Storage Interfaces

Storage Performance

The Gigabyte B650E AORUS Master is a bit sparse on the high-speed USB ports, due to using the B650 chipset. There are still enough for many users that are just looking for any USB ports, regardless of the rated speed. These are good for headphones, USB Audio DACs, web cameras, game controllers, keyboards and mice. There are four 10 Gb/s USB Type-A ports, for those who need a little bit extra bandwidth.

*ORICO USB4 NVMe Enclosure (ORICO-M208C3-U4) used for USB bandwidth tests.

AIDA64 (SATA 6 Gb/s)

AIDA64 (USB 3.2)

The external USB-C enclosure is rated for 40 Gb/s over USB4 or Thunderbolt 3/4. The fallback is 10 Gb/s for everything else. 927 MB/s is a on the low side for peak bandwidth using USB 3.2 Gen2 (10 Gbps) enclosures.

AIDA64 (NVMe M.2)

Using a Gen4 x4 M.2 drive, testing shows that all M.2 sockets are at least Gen4 x4. Without access to a Gen5 NVMe, those M.2 slots cannot be fully tested. The M.2 Gen5 sockets are always connected to the CPU directly, regardless of the motherboard in question as the X670/B650 chipset does not have the throughput available for Gen5 devices. Gigabyte with some great engineering managed to get four M.2 Gen5 x4 sockets on the B650E AORUS Master. This was accomplished by using the dedicated x4 for M.2 NVMe, using the additional general-purpose x4 and lastly from splitting lanes with the first PCIe slot.

The only issue with including this many Gen5 M.2 sockets is a fact that first generation of Gen5 NVMe drives get extremely hot quickly. If you're doing quick reads or writes it won't be a problem using the included heatsinks. However, if you plan on using the drives for sustained read and writes for a extended period of time, the first generation of Gen5 SSDs will require active cooling. Just be aware that these flat heatsinks will not be enough to stop drive throttling. At some point in the future, these Gen5 SSDs will require less power, thus needing less passive or active cooling. Considering the potential longevity of the AM5 platform, its not out of the question this motherboard will be used to its full potential at some point in the next few years.