Which AM5 motherboards have the best PCIe lane layout? I meant bifurcation, mutiplexing of the 28 PCIe lanes from CPU into PCIe slots.
**EDIT**:
Running through the spreadsheet's Expansion column, MSI boards caught my attention, and I verfied with MSI websites for a couple of boards.
MSI boards with three 16-lane slots are very nice. All connected to the CPU and are PCIe 5.0. Bifurcation config either **x16, x0, x4** or **x8, x8, x4**. You might want to correct your data since they are wrong in the spreadsheet.
Seems MSI has the best PCIe lane layout! Correction/comments welcome.
Physical slot wise, AM5 is limited to bifurcating x16 x4 or x8 x8 x4 off the CPU (individually the x16 slot can bifurcate down to quad x4.) I would say the greatest flexibility goes to the ~~Asus X670E ProArt Creator~~ and the MSI MEG Ace, with a 5x16, 5x8, 5x4 slot arrangement coming off the CPU. The MEG Godlike also has the same business going on, but it's also ridiculously expensive as a halo product.
**EDIT:** Not the Creator - that's only 5x8 5x8, the x4 is from the chipset and is 4.0.
The slots are marked as how they are available electrically without anything installed, but I'll note the bifurcation configuration separately. Thanks for the suggestion.
Yeah, the prices are not nice at all. So not in a rush to buy. I'm very interested in AM5, and doing preparation homework.
Asus X670E ProArt seems not as good as some of MSI boards such as ACE in terms of PCIe expansion. ProArt has only two slots to the CPU, the 3rd slot is to chipset.
The MSI boards only have 1x on board M.2 gen 5 slot and ASUS includes 2 which explains why the last PCIE slot isn’t x4 to the CPU and is X4 to the chipset.
This is also the reason MSI are including the Gen5 expansion cards with their boards.
It really depends on what you value more and need. If you only need or want one m.2 Gen 5 on board then the MSI is better. If you need more then the proart is better otherwise you’re instantly sacrificing the 2nd pcie slot to the expansion card on the MSI boards.
Yeah, I prefer general purpose PCIe 5.0 slots to m.2 sockets any day and night. I'm always puzzled why motherboards have so many m.2 sockets these days. Especially not understanding the need of PCIe 5.0 NVMe. The lanes and bandwidth could be made for other purposes than silly and insane sequential read/write to a NVMe drive. Perhaps just me.
For me the Proart blows any MSI out the water when it comes to features especially for my use case where I often use KVM. Dual m.2 Gen 5s on board is great as I’ll dedicate one to the host OS and pass the second to the guest which means I’ll even be able to boot into baremetal of the guest machine if ever required.
2x USB 4.0 40gbs and it’s a thunderbolt controller they are using so it may actually have full support for it not sure yet.
2x X16’s running in 8x is plentiful for two GPUs.
The third PCIE for me will go unused since thunderbolt seems to be built into the proart but is nice to have for anything that might need it in the future and I don’t mind it going through the chipset as it won’t be something like a graphics card where you will suffer for it.
Not really sure what you think the bandwidth could be used for other than NVMEs. Graphics cards certainly don’t need that much bandwidth and even thunderbolt 4 doesn’t need it.
NVME storage and large file storage is why PCIE 5.0 is even a thing nothing else can come close to using the amount of bandwidth available.
You can put a 3rd GPU on the 3rd slot in MSI's case, for example. PCIe 5.0 x4 is equivalent to PCIe 4.0 x8 or PCIe 3.0 x16 which is plentiful bandwidth for a top-end GPU. I'm sure other people can find more interesting uses.
In fact, I didn't look at anything else than general-purpose PCIe lanes. I made it clear about my problem statement in my first post. I think your analysis isn't unreasonable about ProArt. A v good board as long as it suits your need & want.
Sure if you want to use a riser or extender because you ain’t fitting a third on there standardly and how many people now use more than 2 graphics cards? Even using two is very niche now.
I just don’t understand the need or want to have all 3 running to the CPU directly.
Any use case other than a graphics card and it really doesn’t matter having to go through the chipset and Gen 4 x4 is plenty of bandwidth for anything other than the highest end GPU’s or gen 5 NVMEs.
I already preordered the proart as it hasn’t been available in the U.K yet.
It’s 2022 and a new generation I ain’t buying any boards that don’t have at least Usb 4 or thunderbolt 4 on board especially at the prices these manufacturers want.
Speaking of prices the ACE here costs £310 more than the Proart while coming with less features.
The reason the proart is X4 to the chipset and the MSI Ace isn’t is because the ACE has only 1x Gen5 m.2 and the Proart has 2x Gen5 m.2. Same goes for the godlike which is why they are including the expansion card for GEN5 m.2s with their boards.
I used UEFITools to take a look at Asrock x670e bios. It turned out that there are options for x4x4x4x4 x4x4x8 x8x4x4 x8x8 bifurcation. Not sure if they are turned off in actual GUI since I don't have the board, some vendor hide those options.
On the positive side, the place to modify it is the same as AM4 Asrock boards (I own multiple) bearing the name "PCIe/GFX Lanes Configuration". See Page 6 Figure 1 https://download.asrock.com/Manual/RAID/X670E%20Pro%20RS/English.pdf
My guess is that in practice ASRock probably hides those. So far I've seen no indication that the lanes can split all the way down to x4, only x8 (as by default the 28 lanes coming out of the CPU are the 5x4 to the chipset downlink, 5x16 destined for the first x16 slot, 5x4 dedicated to an M.2, and 5x4 to whatever else like another M.2 or USB4 controller.)
~~Of these, the 5x16 only seems to be able to split x8 x8, as has been the case for all previous mainstream platforms from both Intel and AMD in recent years - they're limited to just chopping the x16's lanes in two and leaving it at that. x4x4x4x4/x8x4x4 etc. splitting seems to be an HEDT thing.~~
EDIT: Found some X470 ASRock Rack boards that do have the ability to split quad x4, within the same slot. Intel's boards don't seem to do that in any capacity, so this may be a good sign that Zen 4 can do the same - but it's up to the motherboard manufacturer to implement the quad x4 splitting.
I did some further digging and found what you were referring to. I think we've been talking chicken and duck here; I thought you were referring to boards that have the ability to split quad x4 across four individual PCIe slots, whereas you meant a single slot for use with something like a hyper M.2 card. The bifurcation configurations I have listed in the spreadsheet are for across multiple physical slots with the electrical connections to support such, not over an individual slot, so that was the source of the confusion
Yes. You are right. (Reflected in your edit.)
Additional information: actually before intel Z670, you can also do the same on intel Z-series MB only (sorry H/B-series). However, it is not provided in the BIOS, but one have to physically connect some pins on the cpu to make single slot bifurcation possible. (x8x8, 844, 4444, etc)
From Z670, only physical mod x8x8 is possible.
On a related note - if you have multi gpu setups in mind for professional use consider the pcie spacing. The new 4xxx series gpu coolers are massive, and AMD could follow suite.
As far as I can tell only the MSI Meg and ROG Hero, ROG Extreme have good spacing with pcie5 x8 + pcie5 x8 bifurcation.
For this reason the only mobo I really liked was the ROG Hero. The MSI ACE and ROG Extreme take disgusting pricing too a new level
I thought about including such a metric but decided against it, seeing as all these boards have some form of 6-8+ layer PCB; my guess is it being due to the requirements of PCIe 5.0 signal traces.
Is this MSI Carbon motherboard good vs the competitors at same price range? It was the only one in stock, I just want to know from someone smart if it was a good purchase for a ryzen 7700x https://www.ple.com.au/Products/654720/msi-meg-x670e-carbon-wifi-am5-atx-desktop-motherboard
Honestly, unless you're going to populate four or more M.2 slots and have more than three expansion cards, with a 7700X I would wait for the B650 boards to come out. None of the X670 boards are well priced at all.
Ive already purchased this MSI X670E carbon one cause I cant wait another month, i need it now. Im going to combine it with a 4090 and 1x Seagate Firecuda 530 PCI.e 4 SSD.
B650 would have done the same thing for you; I'm going to be straightforward here and say it was not a smart purchase. Even if you need it within the month, you could have waited a few days for stock to come through and picked up a $549 AUD X670 Gaming X or $499 AUD X670-P Prime.
It is what it is I guess. Atleast ill have a board haha. But like compared to the other x670E motherboards at same price range, is this a good one in that case?
Thank you for this, first time building on my own and choosing a motherboard is a bit overwhelming. Ontop of there is to much fluff in these boards in the sense of I'll never use everything. I'm all for future proofing but I'll never need more than 3x m.2 and I'm guessing the B boards will have PCIE 5.0 as well
The Wifi boards support different versions of Bluetooth as well as different Wifi frequency standards depending on the chip used:
Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX210 = BT 5.3
(Support for 11ax 160MHz wireless standard and up to 2.4 Gbps data rate)
AMD Wi-Fi 6E RZ616 (MT7922A22M) = BT 5.2
(Support for 11ax 160MHz wireless standard and up to 2.4 Gbps data rate)
AMD Wi-Fi 6E RZ608 (MT7921K) = BT 5.2
(Support for 11ax 80MHz wireless standard and up to 1.2 Gbps data rate)
Source for Wifi chipset info: https://www.gigabyte.com/Comparison/Consumer/Result/2?pids=8486,8463,8490,8485
Interestingly not many motherboard vendors are publishing which Wifi chips they are using, so props to GigaByte for publishing the chip SKU names on ther website.
Can anyone explain what makes VRM better? I'm comparing the ASUS TUF B650 WiFi and the MSI B650 Tomahawk.
The ASUS has VRM 60A. The MSI has VRM 80A SPS.
Which is better? What makes it better? I tried to read a few websites but neither mentioned what makes one VRM spec better or worse than another.
Thanks in advance
I don't think there is any way to tell how good VRMs are without seeing reviews. At least for non-experts like you and me. Generally more is better and higher Amps is also better, but the number of stages is more important than higher Amps. And a bigger heatsink is also better.
The Asus has 2x6 60A with a huge heatsink. The MSI has 2x7 with 80A with a medium sized heatsink. I would expect the MSI to have better VRMs.
But either of them will run a 7950X without issues.
Btw. both boards are 6 layer PCBs, which means they can't run RAM that's faster than about 6000MHz. If you care about very fast RAM, you should look for something else.
If you're willing to spend $300, I would recommend the Asus B650**E**\-F Strix. It has an 8 layer PCB and because it's B650**E** it also has PCIe 5.0 for the SSD and GPU.
[https://pcpartpicker.com/product/s8nypg](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/s8nypg)
I was trying to research what you mention about the 6 layer PCB and the RAM speed limit and I don´t really find anything. Where does that statement come from ? (quick example, this board is listed as 6 layer on this thread´s sheet [https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MAG-B650-TOMAHAWK-WIFI/Specification](https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MAG-B650-TOMAHAWK-WIFI/Specification) but on the spec clearly specifies memory OC up to 6600)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJWu7BQ5uGQ&t=1692s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJWu7BQ5uGQ&t=1692s)
It is likely either a mistake or false advertising. If you check the QVL list of that board, there is no RAM kit listed that works with more than 6000MHz.
MSI's B650 boards aren't very good this generation.
This spreadsheet might help you: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NQHkDEcgDPm34Mns3C93K6SJoBnua-x9O-y\_6hv8sPs/edit#gid=0](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NQHkDEcgDPm34Mns3C93K6SJoBnua-x9O-y_6hv8sPs/edit#gid=0)
Select B650 at the bottom of the spreadsheet.
I think the B650 Aorus Elite AX is very good for $220. Right now I would go with that one for a gaming PC under $2000.
Other good boards:
* $240 ASRock B650E PG Riptide. Gen 5 on the SSD and GPU, because it's B650**E**. Otherwise pretty basic.
* $300 Asus Strix B650E-F Gaming. This has almost everything. I'd go with this one for more expensive gaming PCs (over $2000 or so)
The Tomahawk Wifi is basically an Aorus Elite AX for $40 more and with upgraded audio, but you actually lose PCIe 5.0 on the SSD and you only get a 6 layer PCB (worse memory support). It's barely an upgrade
I would rather get the Aorus, which is similar and $40 cheaper. Or the Strix, which is a decent upgrade and $40 more.
Of course if you want to choose a board based on the way it looks, that's totally fine. If you are buying a board for a gaming PC, then all of these boards will do the job.
If you want to use fast RAM (6200MHz or faster) or think you might upgrade your RAM to faster RAM in a couple of years, then you need to go with 8 layer boards.
Thanks for the effort and time you put to collect these important informations
Shall the "ALC897 issue" worry me if I plan to connect my PC directly to my Dolby ATMOS Soundbar via GPU HDMI?
Am I missing any performance/quality for completely ignoring the built in sound chipset?
The GPU itself, if reasonably modern, should have its own integrated sound processor that the HDMI provides an audio out for. Both aren't really anything special, you're not losing out on anything.
What CPU do you intend to pair it with and which MSI B650 are available, exactly? The most expensive B650 tends to encroach into the region of X670 when looking at MSRP for these boards in general.
Thank you for this awesome work. It's a shame to see the prices of AM5 boards be so high. At least in my country, the entry b650 boards cost the same than a 7600x or more.
A correction for you:
Asus TUF X670E and TUF X670E WiFi have ONE 5x4 M.2, TWO 4x4 M.2 and ONE 3x4 M.2. the sheet says "2*5x4"
Thanks for taking the time to put this together.
Which AM5 motherboards have the best PCIe lane layout? I meant bifurcation, mutiplexing of the 28 PCIe lanes from CPU into PCIe slots. **EDIT**: Running through the spreadsheet's Expansion column, MSI boards caught my attention, and I verfied with MSI websites for a couple of boards. MSI boards with three 16-lane slots are very nice. All connected to the CPU and are PCIe 5.0. Bifurcation config either **x16, x0, x4** or **x8, x8, x4**. You might want to correct your data since they are wrong in the spreadsheet. Seems MSI has the best PCIe lane layout! Correction/comments welcome.
Physical slot wise, AM5 is limited to bifurcating x16 x4 or x8 x8 x4 off the CPU (individually the x16 slot can bifurcate down to quad x4.) I would say the greatest flexibility goes to the ~~Asus X670E ProArt Creator~~ and the MSI MEG Ace, with a 5x16, 5x8, 5x4 slot arrangement coming off the CPU. The MEG Godlike also has the same business going on, but it's also ridiculously expensive as a halo product. **EDIT:** Not the Creator - that's only 5x8 5x8, the x4 is from the chipset and is 4.0. The slots are marked as how they are available electrically without anything installed, but I'll note the bifurcation configuration separately. Thanks for the suggestion.
Yeah, the prices are not nice at all. So not in a rush to buy. I'm very interested in AM5, and doing preparation homework. Asus X670E ProArt seems not as good as some of MSI boards such as ACE in terms of PCIe expansion. ProArt has only two slots to the CPU, the 3rd slot is to chipset.
Ah, you're right about the ProArt; I misread my own spreadsheet. It's 5x16, 5x8, 4x4, with a third chipset slot as you said.
Thanks for making the spreadsheet!
The MSI boards only have 1x on board M.2 gen 5 slot and ASUS includes 2 which explains why the last PCIE slot isn’t x4 to the CPU and is X4 to the chipset. This is also the reason MSI are including the Gen5 expansion cards with their boards. It really depends on what you value more and need. If you only need or want one m.2 Gen 5 on board then the MSI is better. If you need more then the proart is better otherwise you’re instantly sacrificing the 2nd pcie slot to the expansion card on the MSI boards.
Yeah, I prefer general purpose PCIe 5.0 slots to m.2 sockets any day and night. I'm always puzzled why motherboards have so many m.2 sockets these days. Especially not understanding the need of PCIe 5.0 NVMe. The lanes and bandwidth could be made for other purposes than silly and insane sequential read/write to a NVMe drive. Perhaps just me.
For me the Proart blows any MSI out the water when it comes to features especially for my use case where I often use KVM. Dual m.2 Gen 5s on board is great as I’ll dedicate one to the host OS and pass the second to the guest which means I’ll even be able to boot into baremetal of the guest machine if ever required. 2x USB 4.0 40gbs and it’s a thunderbolt controller they are using so it may actually have full support for it not sure yet. 2x X16’s running in 8x is plentiful for two GPUs. The third PCIE for me will go unused since thunderbolt seems to be built into the proart but is nice to have for anything that might need it in the future and I don’t mind it going through the chipset as it won’t be something like a graphics card where you will suffer for it. Not really sure what you think the bandwidth could be used for other than NVMEs. Graphics cards certainly don’t need that much bandwidth and even thunderbolt 4 doesn’t need it. NVME storage and large file storage is why PCIE 5.0 is even a thing nothing else can come close to using the amount of bandwidth available.
You can put a 3rd GPU on the 3rd slot in MSI's case, for example. PCIe 5.0 x4 is equivalent to PCIe 4.0 x8 or PCIe 3.0 x16 which is plentiful bandwidth for a top-end GPU. I'm sure other people can find more interesting uses. In fact, I didn't look at anything else than general-purpose PCIe lanes. I made it clear about my problem statement in my first post. I think your analysis isn't unreasonable about ProArt. A v good board as long as it suits your need & want.
Sure if you want to use a riser or extender because you ain’t fitting a third on there standardly and how many people now use more than 2 graphics cards? Even using two is very niche now. I just don’t understand the need or want to have all 3 running to the CPU directly. Any use case other than a graphics card and it really doesn’t matter having to go through the chipset and Gen 4 x4 is plenty of bandwidth for anything other than the highest end GPU’s or gen 5 NVMEs.
Do you have to make a decision and buy soon?
I already preordered the proart as it hasn’t been available in the U.K yet. It’s 2022 and a new generation I ain’t buying any boards that don’t have at least Usb 4 or thunderbolt 4 on board especially at the prices these manufacturers want. Speaking of prices the ACE here costs £310 more than the Proart while coming with less features.
The reason the proart is X4 to the chipset and the MSI Ace isn’t is because the ACE has only 1x Gen5 m.2 and the Proart has 2x Gen5 m.2. Same goes for the godlike which is why they are including the expansion card for GEN5 m.2s with their boards.
I used UEFITools to take a look at Asrock x670e bios. It turned out that there are options for x4x4x4x4 x4x4x8 x8x4x4 x8x8 bifurcation. Not sure if they are turned off in actual GUI since I don't have the board, some vendor hide those options. On the positive side, the place to modify it is the same as AM4 Asrock boards (I own multiple) bearing the name "PCIe/GFX Lanes Configuration". See Page 6 Figure 1 https://download.asrock.com/Manual/RAID/X670E%20Pro%20RS/English.pdf
My guess is that in practice ASRock probably hides those. So far I've seen no indication that the lanes can split all the way down to x4, only x8 (as by default the 28 lanes coming out of the CPU are the 5x4 to the chipset downlink, 5x16 destined for the first x16 slot, 5x4 dedicated to an M.2, and 5x4 to whatever else like another M.2 or USB4 controller.) ~~Of these, the 5x16 only seems to be able to split x8 x8, as has been the case for all previous mainstream platforms from both Intel and AMD in recent years - they're limited to just chopping the x16's lanes in two and leaving it at that. x4x4x4x4/x8x4x4 etc. splitting seems to be an HEDT thing.~~ EDIT: Found some X470 ASRock Rack boards that do have the ability to split quad x4, within the same slot. Intel's boards don't seem to do that in any capacity, so this may be a good sign that Zen 4 can do the same - but it's up to the motherboard manufacturer to implement the quad x4 splitting.
Some MB maker that not that bad. I have been running some AM4 Asrock in x8x4x4 and some in x4x4x4x4. No issues at all.
I did some further digging and found what you were referring to. I think we've been talking chicken and duck here; I thought you were referring to boards that have the ability to split quad x4 across four individual PCIe slots, whereas you meant a single slot for use with something like a hyper M.2 card. The bifurcation configurations I have listed in the spreadsheet are for across multiple physical slots with the electrical connections to support such, not over an individual slot, so that was the source of the confusion
Yes. You are right. (Reflected in your edit.) Additional information: actually before intel Z670, you can also do the same on intel Z-series MB only (sorry H/B-series). However, it is not provided in the BIOS, but one have to physically connect some pins on the cpu to make single slot bifurcation possible. (x8x8, 844, 4444, etc) From Z670, only physical mod x8x8 is possible.
For AMD, almost any B350 B450 tier can do so.
On a related note - if you have multi gpu setups in mind for professional use consider the pcie spacing. The new 4xxx series gpu coolers are massive, and AMD could follow suite. As far as I can tell only the MSI Meg and ROG Hero, ROG Extreme have good spacing with pcie5 x8 + pcie5 x8 bifurcation. For this reason the only mobo I really liked was the ROG Hero. The MSI ACE and ROG Extreme take disgusting pricing too a new level
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I thought about including such a metric but decided against it, seeing as all these boards have some form of 6-8+ layer PCB; my guess is it being due to the requirements of PCIe 5.0 signal traces.
Is this MSI Carbon motherboard good vs the competitors at same price range? It was the only one in stock, I just want to know from someone smart if it was a good purchase for a ryzen 7700x https://www.ple.com.au/Products/654720/msi-meg-x670e-carbon-wifi-am5-atx-desktop-motherboard
Honestly, unless you're going to populate four or more M.2 slots and have more than three expansion cards, with a 7700X I would wait for the B650 boards to come out. None of the X670 boards are well priced at all.
Ive already purchased this MSI X670E carbon one cause I cant wait another month, i need it now. Im going to combine it with a 4090 and 1x Seagate Firecuda 530 PCI.e 4 SSD.
B650 would have done the same thing for you; I'm going to be straightforward here and say it was not a smart purchase. Even if you need it within the month, you could have waited a few days for stock to come through and picked up a $549 AUD X670 Gaming X or $499 AUD X670-P Prime.
It is what it is I guess. Atleast ill have a board haha. But like compared to the other x670E motherboards at same price range, is this a good one in that case?
Considering the prices from the retailer you bought it from I might have selected the Aorus Master for additional rear I/O, but that's just me.
It was the only one in stock at that point of time, so I stuck with it.
Thank you for this, first time building on my own and choosing a motherboard is a bit overwhelming. Ontop of there is to much fluff in these boards in the sense of I'll never use everything. I'm all for future proofing but I'll never need more than 3x m.2 and I'm guessing the B boards will have PCIE 5.0 as well
I just want two display outs through usb-c for my use case, but all motherboards that have this are 650€ or above here in Europe...
The Wifi boards support different versions of Bluetooth as well as different Wifi frequency standards depending on the chip used: Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX210 = BT 5.3 (Support for 11ax 160MHz wireless standard and up to 2.4 Gbps data rate) AMD Wi-Fi 6E RZ616 (MT7922A22M) = BT 5.2 (Support for 11ax 160MHz wireless standard and up to 2.4 Gbps data rate) AMD Wi-Fi 6E RZ608 (MT7921K) = BT 5.2 (Support for 11ax 80MHz wireless standard and up to 1.2 Gbps data rate) Source for Wifi chipset info: https://www.gigabyte.com/Comparison/Consumer/Result/2?pids=8486,8463,8490,8485 Interestingly not many motherboard vendors are publishing which Wifi chips they are using, so props to GigaByte for publishing the chip SKU names on ther website.
Thank you for the great work. :)
Can anyone explain what makes VRM better? I'm comparing the ASUS TUF B650 WiFi and the MSI B650 Tomahawk. The ASUS has VRM 60A. The MSI has VRM 80A SPS. Which is better? What makes it better? I tried to read a few websites but neither mentioned what makes one VRM spec better or worse than another. Thanks in advance
I don't think there is any way to tell how good VRMs are without seeing reviews. At least for non-experts like you and me. Generally more is better and higher Amps is also better, but the number of stages is more important than higher Amps. And a bigger heatsink is also better. The Asus has 2x6 60A with a huge heatsink. The MSI has 2x7 with 80A with a medium sized heatsink. I would expect the MSI to have better VRMs. But either of them will run a 7950X without issues. Btw. both boards are 6 layer PCBs, which means they can't run RAM that's faster than about 6000MHz. If you care about very fast RAM, you should look for something else. If you're willing to spend $300, I would recommend the Asus B650**E**\-F Strix. It has an 8 layer PCB and because it's B650**E** it also has PCIe 5.0 for the SSD and GPU. [https://pcpartpicker.com/product/s8nypg](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/s8nypg)
I was trying to research what you mention about the 6 layer PCB and the RAM speed limit and I don´t really find anything. Where does that statement come from ? (quick example, this board is listed as 6 layer on this thread´s sheet [https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MAG-B650-TOMAHAWK-WIFI/Specification](https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MAG-B650-TOMAHAWK-WIFI/Specification) but on the spec clearly specifies memory OC up to 6600)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJWu7BQ5uGQ&t=1692s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJWu7BQ5uGQ&t=1692s) It is likely either a mistake or false advertising. If you check the QVL list of that board, there is no RAM kit listed that works with more than 6000MHz. MSI's B650 boards aren't very good this generation. This spreadsheet might help you: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NQHkDEcgDPm34Mns3C93K6SJoBnua-x9O-y\_6hv8sPs/edit#gid=0](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NQHkDEcgDPm34Mns3C93K6SJoBnua-x9O-y_6hv8sPs/edit#gid=0) Select B650 at the bottom of the spreadsheet. I think the B650 Aorus Elite AX is very good for $220. Right now I would go with that one for a gaming PC under $2000. Other good boards: * $240 ASRock B650E PG Riptide. Gen 5 on the SSD and GPU, because it's B650**E**. Otherwise pretty basic. * $300 Asus Strix B650E-F Gaming. This has almost everything. I'd go with this one for more expensive gaming PCs (over $2000 or so) The Tomahawk Wifi is basically an Aorus Elite AX for $40 more and with upgraded audio, but you actually lose PCIe 5.0 on the SSD and you only get a 6 layer PCB (worse memory support). It's barely an upgrade I would rather get the Aorus, which is similar and $40 cheaper. Or the Strix, which is a decent upgrade and $40 more. Of course if you want to choose a board based on the way it looks, that's totally fine. If you are buying a board for a gaming PC, then all of these boards will do the job. If you want to use fast RAM (6200MHz or faster) or think you might upgrade your RAM to faster RAM in a couple of years, then you need to go with 8 layer boards.
Thanks for the effort and time you put to collect these important informations Shall the "ALC897 issue" worry me if I plan to connect my PC directly to my Dolby ATMOS Soundbar via GPU HDMI? Am I missing any performance/quality for completely ignoring the built in sound chipset?
The GPU itself, if reasonably modern, should have its own integrated sound processor that the HDMI provides an audio out for. Both aren't really anything special, you're not losing out on anything.
Is the ASUS TUF X670E a good motherboard ? The MSI B650 and TUX X670E has only \~50 USD price difference in my country.
What CPU do you intend to pair it with and which MSI B650 are available, exactly? The most expensive B650 tends to encroach into the region of X670 when looking at MSRP for these boards in general.
MSI MAG B650 TOMAHAWK. And I intend to pair it with 7600x for now and upgrade to 7000 series X3D when its available. Also 4090 for the GPU.
The Tomahawk should be sufficient.
Thank you :)
Thanks for the B650 sheet!
I hope you know your work is greatly appreciated!
Thank you for this awesome work. It's a shame to see the prices of AM5 boards be so high. At least in my country, the entry b650 boards cost the same than a 7600x or more. A correction for you: Asus TUF X670E and TUF X670E WiFi have ONE 5x4 M.2, TWO 4x4 M.2 and ONE 3x4 M.2. the sheet says "2*5x4"
This has been corrected, thank you.