have the option to build a specific type of config would be cost prohibitive and there could well be timing issues with the 16/8 pcie bus(16/8 is minimal) .. layers are the next issue as you mentioned, but.. the most effective construct would be to build 2/3 spec boards -- if someone where to build this, it would have to have a higher usability ratio .. just my thoughts, but this is interesting
Instead of needing a pci-e lane for audio, tie it into a usb header. Then you can have a hot swappable module in case of failure, too. The output could still be tied to the rear I/O in a slim stack on the side nearest the slots.
Doesn't the chipset work to expand the number of PCIe lanes as well as properly utilizing bandwidth. For example, 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes going to the chipset will allow 8GB/s worth of PCIe 3.0 connectivity if needed, though at a latency cost.
Something tells me that BCLK and other OC functionality would be better served on external module that can be connected via wire instead of being directly on motherboard, because majority of people won't need that and it takes A LOT of space per your description, it could also be universal standard for motherboard to have this connector and external module. Also as I recall, these PCIe switches are expensive af... For NVMe, having one OCULink on the board would be awesome, it can be used for anything. Also for M.2, have a look at design of Lenovo P520 and then P920 how their M.2 are setup, you'll like their solutions =) Also surprised you mentioned Threadripper, but not EPYC
I feel like buildzoid's hate for m.2 is pretty specific for him. I do like sata drives more from a connectivity standpoint as it's hard to get at m.2 drives to disconnect them when you have a gpu and a cpu cooler in the way but who wants slower drives? Plus for some ridiculous reason Windows doesn't allow you to install another boot loader when you already have a drive with windows on it. I'm also confused who all this sli/crossfire is for as it's unsupported but a very cool concept nonetheless.
@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking I can kinda agree with that. the placement and cramming of m.2 slots makes no sense from a tinkering/ easily moveable pov.
The first 2 mins of rambling is exactly how i felt too when picking a B550 mobo. There's just always an interface that is not there on every other mobo
I disagree with dual bios, triple bios on a board like this! Personally, I like M.2, but you got to the solution I'd implement at the end with Asus' DIMM.2. Side note: It's annoying on ITX boards that the back panel so often has empty space. On such small boards, that area's essential to have well populated as there's so little expansion capabilities internally and because of the lack of internal expansion, there's plenty of available bandwidth for a vast and speedy back panel.
Wouldnt it be possible to just another circuit board, put it ontop and the connect it with a powerful caple to transit the data/voltage instead of forcing it onto the same circuit board.
There is many (not many many, but there are there) ATX boards with no audio. I hate boards with on board audio (or wifi). This is the first thing I disable. Even on mini-ITX. If you have benchmarks complaining about missing audio, just install a dummy audio driver ("null driver"). That does nothing. Easy. Also most of the monitors and GPUs support audio over HDMI, so there is that too (I hate it personally, and always disable it, because it messes up with default audio devices).
What happened to all of the PCIe slots? I remember in the '00s you could get loads of PCIe slots. Was it us plebs who stole all the lanes for SATA, 2.5, 5 and 10Gb LAN, Wifi and M.2?
It happened when Intel forked their CPU/platform line by creating HEDT and mainstream desktop. Less focus on cores, I/O, general expandability, memory bandwidth, etc.
The x570s Gigabyte Master is nearly perfect except of one/two missing pcie 3.0 x4 slots (that take the SB Lanes of the m. 2) My ideal : (of 7 possible pcie slots) Chipset x570 (so you have 4×pcie 4.0 to the SB) 1: pcie 4.0 (16x/8x) CPU 2: nothing 3:pcie 3.0 1x SB 4: pcie 4.0 (0/8x) cpu (switched with 1) 5 pcie 3.o 4x (shared with M.2) SB 6 pcie 3.0 4x SB 7 pcie 3.o 4x shared with M.2) SB M. 2 of the CPU (and 2 shared with slots) All PCie 4x should have open ended slots you can use 8x/16 cards (like every server has)
WHYYYYYYYY would you choose a B550 instead of a X570???? How can you scoff at a tiny little m.2, that can run at five to ten times the speed of a HDD??? And EVERYTHING attaches to your board with a screw. All pcie cards after sliding into their ports, attach with a screw. And the m.2 also slides into it's port, before being screwed down. ALSO, MOST newer boards, don't use screws with the m.2 drives, there's a circular attachment instead. I'd be perfectly happy with a Crosshair Dark board, IFFFF it had three m.2 drive bays, instead of ONLY two for $450 dollars.
Buildzoid, can you try doing PCB Breakdown for low-end motherboard, especially for Intel CPU? We have some breakdowns about B550 for a while now, but there is a little info about Intel motherboard equivalent like B560.
@@Corei14 I think he may rant about one of the worst H510 or B560 motherboard with discrete MOSFET and the important of heatsink. It is a good content for his channel IMO.
@@nathangamble125 there are just better overall boards. more io, More memory/cpu vrm importations on z590. If an h or b series was good we would know. Other channels already have a tier list. Hardware unboxed noted that more than one decreased overall performance of a CPU.
i understand BCLK is broken on x570, but buildzoid have you also now tried it on new x570s silicone too? it was not fixed by that hardware update? btw for the cost of this plx madness. and all the mixture of x3 and x4 rats nest traces going everywhere it really would be better to have a threadripper intsead wouldnt it? or does that then sacrifice something else on the board? and for gpu spacing... well once we get pcie5 improved signaling then maybe trace length could increase some. and you could just extend downwards the footprint of the board to be longer. and just more generously space every single adjacent slot. this would also then make it easier to design spacings that fitted the sizes of available sli bridges
> i understand BCLK is broken on x570, but buildzoid have you also now tried it on new x570s silicone too X570s is X570 with passive cooling and 7W TDP enforced on the chipset firmware.
I'm not skilled enough to design a board from scratch getting it designed and built motherboard manufacturer as a limited unit run (like 100 boards) would be like 50-150K USD.
@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking I'm actually really surprised one of the mobo manufacturers hasn't asked you to help them make a board to your "perfection" yet.
if only, lol. 40GB Tesla A100's in slots 7 and 5, raid controller in slot 4, then the disp-out card in slot 2, that would be soooooooooooooo sweet for a render/compute box based on the 5950x. It's been a dead on arrival dream for the very thing outlined in this vid, lack of usable PCIe slots. Knowing my luck, if this ever happens, they'll put it on a board with only two Type-A USB ports on the back, Grrrr.
If those pci-e chips that, half the speed and double the bandwidth, becomes a thing in the near future. That could be 64 lanes of pci-e 3.0, on a consumer platform, with the new pci-e 5.0 cpu's.
Thanks for the effort you put in and the very informative videos you provide Could you make a video about popular Buck converters like APW8722 and there is another GS. And another video about how Memory controllers work like NCP81022 and the most commonly used. Thanks in advance.
As someone looking to upgrade to Ryzen soon, the hardest part is choosing a good motherboard. ESPECIALLY now, after all the MFG drama going around. MSI, Gigabyte, AsRock have been getting shitty customer service spotlight, Straight lied to its customers and refused to acknowlege service. Scalping GPUs to its customers, man the list can go on for them. meanwhile Asus has been having issues with its Bios recently and just straight bricking motherboards. At this point, im willing to add 250+ to my budget and get EVGA which is extremely overkill for my needs as im not LN2 XOC
There should be one cheaper than the dark from EVGA, can't remember what they decided to name it or what price it is since I don't care for it at all but you'll come away cheaper than the dark and still have an EVGA board.
I can think of an improvement, though it would require changing the standards for boards and case: Replace the IO shield area with a bunch of half-height double-width card slots and put matching PCIe x1 slots on the board, then remove all the integrated stuff from the board. Limit the motherboard to just power, RAM and PCIe connectivity. Put everything else on cards so you can fully customise everything.
Slot4 is only for quad gpu and should be set to a riser cable at the lower end of moboand and put slot 5 in center of 4 and 5 and lower the 7. You should be able to get some air cooling even with quad gpu with 3pci hieghts
In his insanity, buildzoid has created this monster.
With this Board, Manufactuerers would finally have an explanation for why they sell 500$+ boards
Agree 500$ motherboards are the stupidest thing I've ever seen. 0 Value in them.
This mainboard probably would not be below 2000-3000$, I would even guess closer to 10k. Niche board, not many (or only a handful) of buyers. Totally unnecessary for 99.9% of the users.
@@johnscaramis2515 They could not sell it for that kind of money. You're getting into HEDT with that price. The appeal of this mobo would be that it is using a consumer chipset and CPU to it's fullest potential, so you dont have to splurge on an HEDT setup for either a 3-4-way SLI/Xfire, or NVME NAS setup
@@johnscaramis2515 considering that the Aqua retailed for ~$1000, I think they could do this for a similar price.
But no -- they'll intentionally cut some of these features so they can release their "flagship, limited edition" $1200 model boards! Complete with a useless monoblock for a CPU that consumes, at most, 150w.....
Finally, someone who has the same passion about IO that I do. I need more slots for my GPU, external RAID, 10Gbe, and capture card. :)
the I/O layout on most boards is tragically awful
At some point you just gotta build a separate nas computer and get a motherboard that already has 10Gbe or just go threadripper with more pcie lanes. Though I do agree finding a board that supports a full pcie4 x16 gpu and the elgato capture card at pcie 2x4 was surprisingly challenging. (Most of the boards I was looking at only had an additional pcie3x2 slot, would take away from my second m.2 game drive, or would bifurcate the x16 to two x8 slots). I ended up choosing the x570s master with my gpu in the top slot and my capture card in the bottom.
@@christophergriffis7019 is the x570s master a good board for the time you've had it. i've watched builzoid's recent video about it i just wanna make sure before i pull the trigger on it
@@christophergriffis7019 Yeah, I have my file storage in a separate Windows file server (Thank goodness for VIP-SCDKey) but I still have a Dell H830 sitting in a box doing nothing that I'd like to use, just because. I have my main machine equipped with the GPU and 10Gbe, and I guess that's enough, but I never have been good at "enough".
What, no atomic clock card? Peasant! ;-)
"I'm not aware of anything that converts pcie 4.0 lanes down into more pcie 3.0 lanes"
The irony is that the commonly used chip that does do that.. is amd's IO die when configured as the X570 chipset
AMD (and their AIBs) could probably get behind selling a god-tier X570 board.
On the ASUS X570 WS Pro ACE the bottom slot can be ran at x8 3.0 speed (actually it was x7 3.0 due to latency tested with a GTX 1080) or at x4 4.0 because of the X570 magic. It is so tragic to see the x570 chipset so underutilized.
damn i do actually want this board now
How did you manage to post this comment three days ago? xD
@@pridedoggo the videos go up unlisted early and patreons get the links
@@CmdrSoyo i should pay for patreon then lol
21:30 just put the m.2 slot in the back of the mainboard like you'd find on some ITX boards (Strix B550-I for example)
That will be a throttling problem when transferring large files. Those SSD that have read/write speeds over 3GB/sec will throttle very fast as the SSD controller hit 70 Celcius without a heatsink attached. Since it is at the back of the motherboard, mounting a heatsink risk shorting the motherboard .
@@fleurdewin7958 it'd be fine.
70c is weak, my old SM951 didn't start throttling until like 85c and that took like 3 minutes of constantly writing like 250GB to get to.
Besides if you mount a heatsink to a (commonly single sided) m.2 drive it would face away from the motherboard in the stand-off space between the board and the motherboard tray.
Thats why it's done so often on ITX boards like the.... Strix X570-I, B450 I AORUS PRO, B550I AORUS PRO, STRIX B550-I, X570 I AORUS PRO, B560I GAMING EDGE, Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac, B550I GAMING EDGE MAX, X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3, B550I GAMING EDGE, B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ax, Z590I VISION D, Z590I AORUS ULTRA
And about 30 others.
Iirc the very first itx boards with m.2 had them on the back, it was when 2 slot boards started showing up did they start having them on the front
@@tomstech4390 ineo has an m.2 heatsink with a 20mm fan on it, it quite small so you can put them on the back if your motherboard mounting plate has a cutout, and it cools well even in a hotbox. Just put some kapton tape over it
Ah yes, I forgot about that.
29:10 Allow me to introduce you guys to SlimSAS: it's a port with a cable, supports PCIe x4/x8, and can be converted to a PCIe slot
Alternatively "Buildzoid MB Wishlist"
I agree PCIe is best. M.2 is cool but i just want lanes to use however i see fit
Choice is expensive. It's far cheaper for the board makers to make the choices for you. And since 99% of people want an M.2 slot, those who don't get to be unhappy. A full PCIe board would never sell. Not in the consumer market. Not in numbers great enough to make it economically viable.
@@LadyEmilyNyx why not, this is going to be super expensive anyhow, include an M.2 to PCIe card with it.
@@LadyEmilyNyx you say that like full pcie boards werent the best selling boards in the past or something.
@@LadyEmilyNyx I respectfully disagree. When a consumer goes into a car dealership they frequently want to know what the vechicle costs FULLY LOADED. This is called bragging rights and it isn't all that surprising how much a customer is willing to pay for those rights. As for economically viable that is an argument that falls flat on its face. People love their options. The option to run M.2 where and when one wants is a big plus. The demand for modular building has never disappeared because it is so popular, flexible, and handy.
as long as i have a pci-e x16 slot for a gpu, i want the rest of the lanes for nvme m.2 drives
Maybe I missed it but I think you need to redo this. The ryzen socs have actually 32 pcie lanes but on the am4 socket only 24 are exposed, you need a soldered down "epyc but it's a desktop die" skus for the full shebang.
Then 4 are taken by the chipset, 4 by the top m.2 slot (usually) and THEN the remaining 16 are what is split or whatever. But it doesn't need to be like that. The 4 lanes from the m.2 can be easily taken and technically, while we are pipe dreaming we could just build an "AMD PRO 500" board with no chipset (also seen as X300 and "knoll activator chip") to get the full 24 lanes out of the AM4 socket completely free to toy around.
The chipset is actually a pcie switch in itself and gets you 1x lanes to the NIC and SATA and then x4 lanes to another m.2 slots and usb controllers etc, even more on the Intel side where you get stupid setups like 3x m.2s routed through the chipset's 4 lane "DMI"->4x pcie on "high end" motherboards.
Don't understand that but commenting so buildzoid can check if he had an error in something
uh, that's the IO die, and EPYC/TR have a different IO die. 4 lanes also are strictly for NVME, so, eh. correct on the 4 for the chip-set, again, those are dedicated. the chipset is a bit finicky, in that you lose SATA ports and USB ports as you peal away more lanes for PCIe slots, so not sure you realy want to even mess with that unless the only thing you care about is only having the PCIe slots. the extra M.2 slot would be cool alongside the dedicated M.2 off the CPU. Hmmm.
it's be great if they made a 40+TaraByte M.2, however last I checked there more expensive than a car and over 30cm long, so multiple SATA drives realy are better for that angle, along side the M.2 boot drive.
Had the same thought with the x300 style board, then run a PLX chip instead of a chip set. Alternately run a second x570 off of the 4 lanes for the m.2. This stuff really makes me miss the early days of the AMD HyperTransport. There were motherboards with almost every imaginable configuration. Sun actually sold a system under their Java workstation line where the motherboard was in 2 parts so that the chipset could be upgraded to switch from AGP to PCIe.
@@Zarcondeegrissom Not "desktop epyc". Just a zeppelin die before, and whatever they call it now, looks like your regular am4 desktop cpu but it has 32 lanes.
The zeppelin die on zen/+ and I/O die+CCD zen2> are fully capable of running without a motherboard chipset and have 2sata&plenty of usb.
@@P4GrAnGeR oh, zen1 Epyc Embedded 3000, before the zen2 core chiplets and IO dies?
ruclips.net/video/RerGTNTEzr4/видео.html
would make for an interesting system, even tho it's not zen3, with 5nm zen4 somewhere on the horizon (2020 put a hell of a damper on that I guess). Hmm. I still have yet to try to make a 3D model of that thing, and I've seen nothing of that 'embedded' line since. For what BZ wants, zen1 sucked for LN2 HWbot benchmarking, it was better than FX, it still wasn't a 9900k killer, lol. may as well just use TR at that point.
17:35 "... And that's my ideal motherboard!" *Half of the video remains*
Never change, BZ. I look forward to buying a Buildzoid motherboard to go with my future Kingpin graphics card. 😉
I would buy this. This is also exactly what I want.
Funny you talk about wanting "A *DUMB* dual bios", is it just me or are most "smart" products actually really stupid and just straight up worse?
"Smart" products are only as smart as the person who wrote the logic for them. Which is usually whomever bid the lowest for the job. (Or done in-house where you KNOW they're not paying for top tier talent) After all, they only have to be smarter than 99% of people, to be useful. And given the warning labels that things need... 99% of people are dumber than a post.
no, it's not just you. it's the "paperclip maximizer" problem with "not so"-Smart stuff, that and something called "the alignment problem" with neural AI network stuff.
If they call it "smart" you know it's shit.
@@LadyEmilyNyx warning labels are mostly to avoid legal trolling. In countries where legal system is very slow or the judges just laugh and throw out such bs lawsuits, there are normal warning labels about things that might actually not be obvious. No "warning, falling hazard" stickers on windows here.
So we agree that it would be better for the society if we went back to dumb phones? 👍
A couple of notes:
* You didn't mention 4 extra PCIe lanes from CPU, that are normally reserved for NVMe or SATA. I'm pretty sure nothing really stops you from using them as general purpose lanes.
* Your SLI x3 setup hangs completely from one x8 set of lanes. I'm pretty sure you could shift the layout around to balance the load.
* Microchip released PM42100 (gen4) and PM50100 (gen5) switches, a 100 lane devices that support non-transparent bridging like PLX chips do. You could stuff the whole 20 lanes from CPU into it and split it into 5x16 or however you want to slice it.
This looks like exactly what I was looking for in a motherboard. I have a 5950x, I want to use as much of the bandwidth as I can. Problem is I can't split the PCIe Gen 4 lanes into Gen 3. This would solve that. I would totally pay like $350 for a board like this. This would give me a ton of expansion, far more storage, networking and graphics all in one system. Although I'd like more supported memory, but the added expansion might still persuade me.
OK so if the M.2 eliminated the single screw and went with a simple clip design would it have more appeal? i love M.2 because its a clean install , no wires
my other issue with M.2 is that it's just mishapen PCI-e and PCI-e is better.
@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking The major downside of PCi-e add-in cards is they disrupt the intake of an air-cooled graphics card. Especially if you're lucky enough to have a case with some kind of viable bottom intake.
Yep, These tiny screws are awful.
Ataching M.2 SSDs with a screw on the motherboard is very conveniant! You can save cables going to SATA SSDs! And also you can have faster loading in games and SAM (Smart Access Memory) from the SSD to the GPU.
Buildzoid: Theoretically perfect motherboard
Manufacturers that actually care about their products: WRITE THAT DOWN!!!
Egh it's designed for a very niche use. The modal gamer doesn't need any Pci-e slots past the first as Crossfire/SLI are dead and motherboards are super feature-rich. And the modal gamer favours M.2 NVME drives much more than Buildzoid.
@@zig131 Things PC are dead until resurrected. Never say "never".
@@stevewatson6839 Low level APIs (i.e. DirectX 12 and Vulkan) killed dual GPU gaming. Unless the industry turns thier back on them, dual GPUs will not return.
All those switches seem like a signal integrity and timing nightmare 😅
any thoughts on why hasn't any manufacturer already collaborate with someone with brains and made something like this?
they already pulled some crazy (expensive, limited and HOC oriented) stuff, but for some reason never really reasonable thing
7:40 i disagree screws are great for attaching coolers and heat sinks to the motherboard
why not put the M.2 slots on the back? yea is sucks to access them but that is a case design problem we have cuts out for cpu backplates...
you forgot to specify where the extra power plug (pcie/molex/sata) goes for the pcie power you know if someone did make this you are gonna get it under slot 7 so better say where it goes
If this was an Asus board they could put a dimm.2 on it as well
Didn't you forget about the 4 lanes from the CPU for the NVMe SSDs, in addition to the 16 lanes you have discussed?
Won't this allow you to have 1 M.2 PCI-E gen 4 slot from the CPU and say 1 gen 3 from the chipset, both say at the back?
The way mini ITX boards do it?
the thing is I just don't really care about M.2s. If there's still space left for M.2 slots on the board afte I get my stack of PCI-e slots there can be M.2 slots but otherwise the PCI-e gets priority. I guess I could've gone XL-ATX and added an X4 PCI-e slot at the top or bottom.
realy sure that 4x set of lanes, can only be used for a NVME drive, don't think a single motherboard has even attempted to peal it off for the "on board" WiFi dongle things, so it's use is not realy worth talking about, it does one thing and one thing only. And like BZ, I only care about PCIe slots for Tesla compute cards, well sort of like BZ anyway, lol.
@@Zarcondeegrissom ĺ
@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking I think the trick here is that those 4 lanes from the CPU can only be used for the NVMe drive and while you can use a PCI-E 4 lane slot for those I think you may as well just slap two M.2 on the back side, from the CPU and the chipset.
I mean they would be out of sight and out of mind (like the chipset M.2 slots for the mITX gigabyte boards) for those who use open test benches with a bazzilion of SATA devices ;)
This way those boards could cater to a broader variety of enthusiasts. And maybe considering how this is future looking prepare for those new direct storage things, etc,
I really just wish most mATX boards had a better PICE layout. I don't want/need this crazy board
X4 from the chipset for networking or PCIE SSDs
X16/X8
blank
X8
I have a board similar to that except the top on is m.2 only. If you are going to do this, move the x4 from the top to the third slot, and put the x16 on top. That way SLI/CrossFire is possible with the right chassis, you still get the x4 with a dual slot GPU, and you do not choke your GPU in a four slot case. The other upside is that you could put a 3080 Aorus Xtreme in mATX this way. Asus, please make a Z690 Gene so my wishes can be real!
@@amyfranchuk6704 you don't want the X4 slot below the topic PICE slot because GPU makers are moving to 2.5+ slot cards even on midrange ones.
and dam it I want my 10gb+ nics
Is this a gigabyte x99 soc champion with a b550 chipset 😄
eh more like Z77-UP7 on B550.
@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking yes.
If the DIMM slots can be place on top of the motherboard just like recent EVGA Dark series motherboard, that will be perfect. Longer GPU sits right next to the DIMM slots. It radiates too much heat to the RAM which can affect stability.
all the more reason for the primary 16x slot being the second one down. B)
looks are also deceiving, sure that EVGA board with the rotated CPU section, is just missing slot 1, it only has slot 2(x16) 6(x16) and 7(x4).
Manufactures: How many layers do you want?
Buildzoid: Yes.
@I would be worried about signal integrity with that many layers... Especially on the PCI-E 4.0 slots since 4.0 is very sensible to interference.
there are 128 lane server boards. If the server boards can find the space to route 128 lanes then this B550 with 48 lanes should be doable. It won't be cheap but the PEX8747 already kinda made sure that the board can't be cheap since it's a 100USD chip.
The one thing I really wish Motherboard manufacturers would do is publish the datasheet and register map for the SuperIO chip they use, so many $500+ motherboards have absolutely no software access to sensors and controls because of this, only low end cheap high volume motherboards where the community has reverse engineered the communications have this.
not having direct m.2 slots is fine. just use pcie on a bigger pcie slot. Did this to my Z77 V Formula too
gigabyte, now you have a guideline
Throw in a input for running the clock external , like an bnc or sma you can hook a sig gen up to
PCBs are optional bro, just buy the components and wire them together!
Tell me you have not worked with gigahertz speeds without telling me you have not worked with gigahertz speeds. You want the traces at an exactly defined distance from ground
Tell me you are trolling pls
@@bene5431 Well my case is pretty tall so it's all 3 or 4 inches from the ground
@@joshuablaz lmao
have fun soldering 9001 micro coaxial cables
For M.2. I strongly prefer U.2. On boards that do not have U.2, I just install a M.2 to U.2 adapter, and install NVMe in 3.5 inch bay somewhere. The unfortunate thing about U.2 is that cables are pretty stiff and expensive. And I do not know if there is U.2 connectors and cables that work with PCIe 4 over similar distance.
EDIT: Yes, there are adapters and U.2 cables working with PCIe 4.0, and same distances. Nice. And you can find some cheaper ones too. I guess I overpaid for mine.
For what I have seen the chipset is actually a secondary FCH. The main one is the io die. So the secondary FCH is more a PLX than something else.
For what I've seen a Ryzen CPUs might boot without a chipset.
The chipset would free 4 more pcie lanes.
My x99 server MB have a similar pcie allocation. But the CPUs have 40 lanes and i don't need a PLX.
The Mac Pro PLX chip also contains switches and can reduce the lanes on some slots if another is populated.
You also need a PLX with pcie 4.0 upstream port and 3.0 downstream ones. in this way you have full bandwidth capability.
Not sure if a part like that exists. Probably ASmedia have something since they designermd the and FCH.
The io die handle both the LPC and the spi bus to read the bios and boot the system via the PSP.
The CPU also have the SMbus, the fan controller for the cpu and some generic gpios. And a USB 3.0 controller pinmuxed with a sata controller!
Remember that you need a x1 for the Ethernet.
So a chipset like the pro 500 would be a good choice. But I'm not sure if it uses the other X4 bus.
Would love to see a buildzoid edition motherboard
I appreciate the intent of this and Gigabyte should take note! No more smart BIOS switching. Give me 1 m.2 slot for boot drive, which I'd be willing to swap for a 2-way SLI setup. This would be highly marketable & simpler switching!
Just make it big, this is not likely to be run in a small case. Make it XL-ATX/E-ATX.
SSI-MEB/E-ATX, hell yeah. will need that large case for all the raid drives and Tesla A100 cooling fans anyway. (evil grin)
@Actually Hardcore Overclocking Nice video. What is the motherboard that gets closer to the "perfect motherboard" that you described on AM4?
this mobo is a pipe dream... there in practice it would probably suck, most of the time you have PLX chips used they are on things like GPUs that don't actually suck that much bandwidth, however if you stuck an SSD down this chain it would literally hang your system during high IO.
He said b550 vision gets close to what he wants.
USB I/O has been an issue for decades. Evidently Buildzoid likes to have his options. He is not alone. One of my pet peeves is why motherboard manufacturers insist on limiting the board to two physical onboard headers for USB 2.0. When one considers the plethora of devices that still run USB 2.0 (controllers, card readers, power supplies, to name a few) this negligence baffles me. Instead the user has to dig deep into their pockets for some dubious 3rd party device that may or may not compromise their system board just to get more pin outs for USB 2.0. That's just wrong.
I believe 4 PCIe lanes can be used as general purpose PCIe lane. slot 6 can be connected to M.2 lane?
To get 4 GPU's to use as much power as possible for the sole purpose of benchmarking, sounds like a more stupid hobby than bitcoin mining. Soundcards and multible M.2's sounds sane to me in comparison ...
This channel is called "Actually Hardcore Overclocking". Not "Actually Sane and Productive Things". Competitive overclocking is as stupid as any other sport. But people like stupid things. It's just that normies want to run after a ball on a grass field and geeks want to make computer components run faster (presumably because they're too lazy to run themselves). The objective is the same though: To reach the top of the score board.
It is stupid, and that's why it's fun!
And ITX variant please.
The exclusion of m.2 makes sense with this layout. I’d prefer the choice of using Pcie to m.2 adapters instead of having a x4 I can only use for storage.
The easier way without needing 12 layers or something might be using a 4.0 plx chip and using all 20 of the PCIe lanes coming off the cpu
29:00 That's a good point about the DIMM.2 feature, that might not be a bad use for it
Hey Buildzoid, when do you open your own company with the best PC parts in the market?
Noob in: OC, signal integrity and soldering here.
Is the "dumb" dual bios with a switch, as simple as just switching the physical bios chip? Like when the bios chips were easily user-replaceble?
Would it be possible to solder wires to where the bios chip resided, and feed the wires in to a breakout-board/box with a physical switch connected to the two bios chips?
If I had soldering skills like BZ and everything working fine with the bios chips hanging of the pcb in 30cm wires, I would say it is possible, but I have never heard/seen something like that, so there is probably a catch somewhere.
I think There is a small chance you will have some minor issues. You would probably want smaller wires. There is a chance that the induction of the longer wires would affect the serial connection. It could also create some RF interference (but almost s insignificant amount).
@@thomasb1521 Nah, you don't mess with the serial wires at all, they go to BOTH chips, plain and simple. And yes OP above, they are just two separate 25c-series flash chips. You only switch the /CS pin aka Chip Select (inverted). Since there's nothing else on that QSPI bus AT ALL, it goes to its dedicated spot, the CS line is not at all connected upstream, it just goes to ground on a normal mainboard i think. I don't know how Gigabyte does its Dual BIOS solution now, but the way they used to do this, they have a microcontroller (actually in those old boards, it's an embedded 8051 processor inside the ITE SuperIO controller), which checks the BIOS checksum before allowing the CPU to boot, and would also monitor past boots that they get past POST by spying on the POST codes on the LPC bus that SuperIO is connected to the rest of the system with, and if everything is fine, it pulls the main BIOS chip CS low; if it's not and it has to engage Dual BIOS, then it pulls CS low to the second chip! The other chip, CS is high, weak pullup or active high i don't care.
If it was a mainboard design, you can have the switch be connected to flash chip CS lines, and you should ideally have an RC filter on the path there, and from pushing the power button, one would insert a delay between that and the CPU being powered on, in the SMC/SuperIO firmware, they can make that delay long enough for the filter constant, like maybe 50ms if we're generous, you can avoid all issues from it being a janky switch, and this delay will usually fully hide inside the PWR_OK latency imposed by the PSU. If you insisted on it being even less possible to mess up, just read the switch in the firmware for the SMC/SuperIO, and control CS lines from the firmware. First you can only evaluate the switch once, but once all POST codes have scrolled by, you can have the controller read the switch regularly. The BIOS chip contents is actually shadowed in RAM, and then the chip is no longer used by the system, but you still need a way to flash the first and the second BIOS chips independently, so either you need a way to tell the SMC from the software to go switch the chips, or you simply foresee some way for the switch to keep working after the system has booted.
If you want to make a Dual BIOS yourself, i suggest devising a little board that goes in place of the BIOS chip, and allows you to place two BIOS chips on it, it'll be cheap from any proto service due to diminutive size, and super simple. All the lines except CS are connected to both chips, then you add a weak pullup to both chips' CS pins, and a little SMD slidey switch, or a pinheader, that grounds the one or the other. If you have a pinheader, you can then attach an external switch to it, or just use a jumper, like the goode olde times. I remember my first mainboard had a dozen jumpers, and my first soundcards had even more! I'm a little nostalgic tbh. I don't have a thought off the top of my head on how to make it super universal but still nice, as there can be junk around the BIOS flash chip on the board, and you don't want to collide with it, otherwise a board with a castellated piece would be good, castellations connect to the original footprint of the flash IC, that goes into a wider section with two chips on it. If you're designing around a specific mainboard, you just drill the holes in the PCB design to avoid the junk that you want to avoid.
Signal integrity? Well CS is effectively not a signal line. If you constrain yourself to a few square centimetres of layout space, and have a vaguely clean and sensible layout, you don't have to worry about data to the flash chips themselves, they're like 50MHz at most if that, maaaaybe 100MHz at uppermost? You don't have to length match the traces, at least not within a cm or so. Oh and looks like Gigabyte decided to deem it good to give each chip a 1pF NP0 capacitor on the CS lines and 1uF X5R on VCC so you probably want to copy that more or less, placed directly at the chips, you can beef the CS cap up since you're not using software controlled pins for that, but a switch.
Ah yes, buildzoid's already going on a rant 1 minute into the video, this is the content I'm looking for
@Buildzoid about the no audio support, I have a Asrock Rack X470D4U AM4 server motherboard that has no audio! I was surprised when I couldn't connect the front audio connector. So I guess it's possible! :D
That motherboard will be an overclockers delight
This makes me realize that the case i want is possible. Basically an O11 but the motherboard sits horizontally.
I just need the 500k to do the prototype and production, and anydees is willing to listen.
I had B550 tomahwak for HDD farming and it also involved a lot of CPU processing, the mobo had solid VRM and so it was good to run 3950x.
BUT
I had tried to run both m.2 NVMe, one raid card and dual 10G SFP+ network card.
Nope forget about it, you plug one thing it disables other PCIe slots, then even if you occupy slots such that plugged stuff doesn't get disabled, you get bandwidth limitations and when both NVMe-s are asked to run 100%, one is running at 60% of what it should.
Very bad PCIe situation.
Made me regret the consumer grade approach, should've went for a server instead...
It is situational. I like that the Tomahawk disables PCIe lanes that I don't need instead of SATA ports like some other mobos, so I can have my 6 drives running.
Very happy with my B550 Gigabyte Pro you suggested last year. Very happy with the IO and features. Thanks buddy.
Based on my humble and small CAD experience, motherboard market understanding and good knowledge about mass manufacturing, this motherboard would simply NOT cost less than $900, the amount of layers needed for the absurd amount of shielding you'd need for all those pci-e and to keep your 200mhz blck stable with all of that EMI going on in the lower half of the board.... Man that would be one, EXPENSIVE and HEAVY motherboard....
this is pretty much a modern take on 8 layer boards like the GIgabyte Z77X-UP7 or the Z87/97 Xpower.
UP7: static.gigabyte.com/StaticFile/Image/Global/9e06b62d4078900a974b6f9ddb04c0f5/Product/6676/png/1000
Z97 Xpower: static.techspot.com/images/products/2014/motherboards/org/1312187171_1840435288_o.jpg
@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking The "then" and "now" are a bit different my fellow hardware enthusiast, those boards did not needed the excessive shielding pcie 4.0 and the high bclk + the ddr4 topology requirements for the high clocks you want to reach, an modern board with those features under pcie 4.0, several switchers for your pcie 3.0 plan, the bclk stability you'd want, I mean you already know that the more 'pointy' ends the board has, the more susceptible to EMI it is, pcie slots are also, just like RAM slots, 'pointy' ends, I believe you already know this because you are pushing for an 2 ram slot board, but, the same applies to pcie slots, for the stability to not fall apart from all that EMI susceptibility we'd need very good shielding and grounding internally on the pcb layers, based on the same experience I posted above I would put your motherboard project at an minimum of 12 layers. The RAM traces for example would greatly benefit from being shielded by ground fills and being on their own layers on an SMD slot. Accommodating the traces for all that pcie switching would be an devil of it's own hahah
Well anyway there's a reason we kind of don't see boards like that anymore, the materials cost, tooling and manufacturing would require an too great price for the end consumer, it's sad but the days of those good boards are, perhaps forever behind us.
There PLX chips for PCIe4: Broadcom ExpressFabric PCIe Gen4, PEX series. Microsemi, Microchip, and Avago also produce many models of PCIe4 switches (actual switches, not muxes). Some with very high PCIe lane count, but they also produces smaller ones. All of them available for over a year now. Asmedia does not have one yet, but it will probably change in a year or two.
What ruined modern motherboards is M.2 slots. They eat up PCI lanes like crazy and you get fewer actual PCIe slots. M.2 is a laptop standard. It would have been much better to keep the PCIe slots and have people use add in board SSDs if they need it instead. M.2 is simply dumb on a desktop. Because of M.2 you have to buy a HEDT platform if you want things like high performance networking or RAID controllers as there is simply nothing left on mainstream platforms after one x16 to graphics card and one x1 for maybe a sound card and one x8 (which drops the graphics card slot to x8 as well) for some kind of capture card. Also onboard 10GbE eats lanes too and higher end gaming boards now come with dual LAN by standard. Some people have their own network cards and don't need onboard connectivity. It simply doesn't matter how many lanes a mainstream socket and chipset combo has if motherboard manufactures waste them on all kinds of integrated crap.
truth be told, putting something on to have the option to build a specific type of config would be cost prohibitive and there could well be timing issues with the 16/8 pcie bus(16/8 is minimal) .. layers are the next issue as you mentioned, but.. the most effective construct would be to build 2/3 spec boards -- if someone where to build this, it would have to have a higher usability ratio .. just my thoughts, but this is interesting
Instead of needing a pci-e lane for audio, tie it into a usb header. Then you can have a hot swappable module in case of failure, too. The output could still be tied to the rear I/O in a slim stack on the side nearest the slots.
Doesn't the chipset work to expand the number of PCIe lanes as well as properly utilizing bandwidth. For example, 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes going to the chipset will allow 8GB/s worth of PCIe 3.0 connectivity if needed, though at a latency cost.
Something tells me that BCLK and other OC functionality would be better served on external module that can be connected via wire instead of being directly on motherboard, because majority of people won't need that and it takes A LOT of space per your description,
it could also be universal standard for motherboard to have this connector and external module.
Also as I recall, these PCIe switches are expensive af...
For NVMe, having one OCULink on the board would be awesome, it can be used for anything.
Also for M.2, have a look at design of Lenovo P520 and then P920 how their M.2 are setup, you'll like their solutions =)
Also surprised you mentioned Threadripper, but not EPYC
I feel like buildzoid's hate for m.2 is pretty specific for him. I do like sata drives more from a connectivity standpoint as it's hard to get at m.2 drives to disconnect them when you have a gpu and a cpu cooler in the way but who wants slower drives? Plus for some ridiculous reason Windows doesn't allow you to install another boot loader when you already have a drive with windows on it.
I'm also confused who all this sli/crossfire is for as it's unsupported but a very cool concept nonetheless.
I don't hate M.2s I just see absolutely no reason to use them out side of laptops.
if they didn't eat up usable PCIe slots, meh, thy omit many PCIe slots instead, so meh.
@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking I can kinda agree with that. the placement and cramming of m.2 slots makes no sense from a tinkering/ easily moveable pov.
The first 2 mins of rambling is exactly how i felt too when picking a B550 mobo. There's just always an interface that is not there on every other mobo
I hope one day you can collaborate with a company to make your own
It could be called the BUILDZOID BOARD. :)
I disagree with dual bios, triple bios on a board like this!
Personally, I like M.2, but you got to the solution I'd implement at the end with Asus' DIMM.2.
Side note: It's annoying on ITX boards that the back panel so often has empty space. On such small boards, that area's essential to have well populated as there's so little expansion capabilities internally and because of the lack of internal expansion, there's plenty of available bandwidth for a vast and speedy back panel.
just a brief question, what ya thinkin of the Asus Apex XIII?
should be a great board. I really like the Apex XII(Z490) I have.
Would Threadripper be better for Fire Strike if you disabled SMT?
So suprised you didn't mention safe boot button.
Wouldnt it be possible to just another circuit board, put it ontop and the connect it with a powerful caple to transit the data/voltage instead of forcing it onto the same circuit board.
I just want an am4 Micro-ATX board with proper multi GPU support
There is many (not many many, but there are there) ATX boards with no audio. I hate boards with on board audio (or wifi). This is the first thing I disable. Even on mini-ITX.
If you have benchmarks complaining about missing audio, just install a dummy audio driver ("null driver"). That does nothing. Easy. Also most of the monitors and GPUs support audio over HDMI, so there is that too (I hate it personally, and always disable it, because it messes up with default audio devices).
What will you do with AM5?? You have my info….
What happened to all of the PCIe slots? I remember in the '00s you could get loads of PCIe slots.
Was it us plebs who stole all the lanes for SATA, 2.5, 5 and 10Gb LAN, Wifi and M.2?
It happened when Intel forked their CPU/platform line by creating HEDT and mainstream desktop. Less focus on cores, I/O, general expandability, memory bandwidth, etc.
Ahhhhh yeeeaaa! I hope some company makes a Builzoid Edition Motherboard now.
i wonder how much would this dank pcie layout cost as a separate 16x board with a riser cable. probably "yes".
The x570s Gigabyte Master is nearly perfect except of one/two missing pcie 3.0 x4 slots (that take the SB Lanes of the m. 2)
My ideal : (of 7 possible pcie slots)
Chipset x570 (so you have 4×pcie 4.0 to the SB)
1: pcie 4.0 (16x/8x) CPU
2: nothing
3:pcie 3.0 1x SB
4: pcie 4.0 (0/8x) cpu (switched with 1)
5 pcie 3.o 4x (shared with M.2) SB
6 pcie 3.0 4x SB
7 pcie 3.o 4x shared with M.2) SB
M. 2 of the CPU (and 2 shared with slots)
All PCie 4x should have open ended slots you can use 8x/16 cards (like every server has)
WHYYYYYYYY would you choose a B550 instead of a X570???? How can you scoff at a tiny little m.2, that can run at five to ten times the speed of a HDD??? And EVERYTHING attaches to your board with a screw. All pcie cards after sliding into their ports, attach with a screw. And the m.2 also slides into it's port, before being screwed down. ALSO, MOST newer boards, don't use screws with the m.2 drives, there's a circular attachment instead. I'd be perfectly happy with a Crosshair Dark board, IFFFF it had three m.2 drive bays, instead of ONLY two for $450 dollars.
Buildzoid, can you try doing PCB Breakdown for low-end motherboard, especially for Intel CPU? We have some breakdowns about B550 for a while now, but there is a little info about Intel motherboard equivalent like B560.
No overcloking for CPU so he is not interested. They are all too budget
@@Corei14 I think he may rant about one of the worst H510 or B560 motherboard with discrete MOSFET and the important of heatsink. It is a good content for his channel IMO.
@@Corei14 True, but you can at least overclock RAM on B560.
@@nathangamble125 there are just better overall boards. more io, More memory/cpu vrm importations on z590. If an h or b series was good we would know. Other channels already have a tier list. Hardware unboxed noted that more than one decreased overall performance of a CPU.
*MSI Furiously taking notes*
Lookin' at you MSI B550 Gaming X. . .
so what BZ wants is a mining motherboard io with gaming features
Buildzoid ends video like Mrs. Doyle ends phone calls.
25:12 So how does the Asus X570 WS ACE get a x8 PCIe Slot then? The Only AM4 mobo with 3x x8 PCIe Slots.
BZ: "i have multiable different motherboards" Manufactures: "Feature, not bug."
YES, M.2 slots on motherboards should fak right off. If I want to install NVME SSDs I can use PCie adapters
I think that the LIQUID Honey Badger has a PCI-e 4.0 to 3.0 custom plx chip
BuildZoid x570s Mk1, you can use this name when you start making Motherboards :) I think this should be ATX extended.
i understand BCLK is broken on x570, but buildzoid have you also now tried it on new x570s silicone too? it was not fixed by that hardware update?
btw for the cost of this plx madness. and all the mixture of x3 and x4 rats nest traces going everywhere it really would be better to have a threadripper intsead wouldnt it? or does that then sacrifice something else on the board?
and for gpu spacing... well once we get pcie5 improved signaling then maybe trace length could increase some. and you could just extend downwards the footprint of the board to be longer. and just more generously space every single adjacent slot. this would also then make it easier to design spacings that fitted the sizes of available sli bridges
> i understand BCLK is broken on x570, but buildzoid have you also now tried it on new x570s silicone too
X570s is X570 with passive cooling and 7W TDP enforced on the chipset firmware.
BZ you know that you can get people to make you a PCB right the board would cost a couple grand and Idk how tf bios works but still
I'm not skilled enough to design a board from scratch getting it designed and built motherboard manufacturer as a limited unit run (like 100 boards) would be like 50-150K USD.
@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking hey just dont eat or pay rent for like a hundred years and you will have enough money
@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking I'm actually really surprised one of the mobo manufacturers hasn't asked you to help them make a board to your "perfection" yet.
Quad 1080Ti, now that would be a sight to behold!
Suggestion imperative. The Brand name must include "Buildzoid"
Gigabyte taking notes
Maybe move the second x16 slot down 1 or 2 slots to add space for 2way x16 SLI/crossfire
2way X16 through the PLX is pointless.
Interesting stuff! 👍 Thanks for sharing 🙂
if only, lol. 40GB Tesla A100's in slots 7 and 5, raid controller in slot 4, then the disp-out card in slot 2, that would be soooooooooooooo sweet for a render/compute box based on the 5950x. It's been a dead on arrival dream for the very thing outlined in this vid, lack of usable PCIe slots. Knowing my luck, if this ever happens, they'll put it on a board with only two Type-A USB ports on the back, Grrrr.
If those pci-e chips that, half the speed and double the bandwidth, becomes a thing in the near future. That could be 64 lanes of pci-e 3.0, on a consumer platform, with the new pci-e 5.0 cpu's.
Thanks for the effort you put in and the very informative videos you provide Could you make a video about popular Buck converters like APW8722 and there is another GS. And another video about how Memory controllers work like NCP81022 and the most commonly used. Thanks in advance.
I'm fairly sure there is a 4.0 x16 to 3.0 x32 chip, I think it's what liqid use(d) for their ridiculous SSDs?
MSI B550 unify-x is as close to perfection as it gets...
i want 0.1mhz step size for bclk. such a bummer that i just cant run 100.1bclk like i used to do on my 2600k
As someone looking to upgrade to Ryzen soon, the hardest part is choosing a good motherboard. ESPECIALLY now, after all the MFG drama going around.
MSI, Gigabyte, AsRock have been getting shitty customer service spotlight, Straight lied to its customers and refused to acknowlege service. Scalping GPUs to its customers, man the list can go on for them.
meanwhile Asus has been having issues with its Bios recently and just straight bricking motherboards.
At this point, im willing to add 250+ to my budget and get EVGA which is extremely overkill for my needs as im not LN2 XOC
There should be one cheaper than the dark from EVGA, can't remember what they decided to name it or what price it is since I don't care for it at all but you'll come away cheaper than the dark and still have an EVGA board.
@@NotThatGuyJD the ftw line
@@davidashurov5255 that's it.
I can think of an improvement, though it would require changing the standards for boards and case: Replace the IO shield area with a bunch of half-height double-width card slots and put matching PCIe x1 slots on the board, then remove all the integrated stuff from the board. Limit the motherboard to just power, RAM and PCIe connectivity. Put everything else on cards so you can fully customise everything.
Where can I buy the Buildzoid B550 Monstrosity, and how much will it cost?
Slot4 is only for quad gpu and should be set to a riser cable at the lower end of moboand and put slot 5 in center of 4 and 5 and lower the 7. You should be able to get some air cooling even with quad gpu with 3pci hieghts
m.2 can be set with a pci-e card if you want... even a 1x pci-e can manage 4 m.2 for most common user´s