Monday, November 19th 2018
ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming Starts Selling
With multi-GPU on the decline, AMD Ryzen platform buyers are drawn to the mid-range AMD B450 chipset-based motherboards as the chipset still offers CPU overclocking features not available on its Intel counterpart, the B360 Express, helping buyers save money over X470-based products. Motherboard vendors, seeing a potential for enthusiasts seeking out B450, have each launched quasi-premium motherboards based on the chipset, such as the GIGABYTE Aorus B450 Pro, MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon, and ASUS ROG Strix B450-F Gaming. ASUS is taking this concept further with the better-endowed new ROG Strix B450-E Gaming. This product is interesting, because ASUS hasn't yet launched a Strix-E SKU based on the AMD X470. The company included a mention of the product in its launch reveal for its AMD B450 motherboard series, and is beginning to roll the product out.
The ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming features a more premium CPU VRM than even the Strix X470-F, with a "12-phase" (likely blind-doubled 8-phase CPU with either blind-doubled 4-phase vSOC or 2+1+1), compared to the B450-F, with its 8-phase (4 CPU + 4 SOC) design. The component quality is a step up from the Strix B450-F, and so are the VRM heatsinks. ASUS added metal reinforcement for two of the board's three PCI-Express x16 slots, although the second and third slots are x4. You also get two M.2-2280 slots, one of which comes with SSD heatsink. Intel i211-AT wired 1 GbE and Intel 9260 802.11ac + Bluetooth 5 WLAN, take care of networking. The onboard audio solution is unchanged from the Strix B450-F. The ROG Strix B450-E Gaming is priced around 149.99€.
The ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming features a more premium CPU VRM than even the Strix X470-F, with a "12-phase" (likely blind-doubled 8-phase CPU with either blind-doubled 4-phase vSOC or 2+1+1), compared to the B450-F, with its 8-phase (4 CPU + 4 SOC) design. The component quality is a step up from the Strix B450-F, and so are the VRM heatsinks. ASUS added metal reinforcement for two of the board's three PCI-Express x16 slots, although the second and third slots are x4. You also get two M.2-2280 slots, one of which comes with SSD heatsink. Intel i211-AT wired 1 GbE and Intel 9260 802.11ac + Bluetooth 5 WLAN, take care of networking. The onboard audio solution is unchanged from the Strix B450-F. The ROG Strix B450-E Gaming is priced around 149.99€.
18 Comments on ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming Starts Selling
About power phase, my bet 4+2 phase with double component.
still waiting for crosshair VII or VIII extreme version (ryzen 2)
Multi GPu has fallen from grace, few people even use more than a single 1 GPU or even additional PCIE extensions hardware.
i dont get why more manufacturer work on mATX and working on overall smaller footprint computers.
i owned crossfire and sli gear back when those gave around 50% more FPS in game, now SLI is hot garbage and nearly useless in every game, and the new NVlink isnt doing that good either.
a good single GPU desktop is what 90% user use anyways, i dont understand why the production hasnt shifted. I suppose cause they make better margins on those ATX lol
Mini ITX case can get either your GPU or CPU watercooled or even in some case both depending what you put inside with a third of the size (and weight) of an EATX case.
EATX might still be relevant to maybe some professional that use over 2 GPU but even for enthusiasts gamers most only ever use 1 GPU (again SLI is dead in the water right now) without additional pcie. in which case a mini case is all the space they need.
In my case made a new computer with 2700x + RTX2080ti, 32gb ddr4, 1tb ssd m2 in the NZXT case called manta (in which you can cram 2x240/280 rad) so basically i have the rear vent to intake the front rad for push/pull 280 rad on the GPU and the top 280 on a push for the CPU, im never going back to ATX ot higher.
Total noise is under 30db at all time, temperature are never getting above 50 in a mini itx case. (its under overclock)
Small/Silent/Efficient
If a small case can do that, it basically means that anything above is pretty much overkill and also take up on much more space.
I never understood people going all big on case when it has 0 practical use.
I don't have a wife who's nagging "that big computer is hella ugly".
Recent AMD board Chipsets even including latest 470x supports only a limited amount of PCIe lanes, like at best 2 GPU in 8x/8x configuration and an M2 in 4x ... second one is 1x if you put a second.
and thats the best consumer chipset for Ryzen, above that you need to go Threadripper and the jump isn't cheap.
Intel supports way more PCIE right off the bat, so going either sli/xfire is fine if you wish to do so, i just wouln't go Intel in 2019 when Ryzen2 is coming and will put Intel performance to shame.
the general problem is that 90%+ of game ARE NOT optimized for either multi GPU and you gain next to nothing, or at worse game wont work with multiGPU activated making a whole card (or more) absolutely useless, but then when game dont support it and give 5-10% its also a waste of money.
From the recent 4 games you mentioned i only played 1 (warhammer 2) but FC5 was actually, from what i read, the one best optimized for AMD (better multi thread perf on Threadripper and exceptionnal multi gpu support)
The issue Being that games NEED to be dev/optimized for xfire or SLI, what Nvidia did is going NVlink with plug your 2 gpu together and will work on ANYTHING without needing developer to do anything to make it work (which in my world is superior)
for a full analysis on recent SLI/Xfire performances :
us.hardware.info/reviews/8113/crossfire-a-sli-anno-2018-is-it-still-worth-it
Check benchmarks and conclusion, its like i said pretty much dead in 2018 to do any SLI/Xfire.
in regard to your comment on pcie lane for ssd, FPS is so lightly tied to any SSD performance, at best it speeds up loading, but you can play the same game on same rig from either SSD or HDD and ingame performance are similar (except loadings)
AMD has its own thing called storeMI that basically put all the existing storage together and use the Fastest of the lot to do transfer (think cache) which lets you buy maybe 1 expensive good m2 and bunch of either cheap SSD with high storage or even HDD and get crazy good performances overall (you can check some benchmark on that)
It will speed up Game loading but i mean the performance impact on FPS must be less than 5% unless you game streams like crazy.
you also really dont need Pagefile.sys, its one of the first thing i deactivate on fresh install with Hibernation since i use SSD, If your pagesys is 25GB in auto mode i suppose you either have 16 or 32GB or actual DDR.
(for reference Pagefile is used by windows as equivalent to memory, except memory runs so much faster than hdd/sdd so pagefile is crap cache system it was only really useful when the average was 4-8Gb of memory, so you basically want high amoung 16+gb of memory and completly deactivate that to actually speed up the system, Windows is built in a way that the Higher amount of memory you have the more will be used to pre-cache your daily apps to speed everything), also it hurts SSD life expectancy to leave it on just so you know, and SSD run faster the less full they are, so you really want to avoid unnecessary large usage of GB on it.
Anyway, i really want Ryzen 2 to have more PCI (either through CPU or Chipset) cause i really really want to build a 2x2080ti rig and if Ryzen can't do it in 16/16x i won't pick an intel just for that so i'll just do a single GPU rig.
i went instead for mini because once built i'm not gonna touch the computer unless i want to change it, and boy how happy i am with the small form factor + quiet
the mini ITX actually offer exactly same thing as bigger board mind you (minus PCIE slots)
i have the strix X470 I, it has 2 NVME drive slot, I/O slots are same as every boards, it has wifi/bt, it could accommodate another 2 Drives (obviously not 9, but i don't think i know many people actually using more than 1 or 2)if i wanted (and i might pick 2 cheap high storage ssd) which im planning to use as a huge single partition with StoreMI o they can use the 970evo transfer speed ... in itseld the board has probably everything any gamer might need. Technically Intel board actually tend to be better built tho (one for Intel Extreme CPU is actually probably the best mini ITX ever designed , its literally a feat of engineering that one)
and like i said the computer runs at 50 tops and it is heavily overclocked with 2 RAD of 280mm total only 5 Fans (i picked the PWM 3000 NFA14 industrial by Noctua) if a 2080ti + 2700x OC runs cool with that ... having a 360/420mm bring nothing performance wise to the table but you do pay more.
My Statement was more for people Using only a single GPU, and nothing else(in pcie), anything above a well built mini itx is pretty much overkill, realistically how often do you open your case to modify anything inside past the day you built it ? in 6 month i opened my case once to upgrade the GPU and clean air filter few weeks ago when i bough the 2080ti to replace my vega64