ASUS Announces New AMD X670E Motherboards at Canadian National Expo

[Assimilator]

You can always add pci-e to sata ports but but 6 nativ sata should be minimum in any xxxZ or XxxxE motherboard.

Much as IDE was replaced by SATA, so SATA is being replaced by M.2 PCIe. I give it another 2 generations before M.2 drives have reached large enough capacities to mostly take over from mechanical spinners and boards thus no longer ship with any SATA ports.

And, much as you can still find PCIe-to-IDE cards, so PCIe-to-SATA cards will become the way to have SATA ports on a motherboard (and you can get up to 16 of them from a single x1 PCIe slot). Hell, you can already get cheap M.2 PCIe => SATA adapter cards that provide 5 ports which is more than some boards of this generation are offering.

My quibble with the M.2 encroachment is that the manufacturers haven't yet figured out how to make unpopulated M.2 PCIe slots not steal lanes from ordinary PCIe slots. So if you have four M.2 PCIe slots on a board, you're losing a full PCIe slot (16 lanes worth) of bandwidth... even if you never use any of those M.2 slots. Which is, pardon my French, fucking retarded. We already have bifurcation on PCIe slots, I don't understand why it can't be extended and enhanced to allow a sensible configuration.

E.g. a platform that exposes 32 PCIe lanes should be able to support the following configurations:

PCIe slot 1	PCIe slot 2	Enabled M.2 PCIe slot count
x16	x16	0
x16	x8	2
x16	x4	3
x16	x0	4
x8	x8	4
x8	x4	5

And even more esoteric and potentially useful configurations could be enabled:

PCIe slot 1	PCIe slot 2	Enabled M.2 PCIe slot count
x16	x12	1
x12	x12	2
x12	x8	3
x12	x4	4
x8	x0	6

 

[Dirt Chip]

It is absolutely true, and the reason why Seagate and WD gradually shut down consumer grade manufecturing lines. The gamer community grow, and the price and availability of higher capacity M.2 drives changes accordingly.
Ask any local PC store how HDD sales for the consumer space is going. This stuff is on a sharp decline.
I can tell you that i've worked at a large retail store chain in 2015 and we have already seen the sharp decline in numbers then, and the stronghold of SSD-exclusive gaming machines. Today the situation is far more M.2 SSD storage tuned. Ask the motherboard and CPU manufecturers why they have decided to arm the new boards with 4-5 M.2 ports.

Well, if this is the case then it's unfortunate to anyone needing large storage capacity of raw data at hand.
Still no 8TB+ ssd or nvme in sane price even in the far horizons.

 

[Jism]

This is special...

View attachment 258649

Thats a capacitor for the NVME SSD.

Very well designed heatsink around it.

 

[Athlonite]

I'm a bit miffed that I'd be forced to pay for unwanted WIFI when buying the Strix X670E- F Gaming my PC sits not 2 feet away from my router so I don't need WIFI I have a 10Gbe PCIe nic
Normally the F Gaming doesn't have WIFI but E Gaming does WTF Asus why change now

 

[dj-electric]

Well, if this is the case then it's unfortunate to anyone needing large storage capacity of raw data at hand.
Still no 8TB+ ssd or nvme in sane price even in the far horizons.

The 4 SATA ports on the new boards are still taking care of that. This organ will not disappear in one generation on this evolution of IO. HDDs are also getting cheaper and bigger, and that's also a contributing part to SATA amount reduction. 8-12TB drives have become dramatically cheaper since about 2 years ago

 

[Dirt Chip]

Much as IDE was replaced by SATA, so SATA is being replaced by M.2 PCIe. I give it another 2 generations before M.2 drives have reached large enough capacities to mostly take over from mechanical spinners and boards thus no longer ship with any SATA ports.

When do you see 16TB SSD/NVMe in the 300$ range? In 2 year time??
The problem is that no manufacture will have the 'courage' to make low coast, very high capacity NVMe (8TB and above) in a PCIe 3 form in order to make it less expensive. Those high capacity will always be the high end PCIe 5/6/7 (and not without a good reason, but it doesn't help my case)

SATA is so low resource, low cost that I don't see it disappear completely in the next 5 years besides maybe the smaller ITX or the very basic/budget boards.

But, as always, I tend to be wrong about stuff all the time

And, much as you can still find PCIe-to-IDE cards, so PCIe-to-SATA cards will become the way to have SATA ports on a motherboard (and you can get up to 16 of them from a single x1 PCIe slot). Hell, you can already get cheap M.2 PCIe => SATA adapter cards that provide 5 ports which is more than some boards of this generation are offering.

I`m not sure those adapter are worth buying..
The cheep one maybe able to connect and display that many HDD but to read/write even to 1/2 of them simultaneously will get you into a stand still. No 30$ part will do 16*SATA3 HDDS together and if so I'm buying one right now
The good one cost 5-10 time higher and give you 6-8 SATA ports.

 

[jesdals]

I do like the pcie release mecanism on the highend board damn is a pestillence to remove the GPU on a x570 board with a nvme drive in the top slot

 

[The King]

I am writing some text here so this post does not get deleted!

Oh and here is a video on some X670E ASUS motherboards.

 

[Chicken Patty]

A ton of cash and a ton of ageesa updates for these i bet, unless AMD have ditched that pita for AM5. Either way, gonna need a fat load of cash for a AM5 upgrade.

Same here my friend, same here. Nervously waiting hahaha

 

[AM4isGOD]

I am writing some text here so this post does not get deleted!

Oh and here is a video on some X670E ASUS motherboards.

Interesting RE the backplate, might mean some AM4 coolers will not work. Interesting video, nice to see the board in the flesh.