I definitely agree. Much clearer than a chart, and really highlights what a crapshoot it is on some of these boards. Better hope you don't accidentally plug your mouse into a 1000MB slot and your backup drive in a 41MB slot when reaching blindly around the back of your PC! ASUS are the standout here by labeling the speeds on the ports: 10G on the 10 Gigabit ports (~1 Gigabyte), and 40G on the 40 Gigabit (~4 Gigabyte) ports. Could be a little clearer, but that's already much clearer to the end user than SS, Lighting, Ultra, 3.2, etc as not everyone has the standards or the companies marketing jargon memorized.
Honestly curious why. For me, motherboards have always been the least interesting, they're just an interconnect. If anything, I'd prefer them with as few features as possible and just more PCIe ports to plug actual features into.
I only get interested in MB reviews, when I'm looking at buying. I used HWUB MB roundup to buy mine. But I will watch CPU/GPU reviews even when I'm not buying.
@@chuuni6924 Well it seems like everyone man and his dog does indepth CPU and GPU testing. But motherborads .. hardly anyone... which board boots teh best.. now we know.. which ones support ECC now we know.. Audio stuff... now we know. Thermal limiting... now we know...
I agree. They increased the price substantially and add very minor features. I just got an asrock x670e for 379 and the new one is 450. Only real difference for me would be the 5gbe over 2.5gbe. But if I upgrade my Ethernet I’d just get a 10gbe adapter instead
@xellr Heres a few reasons : More known stability when working with large amounts of data, keeping bit-rot under control, alerts when memory goes bad.
@@xellr ECC stands for Error correction code, and basically it improves system stability. RAM isn't perfect, and sometimes what should be a 0 is a 1. This often doesn't crash your system, but it can still cause weird stuff to happen. ECC will correct that, and ensures the right stuff is in RAM. If you've ever had a system that just seemed generally unstable but it was never just one thing, there's a decent chance the problem is actually your RAM, and ECC memory prevents that kind of thing. It's worse for raw speed, so if your system is 100% for gaming you might want to trade a little stability for a little performance, but for people whose systems are used for productivity, it could be really useful. Imagine you've started a video encode that's going to take 8 hours, then it crashes at hour 7 because of RAM. You might have preferred to pay a little more for your RAM, rather than have to spend another 8 hours trying the encode again.
@@xellr The most important use case for home users imo is transferring data. Let's say you have some family photos that you are creating a backup of. If there's an error when writing the image to ram it might get backed up in a corrupted state. With ECC, the chance of this happening is a lot less because it has to happen in three places at once.
@@MajinOthinus There is no reason to believe that has anything to do with ECC itself. DDR5-8000 is at the bleeding edge of what is even possible, and it is likely that such a kit is using carefully binned chips. The market doesn't produce ECC kits like that. It is also possible that AMD hasn't implemented implemented 2:1 mode with ECC, and everybody says not to bother with 2:1 mode anyway.
@@Vegemeister1 Yes it has. To actually apply full ECC functionality, as is done with RDIMMs, it is necessary to both actually compute those values and cross check and correct the data. That will always necessitate lower clocks as it takes additional clock cycles to complete before the data can be fowarded to the actual CPU. Regarding 2:1 mode: It's moreso that even with the newest AMD chips, 2:1 mode only offers an improvement above 8000MT/s; otherwise it's a straight downgrade from 1:1 mode. Especially because you can implement way tighter timings at lower clock speeds.
I would love to buy a board with competent VRM design, zero RGB, no wifi, and no weird plastic or metal flare pieces that aren't directly useful for heat dissipation. Heck, I'd even be happy with 2x DIMM slots as a cost cut since I haven't used more than two DIMMS outside of a threadripper system since before 2006. Sadly, no one seems to want to sell boards that meet this description.
Keep in mind that the ASRock Taichi series are E-ATX boards, so they are 2 to 3 cm wider. Could be something to mention, cause not everyone can fit them in their case. 😉
ive actually been seeing e-atx boards being the same width as regular atx motherboards so this is false, e-atx boards are taller than your average atx board by around 20 or more millimeters
steve please have a critical look into x870. because those boards also come with mandatory usb4, and at least gigabyte is wiring up that usb4 with 4 cpu lanes, so that means you lose one nvme slot compared to b650 for a couple of usb slots. x870, at least gigabyte, ONLY supports TWO nvme drives without sharing lanes somewhere, one via cpu and one via chipset. the gigabyte boards have more m2 slots, but these are wired to share lanes with the primary gpu slot or the chipset m2 is shared into x2 / x2, which requires phsyical x2 drives according to the manual. dont let people fall into the trap of buying x870 thinking its generally better than b650. it isnt when you rather have one more m2 drive instead of usb ports.
To me, the only improvement will be the NitroPath thing that potentially allows higher memory speed. Otherwise, many boards actually have worse support for M.2 SSDs than their predecessors. For example, the main PCIe slot slows down to x8 if you install a second SSD directly connected to the CPU on many X870E motherboards.
I shall post a copy of my main comment on the video because it is relevant here: The X870(E) boards are just an objective downgrade from the X670E/B650E boards. The chipsets are quite literally identical, so will perform identically, but X870(E) adds the absolutely brain dead USB4 requirement which now means you can't use two PCIe 5.0 SSDs without stealing lanes from the graphics card anymore because the USB4 ports are stealing two lanes. So you're essentially left with 20 actually useable PCIe 5.0 lanes, even though you paid for 24. This is even more baffling as there was absolutely no demand for USB4 and for those who still needed or wanted it, the option to implement it was already there. The fact that so few 600-boards decided to incorporate USB4 already shows the weak demand - understandably so, as there is almost no use case for USB4 on desktop machines above the smallest of form factors. You can also see this in how even now, the USB4 implementation on all those boards is the minimum allowed slots with the ASM4242 controller which is again the minimum viable product and doesn't actually offer USB4 speeds in many of the relevant use cases. There is no reason to buy an X870(E) board whatsoever. Buy an X670E or B650E board; they are cheaper and offer objectively superior features. It is physically impossible to implement more than 2 PCIe 5.0 SSD slots on an AM5 CPU without stealing lanes from the GPU and for X870(E) that number drops to 1.
@@PowellCat745 Memory speed is generally not motherboard, but CPU limited, as the memory controller on the CPU is the part that actually croaks at higher speeds. As for the SSD part, it is categorically impossible for ALL X870(E) boards, as the USB4 ports steal two PCIe 5.0 lanes. The only way around that is to do what ASRock did and downgrade to PCIe 4.0.
Indeed. I wish they were available when I bought my 7950X3D and board as I value stability over everything else and would have loved to go the ECC route, but information was spotty and vendors were less than transparent.
Great video! MB reviews are some of my most fav videos on this channel. Audio testing is a great addition, keep it pls. Also glad to see RAM speeds going up but I'm wondering if the new MB or new CPU enables 8000+ MHz
Zen 5 easily hits 8000MHz even on previous gen B650 boards. I managed to post 8300 as well but was never able to fully stabilize that. I needed to increase PROCODT significantly to stabilize 8000 though. 24hr y-cruncher vt3 stable.
Audio testing on these would make sense if most of them had the 3.5mm connector working as a headphone output... they don't, the testing is done on the line output, it would take another separate device to amplify that signal to headphone levels. And if you have to buy a separate headphone amplifier for the motherboard you are actually getting a worse experience than just buying a good 50$ usb dongle for audio
@@7ergosum Asus's audio implementation is stupidly good for a mobo. When i had a b550-a that they didnt skimp out on audio caps for, it sounded comparable to $200 dac/amps.
@@Hetsu.. I've used X370 Crosshair and X570 Strix, my Creative AE-7 200$ soundcard sounds much better (and it even included a stereo microphone). Perhaps you need better headphones (there are both awesome and crappy ones at almost any price point) or better music files (videogames use heavily compressed audio) or to change the Windows settings so it uses 32bit with the max available sampling frequency. Another separate suggestion is installing EQ APO and setting the preamp to -4db because Windows introduces distortion at high digital volume levels
X670e ASRock Taichi or Taichi Carrara and leave this issue in the in dust. Im running four sticks , purchased at separate times, of GSkill Royal Trident Z at 7800 megatransfers with literally nothing configed except expo turned on, all other ddr5 options set to auto. The first time I booted with 4 sticks it stopped in bios and asked me if I wanted to enable expo. After that it defaulted to the rams advertised speed of 7800mt. Been running about 9 hours with no issues so far. Cinemabench on repeat while playing frozen winter in the background.
You say that like DDR4 wasn't. Modern mainstream platforms have had memory compatibility issues for nearly a decade at this point. And that aint even the major problem with these boards now; the complete lack of connectivity (PCI-E, SATA) is, while costing 2-3x more than boards in the past.
Power Consumption & Audio is important to me, so I can't thank you enough for including these! 🥰 Though I do miss some Idle Power Consumption numbers ...
Idle power consumption is important for me as I'm building a NAS but then this is a gaming-focused channel anyway. Idle power consumption can vary from motherboard to motherboard, especially if it has WiFi or not and I have no need for WiFi.
Many USB dongles from 50 dollars and up will give you a way better audio experience (the difference is more than enough to be measurable) than any on-board audio solution from motherboards. Also, notice how many of the ones futured on the video only have LINE OUT, not headphones out. Therefore, a separate device will be necessary anyway to amplify the line out signal to headphone levels... so you might as well get the dongle (I am using a dedicated 200$ soundcard: SoundBlaster AE-7 from Creative, but there is some noise floor that makes me wanna switch to either dongle or desktop dac/amp)
@@7ergosum I used to have the same opinion and have used midrange hifi receivers through optical toslink as audio solution for decades. But those things use 25 watts idle and I can often hear a low trafo hum in standby after only a few years. I'm autistic and very sensitive to that so it drives me crazy. I then tried 2 midrange 100$ - 200$ audio dac/headphone amps and though they had incredible soundstage, the noise floor was unacceptable. So for the last 5 years, premium onboard audio combined with a premium PSU has been the best solution for me. The old realtek ALC8xx was shit and ALC9xx (+889a) was only decent, but onboard audio has come a long way and ALC1220 sounds really good on a board with good amps if you use the hacked drivers from github IMO. BTW. You do know that there's headphone amps on the board, even if you can't access them from the back IO right?.
@@7ergosum >will give you a way better audio experience than any on-board audio solution from motherboards Are you sure? Because the newer codecs perform really well from what I have seen (ALC4080 vs ALC897 for example). Not picking a fight, just trying to hear your opinion.
@@7ergosum Pro Tip: Don't use the audio out from the back IO. It's too close to the vrm and network chips. Use the audio header that's often right beside the amp audio caps.
Prices for Mobos are getting insane and to top it off, it's hard to find a quality board with digital audio out without paying for other crap I don't need.
don't forget digital optical in. There aren't even many options for that without paying an arm and a leg for. The best cheapest solution is still to get a Sound Blaster Z, which ironically the middle model of its family and is still being made and one of the few internal soundcards you can find with both optical in and out that has current drivers for 10\11.
honest if you're the person that cares for good quality audio, the best solution is to buy a good PCIe sound card and carry it over on any Mobo upgrade. That way you can go with any budget board that provides the minimum you need and save a lot of money on expensive mobo with a lot of additional "features" you don't need. You only pay for the card once.
These are literally the same prices if not a little less than the launch prices of X670E so no they're not getting insane. They've been insane for 2 years lol.
@@AKK5I At the moment there is no ground based launch platform for a Maverick. So it would be about $5 billion for the R&D to make this happen. You'd probably do better by just buying yourself something like an AH-64 Apache, so the missile can just bolt straight in. Then there's the question of which variant you want.
And more than likely, the AsRock board will once again be the best for the high end and mid-tier (Taichi lite) when considering price to performance. Edit: What? There's only a $50 difference between the Normal and Lite versions? I'll definitely be getting the normal version then just for the backplate and the easy-release for the GPU. The way the Lite is without it would make it a nightmare to release the GPU where the retention clip is sandwiched on ALL sides.
yep, top quality with lower prices vs other brands, also highly popular in asian counties, i used asrock brand for 5-6 years, i just preordered the Asrock x870e nova wifi, will arrive in about a week time at my place
regarding USBs There's nothing wrong with leaving USB 2.0 on the board AS LONG as they are not at the expense of fewer connectors if they weren't there. They can still be used for wired k/b and mouse, or charging, for example. I assume you mean that you would still prefer maximum connectors but all high end, to which I can agree.
Thanks for everything and here are two points: 1. there must always be at least 2 usb 2.0 low latency ports connected directly to the cpu for mouse and keyboard 2. the audio quality testing was really useful please keep it there ❤
Most of the new boards have one big problem: lanesharing. The ASRock Taichi is the only board without any sharing for the M.2 slots. Some examples: Carbon Wifi: GPU runs at x8 when the secondary M.2 slot is occupied. Hero: GPU runs at x8 when the second or/and the third M.2 slot is used. Aorus Master: GPu runs at x8 when the third and/or fourth M.2 slot is used. Tanks to AMD... guaranteed USB4 instead of a second M.2 slot on the CPU.
Well the good news is X670/B650 boards still exist and will be better value options anyways. Most of them do have the extra 4 lanes from the CPU on a 2nd M.2 slot. Honestly I would prefer having more different kinds of PCIe configurations to chose from, and if that comes with different gens, fine, there is no real downside in going last gen on the same platform with AMD unless you need one of the new features. And USB4 support isn't even new, so 🤷
Don't see it as much of a problem since x8 on PCIe 5 should still be more than enough for any desktop gpu, unless the new gpus that are coming out soon are something wacky and you're working with dataset workloads
x8 on PCI-e 5 is plenty fine. We are not going to see any graphics cards in the next 5 or 6 years that are going to saturate that especially for gaming workloads. The only time this is likely to become an issue is if your doing AI workloads with huge datasets and then you should be looking at workstation systems not gaming systems if that is your primary concern.
@@MaethorDerien we will see, how Blackwell will perform with PCIe5 x8 (or PCIe4 x16). Even a 5700XT loses up to 10% performance when switching from PCIe4 to PCIe3. With about a third of the performance of a 4080.
This is the most annoying thing about both of the new chipsets. I came to this video in the hopes to see this tested for real and with variations in nvme generations. Im not satisfied with running a gpu in x8 if it is pinned for a x16 slot because you always loose half of the bandwith performance.
It's great to see these new points of comparison for motherboards like USB speeds, ECC compatibility and sound stats. Loving your work Steve! One more thing I think might be interesting to compare (perhaps in a standalone video if it's too much work for the roundup) is the differences in idle power between motherboards. Basically just measure Windows desktop idle with an accurate power meter. I think these flagship motherboards with a lot of hardware on board might possibly suck back quite a bit of power - perhaps we'd see things like the lower tier boards with just a single chipset are more efficient? Or maybe not, but it would be very cool to know and have the data!
Great video Steve, but after recent bad experiences with the X670 Gigabyte Aorus Elite AX I am more likely to buy a board based upon user feedback regarding BIOS reliability than just VRM Thermals and power delivery. My Aorus motherboard tested well but has many people including me with problems running DDR-5 6000 EXPO profiles. This was a problem at launch, then improved but has been terrible again since the AGESA update that stopped X3D chips receiving too much VCore. Even with manually setting the voltages it hangs requiring a CMOS clear any time you try to restart the PC. Shutting down still works followed by a fresh start but it is a worry with updates that automatically suggest a restart after 30 seconds. It is still good to know which boards to avoid each generation, but currently only the Asus TUF X670E (and maybe the Asrock board) seem to have a BIOS that "just works". Even the MSI Tomahawk X670E has many user reviews and UA-cam videos complaining of RAM not running in 1:1 ratio at DDR5 6000 using EXPO profiles, even though the DIMMs are in the motherboard's compatibility list 😕 This is a shame as the X570 Tomahawk was great and there didn't seem to be so many problems simply running at conservative memory speeds.
For not exciting products, the expected pricing is silly on consumer level hardware. As Steve showed, you don't even get working ECC support on all of these.
@@andersjjensen Right, but I suspect that the rest of the lineup is overpriced for what it offers, too. Considering that I got the B450 Tomahawk for 69 EUR in 2019 and a Z690 board with PCIe 5.0 for 109 EUR in 2023. :)
@@seylaw B450 launched in like 2018 though. They weren't even compatible with Zen 2 in 2019 unless you got a Max version or updated the BIOS yourself with a Zen/+ CPU. What matters were the prices of X570 boards back then as they were the new boards and then Z790 prices because again Z690 was old by then. Z690 launched in 2021. You're not making sense. You bought motherboards years after they launched for lower than MSRP and are comparing the new motherboards (that are also way better built with more features and tech) that are just coming out at MSRP. That's like complaining about the price of a new console that just launched because it's not as cheap as another console you bought 3 years after it came out. That's ridiculous and senseless.
@@vigilant_1934Take my comment as you like. But I disagree with you on every aspect. Even the B450 Tomahawk non-MAX got Zen 3 support eventually. And as Raptor Lake is also compatible with Z690 and has nearly the same features, the differences in age vs Z790 have zero impact on the user experience in practice. So it comes down to pricing which is always way worse on the latest and greatest. Smart people look at the prices and feature sets and not on the name of a product or its release date. And as you see the new X870/B850 series is mostly pointless. You could get away with a Asrock B650 Steel Legend Wifi and still get PCIe 5 NVME and GPU slots for 183 EUR including VAT in my country. There is simply no need to buy any of these 250 EUR+ "mid-range" boards for the majority of users.
Thanks for adding the Audio testing. I do a lot of audio work using the board level audio chip. Hard to find reliable audio chip comparisons out there!
I'm still rolling an x570 dark hero and a 5950x with a 3080, I'm doing all right with it. I'm good for now I don't need no motherboard that is more than a month's rent..
I'm going X870E as this is a brand new build. I'd really love a video or part of a video on getting the best out of the M.2s on these boards that will allow to keep the 1x16 PCIe slot at 16 instead of 1x8. This new build is replacing a 3950X on a Taichi x570. As always, great work.
Hero Maximus Formula etc are all 100% cash grabs. It's always better to get the Strix version under them. They always come with a POSTCODE led and plenty of overbuilt VRM power and heatsinks. (you probs already knew this but maybe someone else doesn't)
@@justin6581 looking at the specs it really looks like it could fit even a 9950x3d, a 5090, and a 1000w psu just fine, include a 4TB PCIe 5.0 and 2 8TB PCIe 4.0 SSDs in there too with 96GB of some DDR5-6400 CL30 or 6000 CL28, this will be a great futureproofing mobo
Audio benchmark was nice. I noticed now more motherboards don't include the full 5.1./7.1 jacks. The msi mpg x670e had it, but the mpg x870e now only has 2 jacks (mic in and line out, no line in)
Not completely true. Some of us have waited a long time to "officially" see native support for usb4 and TB especially on AMD Boards. Plus the requirement of PCIe 5.0 with all 870 boards. I agree it seems over the top and not really needed and way too expensive for some people, and the different amount of PCIe lanes available on the different AMD chipsets is still a mess and not very well thought out. Dependent on what people need to connect to their PC and what they use it for, having as many PCIe lanes as possible available in a good designed board can be crucial to some, and utter overkill for others. So for some a 500$ or even 1000$ Mobo might be totally bonkers and to others be Mana from Heaven no matter the cost.
@@ChrisM541 These boards arent for the average minecraft gamer. They are typically for pro’s that work with multiple of external storage and other devices that need to all have a solid and fast connection, hense the focus on more pci-e lanes, minimum 3 onboard nvme slots and as many high speed external ports as possible. I do agree that the avg gamer don’t need all this, but there is still enthusiasts that have the money and is willing to spent it just to get the last 2-3% extra performance. Its just a question of where each of us draw the line of of redicolousness 😘
Noone does breakdowns on motherboards like this and is always one of my questions when building a pc on which one to buy. Props to you guys! Keep these coming. Surprised LTT, Pauls HW, GN or J2C do not go to this level of detail on Motherboards. Always mentioned as an afterthought or very generalized with features/price being the most important vs availability of ports. Really appreciate the attention to the 'bones' of the PC.
@@meekmeads I do not care. I've tried other brands, and it always bit me. I've tried high-end XFX (I've been around for a while), Gigabyte, MSI and asrock boards and they all had significant (to me) issues. I've had multiple ASUS boards and they were all fine. I never had to use ASUS warranty because I never had an issue with an ASUS board. Issues include: Weird network/audio drivers, random BIOS resets, random TPM resets, loud chipset fans (after a while), weird USB behavior where some ports wouldn't work with some software and others would, PC randomly not booting after being shut down (it would never POST) unless power cycled. I've been building PCs for many years for myself and family members and with GPUs and motherboards, ASUS is the only brand where I literally never had an issue. The only ASUS product that failed on me is a gaming display from 2014, that failed just recently 10 years later.
Back to you steve, these motherboard benchmark specs are revolutionary. Thank you guys for such a detailed and expert review! When do we get our hardware unboxed mugs/mouse pads?? :D
"B650 is in my opinion more than enough for most CPUs" the chipset has almost nothing to do with the CPU, pretty much any AM5 chipset will run any AM5 CPU, chipset is about the speeds of the NVME, GPU, USB etc
Very happy to see the USB testing. I use an external sled for my video editing to go between my laptop and desktop, similar to what you used in this video. So it was very useful to see that represented!
I would trade out a ton of USB for a single pcie x1 or even better x4. I personally don't need more than 2x USB 2, 1x 5gbps. So let's say 2x 2.0, 2x 3.0-5gbps, and 2x 3.0-10gbps and then leave the rest to pcie slots. I know it's not as simple as either USB or PCIe but pcie is way better.
Remember that you can set "BOOT Delay Time" to "0" in the BIOS, shaving a few seconds off the boot times. This defaults to "3" in the ASUS BIOS. I'm not sure if this was already done in the video but I'm guessing it was, since my ASUS ProArt Creator X670E also gets 22s boot times. Of course, that's with "BOOT Delay Time" set to "0" and "Memory Context Restore" enabled which is crucial for fast boots with EXPO RAM. For reference, I'm using a 7950X with 2x32GB RAM and latest AGESA 1.2.0.2 BIOS update.
I like the new more in depth motherboard testing! A couple of suggestions: 1) Audio latency testing 2) A quick FPS recap in gaming. Some boards have better memory tracing and other build advantages that can slightly affect gaming performance.
I'm curious if all 4 memory slots can be populated and still run AMD EXPO on these new X870E mobos. I found out the hard way that AMD EXPO would not work when all 4x memory slots were populated on the X670E
@@blegi1245 Intel can't go full speed with all slots populated either. This has been a thing since we stopped using JEDEC spec memory in enthusiast machines.
Well the problem is that you have higher throughput, but worse latency with higher speed memory. So under the line, it doesn't matter much. Your speeds go from very good to great, but the latency goes from great to good, or something. You get the point lol. But that's what Steve means.
@@alextsibicov1163 Fuck ASUS. X670E has 10Gb NICs, but only the MSI's X870E Godlike will have one (according to PCPartPicker), that doesn't make any sense. And that board is probably going to cost over 2k.
Nice to see audio testing, that's the department overlooked most. But perhaps even more important to those figures are the software features, what the control panels allow
Nice into to x870 guys! Asus one looks pretty sweet with that ECC support - any chance you can test if you can run ECC@6000 with 192-256 GB capacity with decent timings? Btw. MSI response to ECC is just ridiculous, not everyone will fork for a Threadripper. I am eyeing the possibility to run 5 SSDs (am guessing 3 PCIe5 + 2x Samsung 990 pro 4TB) with 2x 5090 and 9950x3d - will I have enough lanes? Yes it is confusing, agreed!
@@campas7182 People have apparently got it working correctly on X670E ASUS boards (namely Hero and ProArt) so it probably should be possible on X870E too, it may just need some BIOS settings to be configured. Some people have noted, for example, that on certain boards setting ECC support to "auto" in the BIOS doesn't mean it will automatically work - it needed to be explicitly set to "enabled" instead. In the L1Techs review for the MSI MPG Carbon, Wendell mentioned he may have _possibly_ gotten ECC memory working correctly on the MSI board. It's not officially mentioned anywhere in the datasheet for the board, and from MSI's response to Steve it doesn't sound like they are officially supporting it, but it _may_ work unofficially. I don't think the MSI BIOS exposes any kind of memory error injection support though (unlike ASUS and ASRock which usually do) so verifying that ECC memory is working/reporting correctly is potentially a little more difficult as you'll probably have to physically introduce errors either through shorting pins or overclocking the memory modules until they reach the edge of stability. If MSI aren't officially supporting it then there's also no guarantee it won't just break in a future BIOS release.
This is a fantastic review. Temperature testing and USB port testing are much more useful than bazillion benchmarks that do not differentiate these boards. Kudos.
I keep finding myself getting to this same conclusion... With the games I'm playing right now my current system is fine... I wanted to get an X3D upgrade for a couple games but the increased RAM capacity (16GB-64GB) seems to have solved my stuttering issues, so far. I'll upgrade when I NEED to at this point, not because consumerism strikes again lol
@@MikeB1972 😅 I feel this, I ran out of things to upgrade, I'm trying to convince myself I should get the 9950x3d to replace the 7950x3d but... My monitor is bottlenecking at this point and I have absolutely no problems.
@@dwarfcow like I could get more out of my 6900XT with a CPU better than a 9700KF but like... I'm good rn lol My 144hz 1440p monitor is also gonna be a limiting factor. OLED looks great but the price doesn't... It is getting better, especially 1440p OLED high refresh.
@@MikeB1972 yeah, I got sucked into the ultra wide rabbit hole, and when you sprinkle qd-oled spoiling, I can't get more than 175hz on the only qd-oled UW offerings, I want a 3840x1600 offering but they don't care about the 15 people in that market, apparently - so, the 4090 isn't even breaking sweat capping out the monitor, it could redline with a potato for a cpu.
If you want good and reliable onboard audio, or you plan to use your external DAC's optical input, do yourself a favor and avoid motherboards that use the Realtek ALC4080/4082.
@@netcrashYT ALC1220, ALC1200, or ALC897. They use the Intel HD Audio standard which uses a direct connection to the chipset. The ALC4080/4082 uses a USB interface.
@@Hetsu.. hmm, if that is the case, how is one to connect some high quality dac and audio speakers to a computer? There is only digital out usb and optical.. not counting hdmi..
Epic motherboard review, you covered memory overclocking, audio, boot times, so much better than the usual running cinebench and seeing if it gets hot. The only other thing I’d like to see is power delivery quality, like how well the VRM handles transients and how close steady state voltages are.
Really appreciate your motherboard coverage as it's more complete than most others and is extremely helpful. The addition of the USB testing is more useful than I expected it to be as not all of the same spec are created equally. AMD playing some games with naming as the X870 is the B650E replacement and they're just ditching the X670 equivalency.
Do all of these allow all M.2 slots to be filled and run at full speed while the PCIe x16 Slot still remains able to run at full speed with all M.2 SSDs filled as well, or are there restrictions? Is there bandwith sharing between anything or does everything work together? It would be nice if you could mention them if there are any such restrictions, because what good are lots of M.2 slots if you can't use them all at once without sacrificing video card performance?
you'd have to check the user manual's to find out exactly. usually they don't touch the primary x16 slot and pull extra lanes off the secondary PCIE expansion slots for M.2. but i believe x870E they're required for the spec to have a full unshared PCIE 5.0 x16 slot while non E has more flexibility. could be wrong though.
The AsRock X870E Taichi/Lite and the not yet released X870E Nova Wifi are the only X870/E motherboards with a debug display I´ve seen, where you can populate all M.2 slots and run PCIe1 with all 16 lanes. The Asus Crosshair Hero loses two slots, the Gigabyte Aorus Master/Pro/Elite are losing two slots and the MSI Carbon Wifi is losing one slot.
The absolute maximum without any lane splitting or chipset multiplexing you can achieve on AM5 is one x16 GPU and three x4 NVMEs. Because you have 28 PCIe lanes from the CPU to play with - 4 of which always go through the chipset. On X670 you generally had two standard configurations that most Motherboards came with: 1. a full x16 GPU slot + two x4 M.2 Nvme from the CPU + more M.2 slots that share the gen4x4 bandwidth of the chipset or 2. an x8 GPU slot with one or two extra NVMEs from the CPU splitting of the other 8 lanes. Usually I think they only bother with one and waste the remaing 4x lanes. If the board has PCIe switches, the GPU slot can be used at full x16 if those NVME slot(s) are unused. On X870 (and X670 boards with USB4 support) I think 4 of those lanes from the CPU are used for USB4. I.e. you only have one M.2 slot directly from the CPU unless you cut down the lanes of the GPU slot. Meaning with a full x16 GPU, you can have a max of two NVMEs (one CPU, one chipset) with unshared bandwidth.
Thanks for testing the ECC! I've been looking for real world X870E ECC tests, and this is super helpful. I know Asus listed ECC support and wonder if they could fix it with a BIOS update since that's the MB that I want most.
B650E Taichi Lite on my computer... I think I made a good purchase in not waiting for these boards, haha. Discovering the difference in data transfer speeds across USB ports is definitely something I didn't know I needed. Great thing to test and I like the methodology.
Love to see you guys do videos on motherboards, choosing one is a big part of any build but not a lot of reviewers seem to do big roundups like this. Would like to know how the chipset's pcie link bottlenecks things connected through it, especially since X870 has 2 chipsets chained with 1 connected through the other one, and not directly to the CPU
99% don't need more than 1GB, thats why. 10GB ethernet is way more expensive than 2.5-5 GB and 10GB cables are stiff as hell and expensive too anyway. Its pointless to waste money on 10GB for most manufacturers.
@@Dr.WhetFarts Yeah… but some of us does need those. Really handy with external SSD based nas equipments etc. But yeah, not everyone needs those, but i would expect that some highend ones at least have those, and because highend did have 10gb in 570 series… one would expect that middle range boards should have those in these days…
loved the comment about the difference between x670 and x870 LOL I'd already come to the conclusion that it wasn't worth upgrading based on the lack of USB slots on the i/o panel but that comment really cemented it. Your channel really helped me with my new build earlier this year, thanks so much!
Pretty much the only difference between the two is Wi-Fi 7 and even that card could be replaced on the X670E board, pretty much turning it into and X870 board.
The USB speed testing segment was great, really useful to see, and a great way of presenting it.
I definitely agree. Much clearer than a chart, and really highlights what a crapshoot it is on some of these boards. Better hope you don't accidentally plug your mouse into a 1000MB slot and your backup drive in a 41MB slot when reaching blindly around the back of your PC!
ASUS are the standout here by labeling the speeds on the ports: 10G on the 10 Gigabit ports (~1 Gigabyte), and 40G on the 40 Gigabit (~4 Gigabyte) ports. Could be a little clearer, but that's already much clearer to the end user than SS, Lighting, Ultra, 3.2, etc as not everyone has the standards or the companies marketing jargon memorized.
Agreed! Not everyone can see the back of their PC easily!
Needed model labels on the slides though
would be nice to add mb models to the rear i/o pics in that section. ty for the content
@@BenState Fair point. A great start, though!
not gonna lie, motherboard testing is the most interesting to me, and you provide a lot of info, thank you for that
Honestly curious why. For me, motherboards have always been the least interesting, they're just an interconnect. If anything, I'd prefer them with as few features as possible and just more PCIe ports to plug actual features into.
@@chuuni6924exactly
I only get interested in MB reviews, when I'm looking at buying. I used HWUB MB roundup to buy mine. But I will watch CPU/GPU reviews even when I'm not buying.
@@chuuni6924 Well it seems like everyone man and his dog does indepth CPU and GPU testing. But motherborads .. hardly anyone... which board boots teh best.. now we know.. which ones support ECC now we know.. Audio stuff... now we know. Thermal limiting... now we know...
These MB are really not that exciting, but I still like watching your content
Thank you :)
GPU quick release feature is gold.
@Dr.WhetFarts I mean it's very neat, but I don't really see one using it often (unless you do benchmarks/reviews for a living)
Same it's fun!
I agree. They increased the price substantially and add very minor features. I just got an asrock x670e for 379 and the new one is 450. Only real difference for me would be the 5gbe over 2.5gbe. But if I upgrade my Ethernet I’d just get a 10gbe adapter instead
a BIG thank you for testing ECC RAM compatibility
what is that for?
@xellr Heres a few reasons : More known stability when working with large amounts of data, keeping bit-rot under control, alerts when memory goes bad.
@@xellr ECC stands for Error correction code, and basically it improves system stability. RAM isn't perfect, and sometimes what should be a 0 is a 1. This often doesn't crash your system, but it can still cause weird stuff to happen. ECC will correct that, and ensures the right stuff is in RAM.
If you've ever had a system that just seemed generally unstable but it was never just one thing, there's a decent chance the problem is actually your RAM, and ECC memory prevents that kind of thing.
It's worse for raw speed, so if your system is 100% for gaming you might want to trade a little stability for a little performance, but for people whose systems are used for productivity, it could be really useful. Imagine you've started a video encode that's going to take 8 hours, then it crashes at hour 7 because of RAM. You might have preferred to pay a little more for your RAM, rather than have to spend another 8 hours trying the encode again.
@@xellr The most important use case for home users imo is transferring data. Let's say you have some family photos that you are creating a backup of. If there's an error when writing the image to ram it might get backed up in a corrupted state. With ECC, the chance of this happening is a lot less because it has to happen in three places at once.
@@xellr Stop enabling xellr and spoon-feeding them.
The appropriate response is: "Ask google, you muppet."
I really liked the USB speed breakdown. Don't see that ever.
Same. really good stuff
the prices are kind of outrageous.Thanks for the effort.
Kind of expected the ROG mb to have a Q-cumber feature by the end.
Support-Q ...
I expected a Q-007 feature... disappointed.
they wanted to but it was too q-cumbersome. **ducks**
Get out! @@ThrasherEscapes
@@ThrasherEscapes you're alright man.
Thank You for testing ECC capability! It's so hard to get that kind of info outside of enthusiast forums.
what is that?
@@xellr its a error correcting for ram mostly used for servers but over clockers have started to use it as it make overclocking ram easier.
@@ShadowGun625 It doesn't though. As shown, the maximum clock speed for registered DIMMs is quite a bit lower than for unregistered ones.
@@MajinOthinus There is no reason to believe that has anything to do with ECC itself. DDR5-8000 is at the bleeding edge of what is even possible, and it is likely that such a kit is using carefully binned chips. The market doesn't produce ECC kits like that. It is also possible that AMD hasn't implemented implemented 2:1 mode with ECC, and everybody says not to bother with 2:1 mode anyway.
@@Vegemeister1 Yes it has. To actually apply full ECC functionality, as is done with RDIMMs, it is necessary to both actually compute those values and cross check and correct the data. That will always necessitate lower clocks as it takes additional clock cycles to complete before the data can be fowarded to the actual CPU.
Regarding 2:1 mode: It's moreso that even with the newest AMD chips, 2:1 mode only offers an improvement above 8000MT/s; otherwise it's a straight downgrade from 1:1 mode. Especially because you can implement way tighter timings at lower clock speeds.
300$ entry level boards here we come
I would love to buy a board with competent VRM design, zero RGB, no wifi, and no weird plastic or metal flare pieces that aren't directly useful for heat dissipation. Heck, I'd even be happy with 2x DIMM slots as a cost cut since I haven't used more than two DIMMS outside of a threadripper system since before 2006. Sadly, no one seems to want to sell boards that meet this description.
@@RN1441 Didn't Asrock try that ?
@@RN1441 sad part is that none of the things mentioned are the reason the board have gotten this expensive. It's mostly just price gouging
@@RN1441x870 pro rs is the closest thing, but it’s $200
Use a B650 Aorus Elite about a year and don't mention why bought more expensive board. It have all i need and more.
Keep in mind that the ASRock Taichi series are E-ATX boards, so they are 2 to 3 cm wider.
Could be something to mention, cause not everyone can fit them in their case. 😉
E-ATX with none of the functionality E-ATX boards were known to have.
I didn't think it could get even worse.
ive actually been seeing e-atx boards being the same width as regular atx motherboards so this is false, e-atx boards are taller than your average atx board by around 20 or more millimeters
E-ATX is not a standard, so MB manufacturers can make it what ever size they want. That's why E-ATX's come with variable sizes.
Thanks for testing the audio chips. I didn't expect such a big difference in noise levels.
steve please have a critical look into x870. because those boards also come with mandatory usb4, and at least gigabyte is wiring up that usb4 with 4 cpu lanes, so that means you lose one nvme slot compared to b650 for a couple of usb slots. x870, at least gigabyte, ONLY supports TWO nvme drives without sharing lanes somewhere, one via cpu and one via chipset. the gigabyte boards have more m2 slots, but these are wired to share lanes with the primary gpu slot or the chipset m2 is shared into x2 / x2, which requires phsyical x2 drives according to the manual.
dont let people fall into the trap of buying x870 thinking its generally better than b650. it isnt when you rather have one more m2 drive instead of usb ports.
That unfortunately is already an issue with at least the Proart X670E.
To me, the only improvement will be the NitroPath thing that potentially allows higher memory speed. Otherwise, many boards actually have worse support for M.2 SSDs than their predecessors. For example, the main PCIe slot slows down to x8 if you install a second SSD directly connected to the CPU on many X870E motherboards.
Usb4 into cpu to accidentaly kill it?
I shall post a copy of my main comment on the video because it is relevant here:
The X870(E) boards are just an objective downgrade from the X670E/B650E boards.
The chipsets are quite literally identical, so will perform identically, but X870(E) adds the absolutely brain dead USB4 requirement which now means you can't use two PCIe 5.0 SSDs without stealing lanes from the graphics card anymore because the USB4 ports are stealing two lanes. So you're essentially left with 20 actually useable PCIe 5.0 lanes, even though you paid for 24.
This is even more baffling as there was absolutely no demand for USB4 and for those who still needed or wanted it, the option to implement it was already there. The fact that so few 600-boards decided to incorporate USB4 already shows the weak demand - understandably so, as there is almost no use case for USB4 on desktop machines above the smallest of form factors.
You can also see this in how even now, the USB4 implementation on all those boards is the minimum allowed slots with the ASM4242 controller which is again the minimum viable product and doesn't actually offer USB4 speeds in many of the relevant use cases.
There is no reason to buy an X870(E) board whatsoever. Buy an X670E or B650E board; they are cheaper and offer objectively superior features.
It is physically impossible to implement more than 2 PCIe 5.0 SSD slots on an AM5 CPU without stealing lanes from the GPU and for X870(E) that number drops to 1.
@@PowellCat745 Memory speed is generally not motherboard, but CPU limited, as the memory controller on the CPU is the part that actually croaks at higher speeds. As for the SSD part, it is categorically impossible for ALL X870(E) boards, as the USB4 ports steal two PCIe 5.0 lanes. The only way around that is to do what ASRock did and downgrade to PCIe 4.0.
Adding the ECC support tests makes these videos so goated
Indeed. I wish they were available when I bought my 7950X3D and board as I value stability over everything else and would have loved to go the ECC route, but information was spotty and vendors were less than transparent.
The audio and USb testing data was a nice inclusion, definitely want to see them in more videos going forward
Great video! MB reviews are some of my most fav videos on this channel. Audio testing is a great addition, keep it pls. Also glad to see RAM speeds going up but I'm wondering if the new MB or new CPU enables 8000+ MHz
according to Leo from kitguru, zen 5 does, you can do it on ages 1.2.0.2 with 670 and 870 boards, but not with zen 4
Zen 5 easily hits 8000MHz even on previous gen B650 boards. I managed to post 8300 as well but was never able to fully stabilize that. I needed to increase PROCODT significantly to stabilize 8000 though. 24hr y-cruncher vt3 stable.
Audio testing on these would make sense if most of them had the 3.5mm connector working as a headphone output... they don't, the testing is done on the line output, it would take another separate device to amplify that signal to headphone levels. And if you have to buy a separate headphone amplifier for the motherboard you are actually getting a worse experience than just buying a good 50$ usb dongle for audio
@@7ergosum Asus's audio implementation is stupidly good for a mobo. When i had a b550-a that they didnt skimp out on audio caps for, it sounded comparable to $200 dac/amps.
@@Hetsu.. I've used X370 Crosshair and X570 Strix, my Creative AE-7 200$ soundcard sounds much better (and it even included a stereo microphone). Perhaps you need better headphones (there are both awesome and crappy ones at almost any price point) or better music files (videogames use heavily compressed audio) or to change the Windows settings so it uses 32bit with the max available sampling frequency. Another separate suggestion is installing EQ APO and setting the preamp to -4db because Windows introduces distortion at high digital volume levels
Can these manufacturers please make some good 2-DIMM slot motherboards for AMD? DDR5 is so finicky…
X670e ASRock Taichi or Taichi Carrara and leave this issue in the in dust. Im running four sticks , purchased at separate times, of GSkill Royal Trident Z at 7800 megatransfers with literally nothing configed except expo turned on, all other ddr5 options set to auto. The first time I booted with 4 sticks it stopped in bios and asked me if I wanted to enable expo. After that it defaulted to the rams advertised speed of 7800mt. Been running about 9 hours with no issues so far. Cinemabench on repeat while playing frozen winter in the background.
You say that like DDR4 wasn't.
Modern mainstream platforms have had memory compatibility issues for nearly a decade at this point.
And that aint even the major problem with these boards now; the complete lack of connectivity (PCI-E, SATA) is, while costing 2-3x more than boards in the past.
Power Consumption & Audio is important to me, so I can't thank you enough for including these! 🥰
Though I do miss some Idle Power Consumption numbers ...
Idle power consumption is important for me as I'm building a NAS but then this is a gaming-focused channel anyway. Idle power consumption can vary from motherboard to motherboard, especially if it has WiFi or not and I have no need for WiFi.
Many USB dongles from 50 dollars and up will give you a way better audio experience (the difference is more than enough to be measurable) than any on-board audio solution from motherboards. Also, notice how many of the ones futured on the video only have LINE OUT, not headphones out. Therefore, a separate device will be necessary anyway to amplify the line out signal to headphone levels... so you might as well get the dongle
(I am using a dedicated 200$ soundcard: SoundBlaster AE-7 from Creative, but there is some noise floor that makes me wanna switch to either dongle or desktop dac/amp)
@@7ergosum I used to have the same opinion and have used midrange hifi receivers through optical toslink as audio solution for decades. But those things use 25 watts idle and I can often hear a low trafo hum in standby after only a few years. I'm autistic and very sensitive to that so it drives me crazy. I then tried 2 midrange 100$ - 200$ audio dac/headphone amps and though they had incredible soundstage, the noise floor was unacceptable. So for the last 5 years, premium onboard audio combined with a premium PSU has been the best solution for me. The old realtek ALC8xx was shit and ALC9xx (+889a) was only decent, but onboard audio has come a long way and ALC1220 sounds really good on a board with good amps if you use the hacked drivers from github IMO.
BTW. You do know that there's headphone amps on the board, even if you can't access them from the back IO right?.
@@7ergosum >will give you a way better audio experience than any on-board audio solution from motherboards
Are you sure? Because the newer codecs perform really well from what I have seen (ALC4080 vs ALC897 for example). Not picking a fight, just trying to hear your opinion.
@@7ergosum Pro Tip: Don't use the audio out from the back IO. It's too close to the vrm and network chips. Use the audio header that's often right beside the amp audio caps.
16:59
This is so cool that you have tested ECC. Thank you
Prices for Mobos are getting insane and to top it off, it's hard to find a quality board with digital audio out without paying for other crap I don't need.
Yeah, you'll never find that from a reputable brand.
don't forget digital optical in. There aren't even many options for that without paying an arm and a leg for. The best cheapest solution is still to get a Sound Blaster Z, which ironically the middle model of its family and is still being made and one of the few internal soundcards you can find with both optical in and out that has current drivers for 10\11.
honest if you're the person that cares for good quality audio, the best solution is to buy a good PCIe sound card and carry it over on any Mobo upgrade. That way you can go with any budget board that provides the minimum you need and save a lot of money on expensive mobo with a lot of additional "features" you don't need. You only pay for the card once.
It would be less expensive at this point to buy a good external DAC with the mobo you just need. You get to reuse it with future upgrades too.
These are literally the same prices if not a little less than the launch prices of X670E so no they're not getting insane. They've been insane for 2 years lol.
I probably won't need to upgrade until zen 6 or 7 soo I'll just enjoy the vids
That’s where I’m at, too…
Lots of work put into this video, thanks so much.
Displaying the name of the mobo next to the Rear IO layout would be nice.
Steve's standing, clearly not a good product
or just a minor upgrade .
Hey Raytheon can I get a quote for a single unit of AGM-65 Maverick missile delivered to central Melbourne and fitted to a 2018 Toyota Hilux? Cheers
@@AKK5I At the moment there is no ground based launch platform for a Maverick. So it would be about $5 billion for the R&D to make this happen. You'd probably do better by just buying yourself something like an AH-64 Apache, so the missile can just bolt straight in. Then there's the question of which variant you want.
Mobo Manufacturer PR: His hemorrhoids are just acting up.
Thank you so much for the ECC memory testing !!
And more than likely, the AsRock board will once again be the best for the high end and mid-tier (Taichi lite) when considering price to performance.
Edit: What? There's only a $50 difference between the Normal and Lite versions? I'll definitely be getting the normal version then just for the backplate and the easy-release for the GPU. The way the Lite is without it would make it a nightmare to release the GPU where the retention clip is sandwiched on ALL sides.
yep, top quality with lower prices vs other brands, also highly popular in asian counties, i used asrock brand for 5-6 years, i just preordered the Asrock x870e nova wifi, will arrive in about a week time at my place
Thanks for the comprehensive testing. I love that you added all these new metrics to your motherboard testing. Really makes the content feel premium!
regarding USBs
There's nothing wrong with leaving USB 2.0 on the board AS LONG as they are not at the expense of fewer connectors if they weren't there. They can still be used for wired k/b and mouse, or charging, for example. I assume you mean that you would still prefer maximum connectors but all high end, to which I can agree.
Thanks for everything and here are two points:
1. there must always be at least 2 usb 2.0 low latency ports connected directly to the cpu for mouse and keyboard
2. the audio quality testing was really useful please keep it there ❤
Most of the new boards have one big problem: lanesharing. The ASRock Taichi is the only board without any sharing for the M.2 slots. Some examples:
Carbon Wifi: GPU runs at x8 when the secondary M.2 slot is occupied.
Hero: GPU runs at x8 when the second or/and the third M.2 slot is used.
Aorus Master: GPu runs at x8 when the third and/or fourth M.2 slot is used.
Tanks to AMD... guaranteed USB4 instead of a second M.2 slot on the CPU.
Well the good news is X670/B650 boards still exist and will be better value options anyways. Most of them do have the extra 4 lanes from the CPU on a 2nd M.2 slot. Honestly I would prefer having more different kinds of PCIe configurations to chose from, and if that comes with different gens, fine, there is no real downside in going last gen on the same platform with AMD unless you need one of the new features. And USB4 support isn't even new, so 🤷
Don't see it as much of a problem since x8 on PCIe 5 should still be more than enough for any desktop gpu, unless the new gpus that are coming out soon are something wacky and you're working with dataset workloads
x8 on PCI-e 5 is plenty fine. We are not going to see any graphics cards in the next 5 or 6 years that are going to saturate that especially for gaming workloads. The only time this is likely to become an issue is if your doing AI workloads with huge datasets and then you should be looking at workstation systems not gaming systems if that is your primary concern.
@@MaethorDerien we will see, how Blackwell will perform with PCIe5 x8 (or PCIe4 x16). Even a 5700XT loses up to 10% performance when switching from PCIe4 to PCIe3. With about a third of the performance of a 4080.
This is the most annoying thing about both of the new chipsets. I came to this video in the hopes to see this tested for real and with variations in nvme generations. Im not satisfied with running a gpu in x8 if it is pinned for a x16 slot because you always loose half of the bandwith performance.
The level of additional testing for each board is wild! Really great to see, hope you keep doing this.
Boot time and audio testing was pretty cool. Hope it stays.
all X870 does is makes the X670 boards with a bios update look more cost effective and affordable for the same product basically😂
X670 lacks USB4 and PCI-E 5 (the non E variants) and if the price difference isn't big i would probably go with cheap X870
@@Rentta PCIe5.0 being standard on X870 is really nice. Up to spec with Intel boards too.
@@Rentta I'll go with B650/B850 since I really don't care about 77 USB ports on my Motherboards and the little quirks the X series has
@@brexy9984Good call
@@Rentta my B650E has usb 4 lol
It's great to see these new points of comparison for motherboards like USB speeds, ECC compatibility and sound stats. Loving your work Steve!
One more thing I think might be interesting to compare (perhaps in a standalone video if it's too much work for the roundup) is the differences in idle power between motherboards. Basically just measure Windows desktop idle with an accurate power meter. I think these flagship motherboards with a lot of hardware on board might possibly suck back quite a bit of power - perhaps we'd see things like the lower tier boards with just a single chipset are more efficient? Or maybe not, but it would be very cool to know and have the data!
Great video Steve, but after recent bad experiences with the X670 Gigabyte Aorus Elite AX I am more likely to buy a board based upon user feedback regarding BIOS reliability than just VRM Thermals and power delivery. My Aorus motherboard tested well but has many people including me with problems running DDR-5 6000 EXPO profiles. This was a problem at launch, then improved but has been terrible again since the AGESA update that stopped X3D chips receiving too much VCore. Even with manually setting the voltages it hangs requiring a CMOS clear any time you try to restart the PC. Shutting down still works followed by a fresh start but it is a worry with updates that automatically suggest a restart after 30 seconds.
It is still good to know which boards to avoid each generation, but currently only the Asus TUF X670E (and maybe the Asrock board) seem to have a BIOS that "just works". Even the MSI Tomahawk X670E has many user reviews and UA-cam videos complaining of RAM not running in 1:1 ratio at DDR5 6000 using EXPO profiles, even though the DIMMs are in the motherboard's compatibility list 😕 This is a shame as the X570 Tomahawk was great and there didn't seem to be so many problems simply running at conservative memory speeds.
Thanks for validating ECC, AMD processors are great for budget server builds. Very nice USB testing! Great video, unexciting motherboards though haha
For not exciting products, the expected pricing is silly on consumer level hardware. As Steve showed, you don't even get working ECC support on all of these.
These were the all-out halo products. They exist to make fools part with their money and to make the rest of the line-up look affordable.
@@andersjjensen Right, but I suspect that the rest of the lineup is overpriced for what it offers, too. Considering that I got the B450 Tomahawk for 69 EUR in 2019 and a Z690 board with PCIe 5.0 for 109 EUR in 2023. :)
@@seylaw Those were late generation prices. Just like B650 and X670 boards have come way down in price since launch by now.
@@seylaw B450 launched in like 2018 though. They weren't even compatible with Zen 2 in 2019 unless you got a Max version or updated the BIOS yourself with a Zen/+ CPU. What matters were the prices of X570 boards back then as they were the new boards and then Z790 prices because again Z690 was old by then. Z690 launched in 2021. You're not making sense. You bought motherboards years after they launched for lower than MSRP and are comparing the new motherboards (that are also way better built with more features and tech) that are just coming out at MSRP. That's like complaining about the price of a new console that just launched because it's not as cheap as another console you bought 3 years after it came out. That's ridiculous and senseless.
@@vigilant_1934Take my comment as you like. But I disagree with you on every aspect. Even the B450 Tomahawk non-MAX got Zen 3 support eventually. And as Raptor Lake is also compatible with Z690 and has nearly the same features, the differences in age vs Z790 have zero impact on the user experience in practice. So it comes down to pricing which is always way worse on the latest and greatest. Smart people look at the prices and feature sets and not on the name of a product or its release date. And as you see the new X870/B850 series is mostly pointless. You could get away with a Asrock B650 Steel Legend Wifi and still get PCIe 5 NVME and GPU slots for 183 EUR including VAT in my country. There is simply no need to buy any of these 250 EUR+ "mid-range" boards for the majority of users.
Thanks for adding the Audio testing. I do a lot of audio work using the board level audio chip. Hard to find reliable audio chip comparisons out there!
I'm still rolling an x570 dark hero and a 5950x with a 3080, I'm doing all right with it. I'm good for now I don't need no motherboard that is more than a month's rent..
I'm going X870E as this is a brand new build. I'd really love a video or part of a video on getting the best out of the M.2s on these boards that will allow to keep the 1x16 PCIe slot at 16 instead of 1x8.
This new build is replacing a 3950X on a Taichi x570.
As always, great work.
Can't wait for the Asrock Nova review
19:35
USB speed testing is so cool and I like how you show the results.
$1299 AUD for the hero is absurd
X670E Crosshair Gene better in all front and cost two less.
Yeah
Well, it does look awesome. But that's crazy yeah.
620€/700usd in europe
Hero Maximus Formula etc are all 100% cash grabs. It's always better to get the Strix version under them. They always come with a POSTCODE led and plenty of overbuilt VRM power and heatsinks. (you probs already knew this but maybe someone else doesn't)
Thank you for the Audio Analyzer testing. Can't get this anywhere else.
For anybody wondering, the AsRock X870 PRO RS at $190.
Taichi or bust
Only $190? That’s amazing value.
@@justin6581 looking at the specs it really looks like it could fit even a 9950x3d, a 5090, and a 1000w psu just fine, include a 4TB PCIe 5.0 and 2 8TB PCIe 4.0 SSDs in there too with 96GB of some DDR5-6400 CL30 or 6000 CL28, this will be a great futureproofing mobo
I've just pre ordered it in Uk here £190... hope its ok?
@@nehpets1876 ASRock makes really good budget motherboards, it'll go great with a 9600X and eventually an RX 8600 when RDNA 4 launches
Thank you for documenting the ECC support situation. Its infuriating how hard it is find out even from the documentation on the vendors' own sites.
Audio benchmark was nice. I noticed now more motherboards don't include the full 5.1./7.1 jacks. The msi mpg x670e had it, but the mpg x870e now only has 2 jacks (mic in and line out, no line in)
Thanks for all the important testing! Glad to see you also include bott times as well as everything else.
An entire video saying "just find a good deal on an X670"
Not completely true. Some of us have waited a long time to "officially" see native support for usb4 and TB especially on AMD Boards. Plus the requirement of PCIe 5.0 with all 870 boards. I agree it seems over the top and not really needed and way too expensive for some people, and the different amount of PCIe lanes available on the different AMD chipsets is still a mess and not very well thought out. Dependent on what people need to connect to their PC and what they use it for, having as many PCIe lanes as possible available in a good designed board can be crucial to some, and utter overkill for others. So for some a 500$ or even 1000$ Mobo might be totally bonkers and to others be Mana from Heaven no matter the cost.
For lowly gamers yes. For the real stuff, USB4/TB4 support is huge.
@@mrdali67 "it -seems- is over the top and not -really- needed and way too expensive for -some- all but the usual 0.000001% of people"
@@ChrisM541 These boards arent for the average minecraft gamer. They are typically for pro’s that work with multiple of external storage and other devices that need to all have a solid and fast connection, hense the focus on more pci-e lanes, minimum 3 onboard nvme slots and as many high speed external ports as possible.
I do agree that the avg gamer don’t need all this, but there is still enthusiasts that have the money and is willing to spent it just to get the last 2-3% extra performance. Its just a question of where each of us draw the line of of redicolousness 😘
@@mrdali67 "Its just a question of where each of us draw the line of of redicolousness" - Very well said.
Thanks for the audio data!
Can't wait for 9800X3D vs 285K and 265K benchmarks.
I hope they will also test 285K vs HT OFF 14900K.
Spoiler: 7800X3D win price to perfomance them all.
why? you already know the answer lol
9800X3D vs. 265K is the main thing I'm looking forward to this fall lol
Noone does breakdowns on motherboards like this and is always one of my questions when building a pc on which one to buy. Props to you guys! Keep these coming. Surprised LTT, Pauls HW, GN or J2C do not go to this level of detail on Motherboards. Always mentioned as an afterthought or very generalized with features/price being the most important vs availability of ports. Really appreciate the attention to the 'bones' of the PC.
Please review that ProArt board! Does it support ECC? Does it support DP passthrough over TB?
You seen Tech Notice videos on ASus x670e proart and Gamers Nexus video on ASUs? Might want to avoid ASUS for awhile.
@@meekmeads I do not care. I've tried other brands, and it always bit me. I've tried high-end XFX (I've been around for a while), Gigabyte, MSI and asrock boards and they all had significant (to me) issues. I've had multiple ASUS boards and they were all fine. I never had to use ASUS warranty because I never had an issue with an ASUS board.
Issues include: Weird network/audio drivers, random BIOS resets, random TPM resets, loud chipset fans (after a while), weird USB behavior where some ports wouldn't work with some software and others would, PC randomly not booting after being shut down (it would never POST) unless power cycled.
I've been building PCs for many years for myself and family members and with GPUs and motherboards, ASUS is the only brand where I literally never had an issue. The only ASUS product that failed on me is a gaming display from 2014, that failed just recently 10 years later.
Back to you steve, these motherboard benchmark specs are revolutionary. Thank you guys for such a detailed and expert review! When do we get our hardware unboxed mugs/mouse pads?? :D
Just grab a B650, update the BIOS, and you are pretty much done, as B650 is in my opinion more than enough for most CPUs
Thats why I bought b650e last year, pretty much x670e but cheaper.
You're so right!
"B650 is in my opinion more than enough for most CPUs"
the chipset has almost nothing to do with the CPU, pretty much any AM5 chipset will run any AM5 CPU, chipset is about the speeds of the NVME, GPU, USB etc
@HeadBassVTEC yeah but lacks pcie 5.0 support.
@@keonxd8918I was just quoting @prosecanlik4296 and saying that his statement is kinda non-sense as all AM5 CPUs run the same on all AM5 chipsets
Very happy to see the USB testing. I use an external sled for my video editing to go between my laptop and desktop, similar to what you used in this video. So it was very useful to see that represented!
USB 4 external SSD devices might become interesting
The prices are too steep though, I'll check in on black friday
I'll check in in a few years when USB4 devices are mainstream...and affordable ;)
@@ChrisM541 I think some of them will come faster, like m2 USB devices.
What's the speed difference between usb 4 and fire wire.
@@pegcity4eva Firewire is an old tech, the speed clue is in the name - Firewire 400/800.
An overview about the lane sharing would be great in form of a chart. The ASrock Nova for example stands out here
I'm still good on my MSI AM4 B550 pc's.. 5700XD, 5900X, 5700 and the old beater 3700x.
But these go up to 11. . .
How large of a difference was the move from the 5900X to the 5700X3D? 🙂
Great info! My biggest concern these days is ensuring my front panel USB has enough connectors.
I would trade out a ton of USB for a single pcie x1 or even better x4. I personally don't need more than 2x USB 2, 1x 5gbps. So let's say 2x 2.0, 2x 3.0-5gbps, and 2x 3.0-10gbps and then leave the rest to pcie slots. I know it's not as simple as either USB or PCIe but pcie is way better.
Remember that you can set "BOOT Delay Time" to "0" in the BIOS, shaving a few seconds off the boot times. This defaults to "3" in the ASUS BIOS.
I'm not sure if this was already done in the video but I'm guessing it was, since my ASUS ProArt Creator X670E also gets 22s boot times.
Of course, that's with "BOOT Delay Time" set to "0" and "Memory Context Restore" enabled which is crucial for fast boots with EXPO RAM.
For reference, I'm using a 7950X with 2x32GB RAM and latest AGESA 1.2.0.2 BIOS update.
B650 are still too expensive meanwhile AMD already releasing a new chipset already
welcome to the world of inflation. just going to have to deal with it because the prices aren't going to come down.
@@sirmonkey1985 thanks Kamala/Biden...
@@kiljaedyn It's a "free" market, the government doesn't control the price.
@@kiljaedyn its a global issue, nothing to do with US government
@@rhyho you expect a republican to know there are countries other than the us? lol
I like the new more in depth motherboard testing! A couple of suggestions: 1) Audio latency testing 2) A quick FPS recap in gaming. Some boards have better memory tracing and other build advantages that can slightly affect gaming performance.
I'm curious if all 4 memory slots can be populated and still run AMD EXPO on these new X870E mobos. I found out the hard way that AMD EXPO would not work when all 4x memory slots were populated on the X670E
High speed and daisy chained memory sticks has always been a headache. Unfortunately the largest DDR5 6000CL30 DIMMs available are 32GB.
Unlikely, u looking at prosumer stuff like threadripper with quad channel ram support.
No. Just buy intel instead.
@@blegi1245 Intel can't go full speed with all slots populated either. This has been a thing since we stopped using JEDEC spec memory in enthusiast machines.
Never seen such an in-depth review, you are creating a new standard for mainbaord test and it's super interesting. Keep it going!
Does ryzen 9000 benefit for rams speeds above 6000 though?
This is the real question
This is all I wanna know if x870e over clocks higher..
It doesn't really, especially not for gaming. Steve addresses this in the video. Reason probably is that games favor lower latency over raw bandwidth.
There is a comprehensive test of RAM scaling above 6000 Mhz on TechPowerUp
Well the problem is that you have higher throughput, but worse latency with higher speed memory. So under the line, it doesn't matter much. Your speeds go from very good to great, but the latency goes from great to good, or something. You get the point lol. But that's what Steve means.
The usb test and audio test were awesome.
Priced that high and still doesn't support ECC RAM. No, I'm not referring to On-Die ECC.
Blown away by the effort you put into the USB testing, and it's much appreciated
"Flagship" motherboards, none have a 10Gb NIC, what a joke.
Time for X670e Pro Art then)
@@alextsibicov1163 Fuck ASUS. X670E has 10Gb NICs, but only the MSI's X870E Godlike will have one (according to PCPartPicker), that doesn't make any sense. And that board is probably going to cost over 2k.
i'm waiting for the X970E, with a BNC 10BASE2 network connector on the back. It'll be a pain getting terminators for it though :)
@@alextsibicov1163I heard it had some disconnecting issues, but they might fixed that
Pretty sure they did it already. It was some early Marvel AQC113 driver issue, now it's fixed with new firmware.
Nice to see audio testing, that's the department overlooked most. But perhaps even more important to those figures are the software features, what the control panels allow
I want a 9800X3D AMD !
*you want what you expect a 9800X3D to be like.
Just get 7800X3D
@@teekanne15This sums up most unmanifested desires.
@@teekanne15 lllllooooollll YES!
@@teekanne15 But 99% will be the fastest Gaming CPU!
Those Audio tests, thanks so much!
Nice into to x870 guys!
Asus one looks pretty sweet with that ECC support - any chance you can test if you can run ECC@6000 with 192-256 GB capacity with decent timings?
Btw. MSI response to ECC is just ridiculous, not everyone will fork for a Threadripper.
I am eyeing the possibility to run 5 SSDs (am guessing 3 PCIe5 + 2x Samsung 990 pro 4TB) with 2x 5090 and 9950x3d - will I have enough lanes? Yes it is confusing, agreed!
ASUS booted with the ECC RAM but has ECC disabled. Only the Gigabyte and ASRock boards have ECC working.
Oh, didn't get that, so essentially it doesn't work (yet, potentially). Shame. Not that I like ASUS anyways.
asus warranty thougj yikes
@@ACE112ACE112 I bought new routers just not to do the RMA. Back in the day ASUS was my fav brand though.
@@campas7182 People have apparently got it working correctly on X670E ASUS boards (namely Hero and ProArt) so it probably should be possible on X870E too, it may just need some BIOS settings to be configured. Some people have noted, for example, that on certain boards setting ECC support to "auto" in the BIOS doesn't mean it will automatically work - it needed to be explicitly set to "enabled" instead.
In the L1Techs review for the MSI MPG Carbon, Wendell mentioned he may have _possibly_ gotten ECC memory working correctly on the MSI board. It's not officially mentioned anywhere in the datasheet for the board, and from MSI's response to Steve it doesn't sound like they are officially supporting it, but it _may_ work unofficially. I don't think the MSI BIOS exposes any kind of memory error injection support though (unlike ASUS and ASRock which usually do) so verifying that ECC memory is working/reporting correctly is potentially a little more difficult as you'll probably have to physically introduce errors either through shorting pins or overclocking the memory modules until they reach the edge of stability. If MSI aren't officially supporting it then there's also no guarantee it won't just break in a future BIOS release.
This is a fantastic review. Temperature testing and USB port testing are much more useful than bazillion benchmarks that do not differentiate these boards. Kudos.
Man I cant gaslight myself enough anymore with these mediocre AMD products to get unnecessary upgrades.
I keep finding myself getting to this same conclusion... With the games I'm playing right now my current system is fine... I wanted to get an X3D upgrade for a couple games but the increased RAM capacity (16GB-64GB) seems to have solved my stuttering issues, so far. I'll upgrade when I NEED to at this point, not because consumerism strikes again lol
@@MikeB1972 😅 I feel this, I ran out of things to upgrade, I'm trying to convince myself I should get the 9950x3d to replace the 7950x3d but... My monitor is bottlenecking at this point and I have absolutely no problems.
@@dwarfcow like I could get more out of my 6900XT with a CPU better than a 9700KF but like... I'm good rn lol
My 144hz 1440p monitor is also gonna be a limiting factor. OLED looks great but the price doesn't... It is getting better, especially 1440p OLED high refresh.
@@MikeB1972 yeah, I got sucked into the ultra wide rabbit hole, and when you sprinkle qd-oled spoiling, I can't get more than 175hz on the only qd-oled UW offerings, I want a 3840x1600 offering but they don't care about the 15 people in that market, apparently - so, the 4090 isn't even breaking sweat capping out the monitor, it could redline with a potato for a cpu.
@@dwarfcowsame here I got everything I need, the new 480hz dual mode monitors are now my new goal for my setup.
Thanks for the ECC DRAM test!
No ECC support on the Asus is disappointing...
This was the best motherboard review video I've ever seen. Fantastic job!
*looks at comments during the HUB intro*
*Comments saying steve is standing*
*Steve is indeed standing*
Not again
Audio test is a welcome addition. Thanks.
If you want good and reliable onboard audio, or you plan to use your external DAC's optical input, do yourself a favor and avoid motherboards that use the Realtek ALC4080/4082.
avoid it in favor of what?
@@netcrashYT ALC1220, ALC1200, or ALC897. They use the Intel HD Audio standard which uses a direct connection to the chipset. The ALC4080/4082 uses a USB interface.
@@WrexBF can you elaborate more pls?
@@eniojurko usb is dogshit for audio.
@@Hetsu.. hmm, if that is the case, how is one to connect some high quality dac and audio speakers to a computer? There is only digital out usb and optical.. not counting hdmi..
Great job Steve, really enjoyed the new testing you added in.
I'm kind of disappointed over no CAMM2 support
Epic motherboard review, you covered memory overclocking, audio, boot times, so much better than the usual running cinebench and seeing if it gets hot. The only other thing I’d like to see is power delivery quality, like how well the VRM handles transients and how close steady state voltages are.
Q-Comment
Q-Reply
Ian Fleming’s Estate is going to sue.
@@Raivo_K Q-Reply 2
Really appreciate your motherboard coverage as it's more complete than most others and is extremely helpful. The addition of the USB testing is more useful than I expected it to be as not all of the same spec are created equally.
AMD playing some games with naming as the X870 is the B650E replacement and they're just ditching the X670 equivalency.
Do all of these allow all M.2 slots to be filled and run at full speed while the PCIe x16 Slot still remains able to run at full speed with all M.2 SSDs filled as well, or are there restrictions? Is there bandwith sharing between anything or does everything work together? It would be nice if you could mention them if there are any such restrictions, because what good are lots of M.2 slots if you can't use them all at once without sacrificing video card performance?
you'd have to check the user manual's to find out exactly. usually they don't touch the primary x16 slot and pull extra lanes off the secondary PCIE expansion slots for M.2. but i believe x870E they're required for the spec to have a full unshared PCIE 5.0 x16 slot while non E has more flexibility. could be wrong though.
The AsRock X870E Taichi/Lite and the not yet released X870E Nova Wifi are the only X870/E motherboards with a debug display I´ve seen, where you can populate all M.2 slots and run PCIe1 with all 16 lanes. The Asus Crosshair Hero loses two slots, the Gigabyte Aorus Master/Pro/Elite are losing two slots and the MSI Carbon Wifi is losing one slot.
@@jojobetzler3732 Asrock 🔥
The absolute maximum without any lane splitting or chipset multiplexing you can achieve on AM5 is one x16 GPU and three x4 NVMEs. Because you have 28 PCIe lanes from the CPU to play with - 4 of which always go through the chipset.
On X670 you generally had two standard configurations that most Motherboards came with:
1. a full x16 GPU slot + two x4 M.2 Nvme from the CPU + more M.2 slots that share the gen4x4 bandwidth of the chipset or
2. an x8 GPU slot with one or two extra NVMEs from the CPU splitting of the other 8 lanes. Usually I think they only bother with one and waste the remaing 4x lanes. If the board has PCIe switches, the GPU slot can be used at full x16 if those NVME slot(s) are unused.
On X870 (and X670 boards with USB4 support) I think 4 of those lanes from the CPU are used for USB4. I.e. you only have one M.2 slot directly from the CPU unless you cut down the lanes of the GPU slot. Meaning with a full x16 GPU, you can have a max of two NVMEs (one CPU, one chipset) with unshared bandwidth.
@@sirmonkey1985 User manual... is? User manual's what?
Thanks for testing the ECC! I've been looking for real world X870E ECC tests, and this is super helpful. I know Asus listed ECC support and wonder if they could fix it with a BIOS update since that's the MB that I want most.
ohh no he is standing.
MENACINGLY
Once I saw he was standing, I knew trouble would follow
I'm planning a new PC build when the 9800X3D and 5090/5080 are available. I appreciate all your testing info!
No Q-Nutcracker? Smh ASUS... 🤨
B650E Taichi Lite on my computer... I think I made a good purchase in not waiting for these boards, haha.
Discovering the difference in data transfer speeds across USB ports is definitely something I didn't know I needed. Great thing to test and I like the methodology.
LOVE the USB Performance section per port breakdown....sooo good.
Love to see you guys do videos on motherboards, choosing one is a big part of any build but not a lot of reviewers seem to do big roundups like this. Would like to know how the chipset's pcie link bottlenecks things connected through it, especially since X870 has 2 chipsets chained with 1 connected through the other one, and not directly to the CPU
I have old 570… that has 10gb lan port. What new 870Es has 10gb lan port? Should be standard in middle range motherboards now 10+ years later….
99% don't need more than 1GB, thats why. 10GB ethernet is way more expensive than 2.5-5 GB and 10GB cables are stiff as hell and expensive too anyway. Its pointless to waste money on 10GB for most manufacturers.
@@Dr.WhetFarts
Yeah… but some of us does need those. Really handy with external SSD based nas equipments etc. But yeah, not everyone needs those, but i would expect that some highend ones at least have those, and because highend did have 10gb in 570 series… one would expect that middle range boards should have those in these days…
@@Dr.WhetFarts Cat 6 cables are no more stiff than 5e.
@@haukionkannel thats why you have pcie slots
Asus ProArt X870E has both 10Gb and 2.5Gb ports
Thank you for the audio data. I know it's not on the top of most people's list but it does matter to me ❤
Stupid question, why did AMD jumped from X670 to X870? What happened to X770?
Gotta keep up with Intel's expected chipset naming 😂
Short answer: money
Long answer: mmmoonneeyy
Pure branding marketing nonsense, it's the same reason as to why there is no desktop Ryzen 6000 or 8000 series.
@@AlexanTheMan well they did use those numbers for the laptop cpu´s.
@@AlexanTheMan You have 8 series APU's like 8500G, 8600G and 8700G.
loved the comment about the difference between x670 and x870 LOL
I'd already come to the conclusion that it wasn't worth upgrading based on the lack of USB slots on the i/o panel but that comment really cemented it. Your channel really helped me with my new build earlier this year, thanks so much!
The X670E Hero also has already had USB4 for 2 years
Pretty much the only difference between the two is Wi-Fi 7 and even that card could be replaced on the X670E board, pretty much turning it into and X870 board.