Gigabyte B650E AORUS Master

[mechtech]

VRM's can run for 3 years on 100 degrees. The heatsinks added is in some cases needed; but not mandatory.

Yes there's surrounding capacitors that could not bear the radiation heat; their life span heavily relies on the operating temperature they are at.

But other then that if you buy a board it will usually last you for 3 years before you even upgrade.

Things also got more expensive because components just last longer compared to the Socket A / and Intel era compared to today. How many VRM's blew up on the AM4 platform? I dont see threads.

And most builds using a stock heatsink blow downwards pushing air over the vrms, vs tower coolers or liquid with do not. These VRMs are probably one of the biggest costs on the board. I would guess chipset, 10gb lan, and pcie V5 are the others.

 

[Jism]

Or they are an excuse to drive up the costs. Do you really need a 1600 Amp capable VRM?>

Not even in worst peak conditions your tapping into half of it's capacity.

 

[Chrispy_]

"Budget-friendly" and "MSRP of $350" are not compatible terms.

Never before has a B-series motherboard been worth more than about $175. These E variants are horrific value, and the E-variant has no place being put in the B-series board segment at all.

Zen 4 desperately needs a large range of sub-$200 motherboards from a wide choice of vendors in a good selection of form factors. Where's mITX? Where are the E-ATX workstation boards? I get that these are early days for the platform but if the CPUs are on sale, the choice of platforms to put them in are just as important.

 

[Fergutor]

2 audio jacks, and 4 SATA ports...

 

[Asni]

Biostar X670E Valkyrie 18x Renesas RAA22010540

Spoiler

Gigabyte B650E Aorus Master 16x Renesas RAA22010540

Spoiler

The heatsink is pretty similar, i guess Biostar cheaped out on thermal pads (the mainboard would probably run cooler without any cooling).
It reminds me of this.

MSI M.2 Shield is Snake Oil Say Tests, Company Refutes Charges

With its 200-series chipset motherboards, MSI introduced its exclusive M.2 Shield accessory on some of its more premium products. This aluminium heatspreader with a thermal pad, according to its makers, is designed to lower temperatures on M.2 SSDs, and reduce thermal throttling of performance...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Tek-Check]

Gigabyte readies the budget-friendly AORUS Master built upon the B650E chipset. Offering a robust 16+2+2 VRM configuration, DDR5 support, PCIe Gen5 and four M.2 Gen5 sockets, Gigabyte is setting the playing field for things to come. Does the B650E AORUS Master have what it takes to win over the consumers? Follow along as we find out!

Thank you for this thorough review. I would kindly request another shot of the red area to expose HDMI chip feeding the port from iGPU.
Gigabyte claims that their HDMI 2.1 FRL port can output 7680x4320@60Hz and HDR, but without bit depth or other details. 8K/60hz can be done with either 32 Gbps (8-bit 4:2:0), 40 Gbps (10-bit 4:2:0) or 48 Gbps signal (12-bit 4:2:0). It is not clear what exactly they offer here.

If I may suggest for all future motherboard reviews, please expose iGPU capability in practice, i.e. HDMI and DP/USB-C chips near those ports, so that we try to find out what exactly is offered to consumers from iGPU. This is important, as it will tell us how much of iGPU capability motherboard vendors decide to implement and expose, which in turn, will tell us what kind of monitor we can connect to hybrid iGPU-GPU.

AMD officially says that iGPU from 7000 CPUs support both HDMI 2.1 FRL up to 48 Gbps, DSC with it, and DisplayPort 2.0 at 40 Gbps, and DSC with it.
Several vendors have nicely implemented 32Gbps HDMI ports, including this one, but so far no vendor has decided to expose DP 2.0 at 40 Gbps form iGPU via either DP port or USB-C port by DP 2.0 Alt Mode.

AMD has officially certified DP 2.0 port at 40 Gbps with VESA on Rembrandt APU with RDNA2 graphics. 7000 Raphael CPUs have similar media engine within RDNA2 capability. Any motherboard vendor wanting to expose DP 2.0 port from CPU's iGPU, would need to apply to VESA to receive their certification. We are curious whether any vendor has an intention to do this on a desktop system. Much appreciated.

 

[igralec84]

Ihre Suche nach b650

Ihre Suche nach b650

www.alternate.de

that's crazy pricing lol

 

[Broken Processor]

350$ is actually decent for the top line board, not much more than B550 despite much more/faster PCIe...

Still, too expensive for a supposed "mid-range" board.

B series is there budget range so I wouldn't call them top of the line.

 

[ir_cow]

@Tek-Check here you go

Spoiler: HDMI

Spoiler

 

[Denver]

Well, There seem to be few options under U$200.

 

[Tek-Check]

@Tek-Check here you go

Spoiler: HDMI

View attachment 264904
Spoiler

Thank you. Much appreciated. Yes, this chip looks very similar to the one on Valkyrie board and on Xbox series X console. I am curious whether this board offers 32Gbps or 40 Gbps signal on HDMI 2.1 FRL port. Gigabyte does not say.

Do you ever test bandwidth and image capability of video ports from iGPUs/GPUs on monitors? This seems one area that has been less explored on motherboards, with a lot of confusion in marketing from vendors.

 

[ir_cow]

Do you ever test bandwidth and image capability of video ports from iGPUs/GPUs on monitors? This seems one area that has been less explored on motherboards, with a lot of confusion in marketing from vendors.

I know it works, but that's about it. 4K 60Hz with HDR (Cheap $200 Monitor). Cyberpunk 1920x1080 Low settings gets 15 fps in the in-game benchmark. Turn on FSR Quality and its 21 FPS.

If you have some program to test image quality, I would be interested. To my eyes, it looks normal.

 

[Garrus]

350$ is actually decent for the top line board, not much more than B550 despite much more/faster PCIe...

Still, too expensive for a supposed "mid-range" board.

The old Master was $300 USD for me in my country but was often on sale. $50 price increase MSRP versus MSRP. Better than the ridiculous $520 USD X670 Master I suppose. But still too much. Bring it back down to $250-$300 and then we'll talk. That's over $400 in Canada, that's all I'm asking for. Currently $500.

 

[iuliug]

Gigabyte has also ditched dual-bios since move to 256mb chips. Even for a Master branded board ...

 

[Mussels]

I don't think i'd pay $500+ Au for a motherboard that locks me to 8x on my GPU

The boot times i can forgive short term, since that's something that will definitely get fixed with AGESA updates since it seems to have been on other brands

It's a budget board at double flagship prices, AM5 is not looking good if prices like this continue

 

[AlwaysHope]

Considering the prices here in Australia atm from a popular online retailer with B650/E platforms, the Z790 platform is looking more attractive all the time imo.
Asus & Gigabyte kick in at AUD $359, the catch is gotta wait until 18 Nov. That price is very close to the entry level Z790 boards!

 

[Prime2515102]

They could have used a lesser audio CODEC and saved a few pennies. Two audio jacks and an optical out for a 7.1 and DSD capable chip. Somebody was asleep at the wheel...

 

[ir_cow]

They could have used a lesser audio CODEC and saved a few pennies. Two audio jacks and an optical out for a 7.1 and DSD capable chip. Somebody was asleep at the wheel...

a few pennies is just that. How much does it really cost? I suspect most of it is Gen5 related since the Gen4 versions are 150-200$ cheaper.

 

[Minus Infinity]

Wouldn't touch an all new Rev 1.0 MB with a 100' barge pole. Went through all this crap with AGESA and crap memory support with original Zen on X370.

Why 4 M.2 slots? Rather it was two and they actually got USB 3 to perform a lot better. I will also eagerly await Actually Hardcore Oveclocking's analysis of all the VRMs being used and see ig MSI tops the charts again. Trouble with MSI they usually have by far the least amount of USB ports, embarrassingly few even on X570 MB's.

 

[nguyen]

overkill VRM on motherboard that mainly target gamers.

Braindead YTbers will praise this board to the moon for the useless VRM LMAO

Let hope Gigabyte won't put stupid crap on their Intel B760 to inflate pricing like this, B660 Aorus Master is selling for only 170usd

 

[AKBrian]

Gigabyte has also ditched dual-bios since move to 256mb chips. Even for a Master branded board ...

This is actually a benefit if you do a lot of overclocking or memory benchmarking.

Typical Gigabyte dual BIOS behavior is extremely frustrating as it will often self-recover to a seemingly randomly chosen chip, with separate stored profiles and settings, and recent boards could not be locked down as they lacked a physical selection jumper. The boards sort of just did what they wanted during OC self-recovery, clear CMOS or even after memory training attempts. It was awful.

 

[ir_cow]

I don't think i'd pay $500+ Au for a motherboard that locks me to 8x on my GPU

Eh, its not that bad for gaming, but I hear ya. RTX 4090 might be held back by x8 even more.

I did some quick tests.

Spoiler: PCIe Scaling

1920x 1080 Benchmarks

 

[trparky]

How the actual f**k is a $350 motherboard considered to be mid-range?

I was seriously entertaining the idea of going Ryzen 7000 for a new build, but these prices are just beyond stupid. I might as well go with a Ryzen 5000-series build instead.

 

[Ando]

ASRock B650E PG RIPTIDE WIFI AM5 ATX Mainboard , 4 slots DDR5, PCIe 5.0 x16 Slot, 3 M.2 slots, 2.5Gb Lan, WI-FI 6E, 7.1 Nahimic Audio , Front USB3.2 Gen2X2 Type_C , 14+2+1 Power Phase - Newegg.com

Buy ASRock B650E PG RIPTIDE WIFI AM5 ATX Mainboard , 4 slots DDR5, PCIe 5.0 x16 Slot, 3 M.2 slots, 2.5Gb Lan, WI-FI 6E, 7.1 Nahimic Audio , Front USB3.2 Gen2X2 Type_C , 14+2+1 Power Phase with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

$240 seems to be the cheapest B650E board showing on newegg, from Asrock of course. Worst aspect seems to be 6 USB 2.0 on the rear, and the ALC897 audio. Wonder if that's as low as they can go?

MSI doesn't even have any announced B650E models; their Carbon board is nearly the same price as this one with only PCIE 4x16!

 

[trparky]

I can seriously get a decent B550 board for less than $180, re-use my current RAM, get a 5800X3D along with an OK-ish cooler and do it all for less than $700.

I'd really love to get a hit of whatever these motherboard manufacturers are smoking because it must be some seriously powerful stuff for them to think that these prices are anywhere close to being decent. My local Microcenter is giving away DDR5 memory kits for free when buying a Ryzen 7000 CPU. That tells me that these new AMD Ryzen 7000 chips are not selling well at all. And with these motherboard prices, I'm not at all surprised. AMD got greedy and it's going to hurt them.