ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming Starts Selling

[btarunr]

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€.



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[ixi]

I only see two good things on this mobo for this price. First is wifi and second one is m.2 cooler. Comparing to local internet store you can get x470 mobos even. At least for me it looks like it will cost around 170 from shop.

 

[IceShroom]

Instead releasing another ATX board, motherboard manufacturer need to release quality mATX board. mATX is perfect for single GPU system.
About power phase, my bet 4+2 phase with double component.

 

[PerfectWave]

problem with this low end mobo is the cmos clear. there is no button!

 

[SIGSEGV]

ASUS hasn't yet launched a Strix-E SKU based on the AMD X470

crosshair hero?

still waiting for crosshair VII or VIII extreme version (ryzen 2)

 

[Batailleuse]

Instead releasing another ATX board, motherboard manufacturer need to release quality mATX board. mATX is perfect for single GPU system.
About power phase, my bet 4+2 phase with double component.

Totally agree with that assessment,

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

 

[sepheronx]

more matx and itx would be very nice.

 

[bonehead123]

Yet anutha mfgr who is too friggin cheap to include m.2 heatsinks for all the slots.... is it really that important to shave that .003691¢ off the BOM for a mid-range/mid-featured mobo....seriously ?????

 

[Ruru]

I'm not a fan of that mATX/ITX craze, I'd like to see more ATX boards which are fastened with 9 screws instead of 6 (I don't mean this motherboard, but in generally). EATX cases ftw!

 

[Batailleuse]

I'm not a fan of that mATX/ITX craze, I'd like to see more ATX boards which are fastened with 9 screws instead of 6 (I don't mean this motherboard, but in generally). EATX cases ftw!

EATX ? do you even plug anything else in your pcie beside a GPU ?
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.

 

[Ruru]

It's a "bit" easier for maintenance, upgrading, cable management etc when there's plenty of room. Why would I bother getting a little case, when I can just have a big case on the floor with room to do anything a PC needs. It's also much cheaper. And lots of more room for water cooling.

I don't have a wife who's nagging "that big computer is hella ugly".

 

[kapone32]

Totally agree with that assessment,

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

This is why I like ATX; I can't speak for Nvidia but for all the people that don't get it or listen to the industry standard to say that crossfire is dead are not looking at the picture properly. Right now you can get AMD Power Color RX 570 4gb for 189 Canadian or the Rx 570 8GB for 199. 2 of those would be 379 or 399 for the 8GB variant. That is less than a 1070, 1080, Vega 56 or 64 in Canada. You can actually find RX 580 cards for that price. There are currently over 300 games that support crossfire including but not limited to older games like Kingdoms of Amulaur, Crysis 1,2 or 3 and Total War Rome 2. There is the fact though that new games like Total War Warhammer 2, Strange Brigade, Project Cars 2 and Far Cry 5 also have full crossfire support profiles. The scaling in all games that support crossfire is as high as 95% from what I have seen. In terms of this specific board, my biggest want for Ryzen is more PCI E lanes so that we can run NVME drives in RAID 0. It is my thought process that 2 NVME drives in RAID 0 used as the paging file would see a marked improvement in FPS as currently I see up to 25000MB of page file use when gaming. And even though it is on 2 SSDs in RAID 0 1000Mb/s reads to not compare to 6000Mb/s for 2 NVME drives in RAID 0. I know that the Asus Crosshair 6 has native NVME RAID support but I would much rather see it on an actual PCIe bus. The Asus HYper M2 card sells for $67 Canadian and can hold up to 4 NVME drives.

 

[realvideo]

Bought this motherboard, but unfortunately it came with a broken wi-fi adapter and missing antenna. Had to return it and now gonna have to wait for god knows how long until it goes through warranty to get it back or else... very dissapointed.

Bought this motherboard, but unfortunately it came with a broken wi-fi adapter and missing antenna. Had to return it and now gonna have to wait for god knows how long until it goes through warranty to get it back or else... very dissapointed.

Also, I don’t get why asus added the heatsink on the secondary m.2 which makes the x16 pcie a x8 and not the main one..

 

[Batailleuse]

This is why I like ATX; I can't speak for Nvidia but for all the people that don't get it or listen to the industry standard to say that crossfire is dead are not looking at the picture properly. Right now you can get AMD Power Color RX 570 4gb for 189 Canadian or the Rx 570 8GB for 199. 2 of those would be 379 or 399 for the 8GB variant. That is less than a 1070, 1080, Vega 56 or 64 in Canada. You can actually find RX 580 cards for that price. There are currently over 300 games that support crossfire including but not limited to older games like Kingdoms of Amulaur, Crysis 1,2 or 3 and Total War Rome 2. There is the fact though that new games like Total War Warhammer 2, Strange Brigade, Project Cars 2 and Far Cry 5 also have full crossfire support profiles. The scaling in all games that support crossfire is as high as 95% from what I have seen. In terms of this specific board, my biggest want for Ryzen is more PCI E lanes so that we can run NVME drives in RAID 0. It is my thought process that 2 NVME drives in RAID 0 used as the paging file would see a marked improvement in FPS as currently I see up to 25000MB of page file use when gaming. And even though it is on 2 SSDs in RAID 0 1000Mb/s reads to not compare to 6000Mb/s for 2 NVME drives in RAID 0. I know that the Asus Crosshair 6 has native NVME RAID support but I would much rather see it on an actual PCIe bus. The Asus HYper M2 card sells for $67 Canadian and can hold up to 4 NVME drives.

I dont mean dead dead, but support for recent game is minimal at best, sure it USED to work upward to double your performances back in the day and IF the game you pick actually has Xfire/SLI support then great for you, now:

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 :

https://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.

 

[kapone32]

I dont mean dead dead, but support for recent game is minimal at best, sure it USED to work upward to double your performances back in the day and IF the game you pick actually has Xfire/SLI support then great for you, now:

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.

Agreed but PCI-E 3.0 does not make any discernable difference between Crossfire at 8x vs 16x otherwise people would be getting much more performance using Threadripper vs X470 for gaming in crossfire. As an example I get 156 FPS in Strange Brigade @ 4K on a 49" monitor

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.

I will never buy Intel again I have been using AMD for that last 14 years. Even though they support more PCIE lanes their Z390 boards still only have 1 full x16 PCIE slot. You need to go to Sky lake to get all of those lanes.

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.

I generally buy games based on the crossfire performance, Total War is my favourite game franchise and they have fully supported Crossfire since Shogun 2 and even if only 1 percent of all games support it that is still over an estimated 2000 games (based on estimates) that support it.

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)

I used to have 2 GTS 450s in SLI until NVIDIA disabled SLI for that card. It influenced me to got ATI/AMD and I haven't looked back yet

for a full analysis on recent SLI/Xfire performances :

https://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.

I understand your argument and do agree with some of it. I do have 16GB of RAM but unfortunately RAM has been over priced for a while now so going to 32GB was not feasible for me. That is why I use the page file

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 want Ryzen 2 as well and I also would like to see more PCIE lanes. There was a rumour that the X470 was going to have a PLX chip that allowed another 28 lanes but that did not come true. Maybe we should start a thread on AMD to try to get them to give us more PCIE lanes on the Ryzen release X570 or whatever they are going to call it .

EATX ? do you even plug anything else in your pcie beside a GPU ?
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.

The case I have is the Thermaltake Core X9 and that is a true enthusiast's case. In terms of quiet nothing beats a 200MM fan and I have 3 of them in my case. I also have 12 140MM fans in that case and you cannot hear it. Instead of 2 240/280 rads I have 1 420 AIO that cools my CPU and 1st GPU at the same time. I also have my GPUs sitting horizontally in terms of temps the CPU idles at 25C and the GPU idles at 23C. Neither of them go over 50 C under load. I have a total of 9 drives in that case and none of them idle above 30 C. Including my NVME drives. Does your case have that? The other thing with cases is that a bigger case is much easier to work with than a Micro or Mini ITX case. Besides those boards rarely have a much functionality built into them vs ATX. However regardless of our opinion a case is the most subjective part for a PC build just like cars some like them small and some like them large.

 

[Batailleuse]

However regardless of our opinion a case is the most subjective part for a PC build just like cars some like them small and some like them large.

well true actually i almost went for an Obsidian 1000D ... you hardly get bigger, but i was also planning a different use (4 gtx 1080ti SLI which was previous to 20 series release) and i had another motherboard with an i5/vega64 i could have crammed in on top of the other one, until i actually dig deeper on SLI and found that in 90% case it was just a waste of money and it was in the range of 5-10% perf per GPU and that gen 20 will only work with 2 GPU with NVlink.

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

 

[kapone32]

well true actually i almost went for an Obsidian 1000D ... you hardly get bigger, but i was also planning a different use (4 gtx 1080ti SLI which was previous to 20 series release) and i had another motherboard with an i5/vega64 i could have crammed in on top of the other one, until i actually dig deeper on SLI and found that in 90% case it was just a waste of money and it was in the range of 5-10% perf per GPU and that gen 20 will only work with 2 GPU with NVlink.

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)

That is not true for most Mini ITX boards, hardware like RAM slots, fan headers, RGB headers, VRM AND PCIE are all less than their ATX cousins. My particular board has 8 SATA Ports and 10 USB 3.0 ports, 5 fan headers, 4 RGB headers (of which 2 are 3 PIN) and a 16 Phase VRM. I only wish it was wired electrically for the PCIE like the 990FX boards

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)

Try the Micron 1100 it is the cheapest 2TB SSD drive.


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.

I have a single rad and I get the same temps as you with 2 Rads, the Radiator is the Alphacool 420 AIO Esibaer (I use 6 Noctua Redux 140MM PWM 1500 RPM) and I got mine for $135.99 then I paid 12 dollars for the tubes and liquid to expand it to cool my Sapphire Vega 64 Nitro with a Bysski waterblock that cost me $86. There is also the fact that the 2080TI does not have the same die configuration as Vega and that design makes Vega produce way more heat.

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

This is just me but there is no point in having a PC with all of that functionality and not actually using it. I open my case all the time, I look for deals all the time, that is why I have the Core X9. It is one of the easiest cases to work in that I have ever owned. I also like to dust my computer once every 2 months (weather permitting). I also like to update my PC, the last was replacing a 3TB Seagate HDD with 2 Micron 2TB SSDs. So I would call my self a tinker when it comes to my PC. I have several other computers as well and the smallest case I have is the Cooler Master HXB because I have always went with ATX because I am that person or enthusiast that always like to get the most I can for my money. My latest build is going to be using the Phanteks Enthoo full RGB case and I am really looking forward to it. Just waiting for the last part a RX570 for $189.99.

 

[realvideo]

Apparently, these motherboards are shipped without Wi-Fi antenna in the box, at least in Europe. Ordered it twice and both times the antenna was missing. Major fuck up by ASUS... They're EMEA support is a joke as well, advised to order again.

 

[newtekie1]

Come on, they seriously couldn't integrate the WiFi antennas into the I/O shield, so they don't take up a PCI bracket slot? What is this, amateur hour ASUS?

Also, I don’t get why asus added the heatsink on the secondary m.2 which makes the x16 pcie a x8 and not the main one..

Because the M.2 heatsinks that motherboard manufactures are including aren't actually for function they are just for looks. The reality is M.2 heatsinks don't really help when the drives are used in real-world use cases.