FRONTPAGE Gigabyte B650E AORUS Master Motherboard Review

[Overclockers.com]

Today we will look at one of the latest Gigabyte motherboards with the new B650E chipset, the B650E AORUS Master. The motherboard uses an Extreme version of the chipset designed to work with PCIe 5.0 devices, so it promises it will be a great option if we are planning to build a gaming PC for a couple of years and give us a window to upgrade.

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[Voodoo Rufus]

Two things:

1. No good picture of the rear IO
2. How are the M.2's arranged in terms of lane distribution to the CPU/chipset? Does it steal from the GPU slot?

 

[JLK03F150]

Here's the rear IO from the Gigabyte product page.

 

[EarthDog]

Two things:

1. No good picture of the rear IO
2. How are the M.2's arranged in terms of lane distribution to the CPU/chipset? Does it steal from the GPU slot?

B650E has 28 total pcie 5.0 lanes off the cpu. In this case, the board splits a total of 8x lanes for four m.2 5.0 modules. So it seems you can run two 5.0 x4 drives or 4x 4.0 drives and get max performance out of everything attached.

Gigabyte has a chipset diagram in the manual. Definitely good information to have in reviews.

 

[Voodoo Rufus]

Thanks. Some of these boards are doing weird things between PCIE slots and M.2 slots.

 

[EarthDog]

They are... mostly Intel boards as they don't have as many lanes off the CPU. 20 IIRC. So if there are more than two PCIe 5.0-capable M.2 sockets, it's taken from the GPU lanes. The primary socket will run 5.0 x8 and give the lanes to the M.2 socket(s).

I can see why they do that... by the time 5.0 x8 is a glass ceiling for most uses, the platform will damn near be obsolete anyway. A 4090 is hindered by ~2% with 3.0 x16 at 2560x1440.

 

[Woomack]

Two things:

1. No good picture of the rear IO
2. How are the M.2's arranged in terms of lane distribution to the CPU/chipset? Does it steal from the GPU slot?

1. I don't know how, but the IO photos missed the gallery. Below you have one of them.



2. Everything is described in the table with specifications

1 x PCI Express x16 slot, supporting PCIe 5.0* and running at x16 (PCIEX16)

* The M2B_CPU and M2C_CPU slots share bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the M2B_CPU or M2C_CPU slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot operates at up to x8 mode.

1. 1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 25110/2280 PCIe 5.0* x4/x2 SSD support) (M2A_CPU)
2. 3 x M.2 connectors (Socket 3, M key, type 22110/2280 PCIe 5.0* x4/x2 SSD support) (M2D_CPU, M2C_CPU, M2B_CPU)

 

[Voodoo Rufus]

Great picture. So the board takes 8 lanes from the GPU slot to allocate to two of the M.2 5x4's. That's one of the downsides of lane allocation with the more budget chipsets. If you want a lot of M.2s, they have to come from somewhere.

 

[EarthDog]

Great picture. So the board takes 8 lanes from the GPU slot to allocate to two of the M.2 5x4's.

If you want a lot of M.2s, they have to come from somewhere.

Indeed.

But... what's the real downside to that GPU slot splitting to x8??

 

[Voodoo Rufus]

Depends what GPU you're running. If I put my 2080Ti in it, it would drop to PCIE3x8 (2x16 equivalent). Performance will suffer in some scenarios at that point.

 

[EarthDog]

Depends what GPU you're running. If I put my 2080Ti in it, it would drop to PCIE3x8 (2x16 equivalent). Performance will suffer in some scenarios at that point.

??....why would your 2080ti run at 3.0 x8?

It's a 3.0 x16 card, but it has 4.0 x16 bandwidth available from the 5.0 x8. AFAIK all the pathways are still active, but bandwidth is cut in half as it's rerouted by the pcie multiplexers/MUX. It doesn't drop to x8 physical. I wouldn't bet my life on that though and will reach out and confirm. Perhaps some boards make a hard cut like that, but that seems like a silly design choice (though less expensive than adding MUX chips I suppose).

Edit: Regardless, a 2080ti on 3.0 x8 bandwidth only loses 2% too (look up '2080ti pcie scaling techpowerup') ... same as 4090 on 3.0 x16... or, nothing to worry about anyway.

 

[Voodoo Rufus]

If the motherboard has the parts to keep the same available bandwidth after splitting things off for M.2s, that would be great. Let us know what you find out.

 

[EarthDog]

They do. They are called MUX (Multiplexer) chips and have been on motherboards for several generations.

I checked on the ASRock the PCIe 4.0 card ran at 4.0 x16 while there's a device in the CPU-connected M.2 socket that splits lanes off the graphics slot. This board is on the testing table next so I'll test there soon.

 

[mantheunknown]

Hello,
In the review under 'EXPO & XMP Support' it seems to imply that any DDR5 RAM (not necessarily specific to AMD) may be used. If so, it opens up a lot of contenders at lower price points. Is this a motherboard specific feature or universal. I am considering an ASUS proart x670e MB and I see no reference to this capability. It does not say EXPO/XMP. Appreciate guidance. Thank you.

 

[EarthDog]

I think they were just wise enough to market that. I'm certain if you check the memory QVL (for any board) there are plenty of non-EXPO kits on the list of boards that don't advertise XMP/EXPO.

 

[mantheunknown]

Thank you @EarthDog,
I went to ASUS proart x670 QVL and found this F5-5600J2834F32GX2-TZ5RS. These sticks are INTEL/XMP!!! Since I know nothing about any of these things, will I have an issue using these. I would probably like to move (oc) the 5600 to 6000. Thks.

 

[EarthDog]

Thank you @EarthDog,
I went to ASUS proart x670 QVL and found this F5-5600J2834F32GX2-TZ5RS. These sticks are INTEL/XMP!!! Since I know nothing about any of these things, will I have an issue using these. I would probably like to move (oc) the 5600 to 6000. Thks.

You likely will not have any issues if it's on the QVL list.... that's what it's there for.

 

[Woomack]

Most (if not all) EXPO profiles are exactly the same as XMP on the same memory kits - all memory kits that support EXPO also support XMP. At least on all memory kits that I tested, EXPO was exactly the same as XMP.
AMD X670/E and B650/E motherboards were prepared when there wasn't a single memory kit with EXPO profiles, and most memory kits on QVL don't have EXPO profiles.
In short, most memory kits designed for Intel chipsets will work, but it's not guaranteed that they will reach the maximum frequency. All memory kits designed for AMD should work unless the manufacturer fails something in the profile programming.

So far, the only memory kit that couldn't work at XMP #1 on Gigabyte B650E Master was Kingston Renegade 32GB DDR5-6400 CL32. It could boot but wasn't passing stability tests. XMP #2/6000 and XMP #3/4800 were working fine. The same RAM works fine on Intel motherboards. It was on BIOS F3b, and it's possible it will be fixed in future updates (or simply, it's RAM fault, and it won't work).

 

[apenland01]

Thanks for the review! Looking at either a B650E or X670E chipset board. I have my new case, water AIO (may not fit lol) and power supply. Waiting until January for the board and cpu to see what updates/changes/stocking becomes more apparent. I have a gut feeling some of these early boards will be replaced fairly soon, as many are already out of stock and feedback is starting to come in....

 

[Woomack]

I see that these motherboards are already pretty good. All leading manufacturers have already released all important fixes, and there have been no updates for over a month. I also haven't heard about any significant RAM compatibility problems.
AMD declared they will keep the chipset for some longer, and I doubt there will be anything more anytime soon as the current generation supports devices that are not even on the market yet (PCIe 5.0, everything). If you see anything new, it may be a refresh with USB 4.0 or other newer controllers.
Either way, it's good to wait for the 3D cache CPUs that should appear on the market soon.