ASUS Shows Off the ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme

[Kapone33]

Probably the usual case where it halves the top slot lanes when used... you put a sound card there in the most natural place it could be, furthest from the GPU at the bottom and if you have a nvme HHHL card like Optane... it will give you a surprise running at half speed... my ASUS X570 has a such great "feature".

The rant about lack of slots is really an actual pain...

I would like to have like PCIe expansion card with pcie bifurcation and have 4 drives there. You can easily swap them, and cooling is better. And ASUS actually has things like that... it is just a piece of PCB with some simple plastic and without expensive controllers... basically it doesn't cost much and should be added by default imho.

I also like independent USB expansion cards... because I often test faulty devices that can fry the USB... next thing are capture cards... well... it is a workstation... some people not only game on them, but buy them because of customizability. The intel mainstream chipset were so anemic in PCIe department and making an artificial segmentation to force you to use HEDT for more PCIe lanes... that's another di*k move in my book.

Ah Threadripper or X299. You could buy a 1900X for $200 10980x werelike $600 and get 48 to 64 lanes with a $300 MB. With that you could use one of the Asus M2 cards, fill it with 4 drives and double that and still have a Multi GPU setup. Then TRX40 was announced and people like you and me were excited. It was either 96 or 128 PCIE lanes of 4.0 on TRX40 and boards were as cheap as $399 Canadian. Then the chips at $2500 to get in forced people to abandon that thought process. So we will wait until those CPUs drop in price and snag one. That never happens and f. me they release a 16 core monster on AM4 that is so compelling that you will bite the bullet and and buy X570. Only to find that X570 is even more restricted than X470 when it comes to PCIe allocation. Then they realize that there were more than a few people on HEDT and release X570 boards that have lane splitting only on the high end Having said that I am not sad about my AM4 main driver but it behooves me how a board with 1/2 the connectivity is more expensive than a TRX40 board Asus Prime for $399 vs the Extreme X570 for $800.

 

[eidairaman1]

Well.. there are some tiny pcie 2x slot lanes from PCH that are often put in idiotic place where GPU covers them etc ... sometimes it is weird, I use a riser cable and route those spare lanes elsewhere... well just to point out, that the lanes are there, but... damn... the slots are routed often in rather weird way.

I came from X99 where you had them enough... but it is an artificial segregation, things like that should die... the fun part comes, that the most rational pcie layout comes with most expensive boards and they kinda intentionally make some stupid arrangement for more budget friendly options just because for the more expensive ones have some advantage. I didn't do X299 because of mesh topology, those CPU's suck at gaming and cost and arm and leg and offer you nothing more and HEDT really died recently as a thing, I do not treat Threadrippers as HEDT as those are different animals, more like home chibi server rendering farm. ie Like in old days I had Tyan Socket F duallies. The distinctive feature should be good at overclocking.

HEDT is what a Workstation Designation was

 

[matar]

Nice

 

[Ferrum Master]

HEDT is what a Workstation Designation was

Was.

Ah Threadripper or X299.

Sucks for gaming and OC.

Still I will hold my point... the market is littered with poorly designed choices, a waste just to fill gaps. The design choices often are only like two or three types. During the old days the ITX segment was absent, now people having special needs and heavy integration migrate to that, but a custom system builder like me is left for paying for additional tax.

 

[Valantar]

Was.

Sucks for gaming and OC.

Still I will hold my point... the market is littered with poorly designed choices, a waste just to fill gaps. The design choices often are only like two or three types. During the old days the ITX segment was absent, now people having special needs and heavy integration migrate to that, but a custom system builder like me is left for paying for additional tax.

That's exactly the evolution of PC building that I described above. Your use case is becoming an increasingly small niche, with other concerns taking over, which sadly leaves you in the lurch - especially as the feature you're requesting - PCIe - is one of the most expensive to implement, both through signal quality requiresments for newer PCIe standards, through dense trace layouts meaning more complex boards, and through the potential problem of having enough lanes to begin with (possibly requiring PLX switches). But it's not a willed development from anyone as much as it is just a change in the base capabilities of hardware and the needs and desires of buyers - AICs outside of GPUs are a tiny niche in and of itself, and having multiple AICs in addition to a GPU in a build is very rare. As PCs and PC gaming have gone mainstream, usage patterns have changed.

Luckily for you though, it seems that MSI's X670E/X670 boards might suit you well - all announced boards have three x16 slots with no mention of them being electrically anything below this (which begs the question of where they're getting the lanes, mind you), and one of them (seemingly the cheapest?) has an additional x1 slot.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Luckily for you though, it seems that MSI's X670E/X670 boards might suit you well - all announced boards have three x16 slots with no mention of them being electrically anything below this (which begs the question of where they're getting the lanes, mind you), and one of them (seemingly the cheapest?) has an additional x1 slot.

We will see, so far looks really promising.

 

[Valantar]

We will see, so far looks really promising.

Yeah, they do look well suited to HEDT-like workloads. Still, considering how riddled with errors their press release is I'd wait until the boards are launched before forming any firm opinions. For example, they say "The X670 chipset is divided into two segments - X670 Extreme and X670. X670E supports PCIe 5.0 through both the PCIe slot and M.2 slot whereas X670 motherboards support PCIe 5.0 through the M.2 slot exclusively." But that's not the difference between X670E and X670 - that's the difference between X670 and B650! Either MSI's marketing department is getting some really bad information, they're rather incompetent, or they got the info far too late to actually proofread their press copy. Either way, it doesn't build confidence.

 

[trsttte]

Yeah, they do look well suited to HEDT-like workloads. Still, considering how riddled with errors their press release is I'd wait until the boards are launched before forming any firm opinions. For example, they say "The X670 chipset is divided into two segments - X670 Extreme and X670. X670E supports PCIe 5.0 through both the PCIe slot and M.2 slot whereas X670 motherboards support PCIe 5.0 through the M.2 slot exclusively." But that's not the difference between X670E and X670 - that's the difference between X670 and B650! Either MSI's marketing department is getting some really bad information, they're rather incompetent, or they got the info far too late to actually proofread their press copy. Either way, it doesn't build confidence.

Yeah, there's not that much information. Even regarding X670/X670E from my understanding the non-E can still have pcie5.0 on the gpu slot, it's just not the target, while the Extreme version has to. I really don't like that they went the Intel way segmenting more the chipset versions, hopefully they'll release a couple official block diagrams soon so things become clearer.

all announced boards have three x16 slots with no mention of them being electrically anything below this (which begs the question of where they're getting the lanes, mind you)

Those are definitely not all x16 electric. Educated and obvious guess is first 2 PCIe gen5 are bifurcated (either 1 x16 or 2 x8), third one x4

 

[Valantar]

Yeah, there's not that much information. Even regarding X670/X670E from my understanding the non-E can still have pcie5.0 on the gpu slot, it's just not the target, while the Extreme version has to. I really don't like that they went the Intel way segmenting more the chipset versions, hopefully they'll release a couple official block diagrams soon so things become clearer.

Yeah, it's all a bit confused. From what AMD said, X670 should be 5.0 on PEG and CPU m.2, E on essentially everything, and B650 only on CPU m.2. If board makers are making X670 with no 5.0 on the PEG port, that quickly starts watering down the distinction between X670 and B650. Not that I think PEG 5.0 is likely to matter much for performance within the useful lifetime of these platforms, but they're kind of undermining the segmentation between the chipsets. This could be defensible through prioritizing cost and giving more lanes but not at such high speeds, but these don't seem like low cost boards...

Those are definitely not all x16 electric. Educated and obvious guess is first 2 PCIe gen5 are bifurcated (either 1 x16 or 2 x8), third one x4

That's likely correct, yes. Otherwise they'd need to have at least a couple of PLX switches on board - and do those even exist for PCIe 5.0 yet?