Storage Interfaces

Storage Performance

The Gigabyte X670E AORUS Master has a few more high-speed USB ports than its B650 counterpart, thanks in part to the X670 chipset. While the B650 has less of everything, depending on the motherboard configuration, it may actually have more external USB ports. While some may argue the lack of USB4 is unfortunate to not be included, 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. Those who need a little bit extra bandwidth will find four 10 Gbps USB Type-A ports, and a single USB-C 20 Gbps.

*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. 1040 MB/s is right on target for a USB 3.2 Gen2 (10 Gbps) enclosures.

AIDA64 (NVMe M.2)

Using a Gen 4 x4 M.2 drive, testing shows that all M.2 sockets are at least Gen 4 x4. Without access to a Gen 5 NVMe, those M.2 slots cannot be fully tested. The M.2 Gen 5 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 Gen 5 devices.

The main issue many will encounter with Gen 5 NVMe drives is thermal throttling. This has been brought up in previous reviews, though to reiterate here, the first generation of Gen 5 NVMe drives get extremely hot. 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 Gen 5 SSDs will require active cooling. Gigabyte does provide a large passive heatsink for the first M.2 Gen 5 socket to to alleviate this problem. However, the second Gen 5 M.2 socket is below the video card, which is less than ideal. At some point in the future, these Gen 5 SSDs will require less power, thus needing less passive or active cooling. Considering the potential longevity of the AM5 platform, it's not out of the question this motherboard will be used to its full potential at some point in the next few years.