Tuesday, December 7th 2021
Gigabyte's B660 Gaming X DDR4 Leaks, Suggests Lower Cost Motherboards Won't be Getting PCIe 5.0
Based on the Intel 600-series chipset leak earlier today, it was easy to conclude that all 600-series motherboards would be getting PCIe 5.0 support, but alas, that is not the case. We've already seen some rock bottom Z690 without PCIe 5.0 and thanks to Videocardz we now know that Gigabyte's B660 Gaming X DDR4 will also lack PCIe 5.0 support.
How do we know this board doesn't support PCIe 5.0? First of all, the x16 slot closest to the CPU uses one of Gigabyte's older reinforced PCIe 4.0 slots, whereas all of its Z690 boards with PCIe 5.0 support uses a new, white type of slot. These slots use a visually different kind of reinforcement as well, even if it's only marginally different. However, Gigabyte doesn't appear to be silk screening PCIe 5.0 on supported boards and it's possible that they're using a different slot vendor for the B660 boards.
Out of the 18 available PCIe lanes, the four from the CPU are used for the top most M.2 slot, with another four PCIe 4.0 most likely being used for another M.2 slot, with the third one being PCIe 3.0. That leaves us with two PCIe 4.0 lanes and four PCIe 3.0 lanes. We're guessing that the two PCIe 4.0 lanes are used for the two PCIe x16 slots at the bottom of the board, since they're only PCIe x1 electrically if you take a closer look at the slots. This leaves a PCIe 3.0 for the 2.5 Gbps Ethernet controller, while we're not entirely sure what the remaining three lanes are used for.
The board features the expected four SATA ports, plus two rear 10 Gbps USB 3.2 ports, as well as a front header for what should be a 20 Gbps USB 3.2 port. There are also a couple of 5 Gbps USB 3.2 ports and a front header for another two, as well as four rear USB 2.0 ports and two headers for another four. The board also has a DP and HDMI port, although it's unknown what type they are, but most like DP 1.2 and HDMI 1.4. As the board name suggests, this board uses DDR4 memory. Unlike most of Gigabyte's Z690 boards, the B660 Gaming X features a full set of 3.5 mm audio jacks. Gigabyte's Q-Flash Plus is also supported and the board has an additional button for resetting the CMOS. Overall it's not a very exciting board, but hopefully it'll be priced at a more reasonable level than its Z690 siblings.
Source:
Videocardz
How do we know this board doesn't support PCIe 5.0? First of all, the x16 slot closest to the CPU uses one of Gigabyte's older reinforced PCIe 4.0 slots, whereas all of its Z690 boards with PCIe 5.0 support uses a new, white type of slot. These slots use a visually different kind of reinforcement as well, even if it's only marginally different. However, Gigabyte doesn't appear to be silk screening PCIe 5.0 on supported boards and it's possible that they're using a different slot vendor for the B660 boards.
The board features the expected four SATA ports, plus two rear 10 Gbps USB 3.2 ports, as well as a front header for what should be a 20 Gbps USB 3.2 port. There are also a couple of 5 Gbps USB 3.2 ports and a front header for another two, as well as four rear USB 2.0 ports and two headers for another four. The board also has a DP and HDMI port, although it's unknown what type they are, but most like DP 1.2 and HDMI 1.4. As the board name suggests, this board uses DDR4 memory. Unlike most of Gigabyte's Z690 boards, the B660 Gaming X features a full set of 3.5 mm audio jacks. Gigabyte's Q-Flash Plus is also supported and the board has an additional button for resetting the CMOS. Overall it's not a very exciting board, but hopefully it'll be priced at a more reasonable level than its Z690 siblings.
23 Comments on Gigabyte's B660 Gaming X DDR4 Leaks, Suggests Lower Cost Motherboards Won't be Getting PCIe 5.0
Then again, there's plenty of ordinary users™ who'd be far better off buying mATX or even mini-ITX than full blown ATX to save a few more bucks (bc they'll never use all those connectors et cetera) yet insist on it so yeah xd
At least there are some decent mATX boards for Intel, whereas for AMD there aren't many at all.
The upcoming i5 12400F and i7 12700F expected to retail at $200 and $280 . The B660 DDR4 boards with decent VRM's will probably retail for $140 - $160+ depending on how much goodies you want with your motherboard.
www.tomshardware.com/news/core-i5-12400-qs-cpu-24-percent-faster-core-i5-11400-gaming
www.hardwaretimes.com/intel-core-i5-12400-benchmarks-leak-out-faster-than-the-ryzen-5-5600x-and-100-cheaper/
www.techpowerup.com/289216/intel-12th-gen-core-locked-processors-arrive-mid-jan-possible-specs-surface
I totally agree that a good difference between top tier boards and mid/entry is the PCI-E gen level, as thats a good way to cut costs that 99% of users wont notice
I've got an RTX 3090 and an SN850, two top tier PCI-E 4.0 devices... and if someone snuck in and changed my system to PCI-E 3.0, I would not notice.
And thats even with my GPU at x8 mode, feeding that silly RAID card I have in the second slot.