ASrock X570 Ex4 VS Taichi

[Nebulous]

Hey guyz, long time! Anyhows, I'm in a pickle here. I've been thinking of an upgrade/new build and deciding on going team red. With my current rig I have 5 spinners, 4 of them in 2 separate sets of raid-0 ( 2x 3tb are my games drive & 2x 300gb raptors are my media drives) 2tb is sort of the back-up storage. That's all 5 spinners.

Using the M.2 Nvme drive as my main os/boot drive disables 2 of my Sata ports rendering them useless and I need all my Sata ports.

Now I'm torn between the 2 boards: The Extreme 4 & The Taichi. Cpu will be the 5800X unless I can squeeze a few more pennies for the 5900X

Both boards have 8 Sata ports. Ext 4 has 2 M.2 Nvme slots, Taichi has 3

Now here's the confusing part:

I've found the Taichi's M.2 Nvme slots ( 1 & 2) will not disable any of the sata ports. #3 M.2 Nvme disables PCIE #5
I can't seem to find any info regarding this on the Extreme 4 anywhere. This is my concern.

I prefer the Extreme 4, (because of price and name ie: sig) but the lack of info regarding the M.2 Nvme & Sata ports has me concerned.
If I have to splurge a few more coins for the Taichi Because of the M.2 Nvme not disabling any of my needed Sata ports, then I'll go that route even tho I really don't want to
And yes I'd like to stay with ASrock.


So my question is:
Is the Extreme 4 and the Taichi identical in regards to the Sata ports/ M.2 Nvme, aside from price and other features difference?

Hope my question was detailed enough, but not confusing anybody

 

[EarthDog]

With only two m.2's on the Ex4, I dont think it will disable any. Rememeber, x570 has a lot more pcie lanes to go around.

Honestly, I'd start to move on from spinners as anything but warm/cold storage at this time.

 

[Blaylock]

IIRC the X570 chipset allows for 16 lanes of PCIe 4.0 with 2x M.2 slots dedicated. Any additional M.2 slots would be shared lanes. Since the Ex4 only has 2 M.2 slots those would be direct connect to the CPU via PCie 4.0. I believe this is chipset specific and not motherboard specific.

 

[Nebulous]

With only two m.2's on the Ex4, I dont think it will disable any. Rememeber, x570 has a lot more pcie lanes to go around.

Honestly, I'd start to move on from spinners as anything but warm/cold storage at this time.

See that's what I thought about my current board. With 2 M.2's, either one will disable 2 sata's. Using the secondary M.2 slot, it disabled sata's 5 & 6

I like my spinners. They're relatively cheap for large sizes. So long as they're still available, I'll keep using them. You might think large SSD's are cheap, but to me they are not. I'm still working with a limited budget and don't have disposable income to get the latest and greatest (ahem), so I gotta work with what I got

Look how long it took me to get a new board and chip, and it's still a toss up.

IIRC the X570 chipset allows for 16 lanes of PCIe 4.0 with 2x M.2 slots dedicated. Any additional M.2 slots would be shared lanes. Since the Ex4 only has 2 M.2 slots those would be direct connect to the CPU via PCie 4.0. I believe this is chipset specific and not motherboard specific.

Ahh, otay. Again I got jammed up with my current setup. I found out afterwards that 1) it was a dead socket and 2) using the M.2 slot neutered 2 of my sata ports.

See, now I'm rethinking the x570. At this late stage wondering if the new chipset will come along and I'll shoot myself in the foot again with a dead socket.


Thanks for the info guyz!

 

[Blaylock]

Well, to be honest AM4 is now 4 generations in and DDR5 is not far around the corner.

 

[Nebulous]

Well, to be honest AM4 is now 4 generations in and DDR5 is not far around the corner.

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of.

 

[bassnut]

The next of iteration RYZEN is rumored to be on a new socket. I'm not sure if I would go so far as calling the AM4 as dead yet though.

 

[trents]

The next of iteration RYZEN is rumored to be on a new socket. I'm not sure if I would go so far as calling the AM4 as dead yet though.

Agreed. And that first generation of DDR5 stuff will not likely be mature enough to offer much bandwidth improvement anyway.

 

[Blaylock]

It will also be hella expensive too.

 

[EarthDog]

If you're ready to buy now, buy now. DDR5 and a new socket isn't going to do much for you, really. It's not like when DDR5 hits the scene it's going to make more than an iterative difference. It will use less power, surely. But I don't see significant increases in memory performance initially (see trents comment), especially considering that for most home users, bandwidth isn't a concern.

I also wouldn't call AM4 (or Socket 1200 for Intel) dead. They both perform quite well today, and will do so for the next several years.

 

[Blaylock]

Agreed, I wasn't suggesting AM4 is a dead socket with my mention of DDR5, however, I would think it is certainly getting close. I would venture to guess we'll see one (maybe two) more generations with it. That's not to say AMD couldn't come out with an AM4+, as they did with AM3 and AM2, and support some backward compatibility.

 

[EarthDog]

The next AMD CPU/board etc will be on a different chipset/socket. This is technically the end of the road. My contention is simply that waiting (a while) for the new parts isn't going to be worth it (performance wise). I'd rather buy now, than when I need to upgrade, look at the scene then. If I can drop in another CPU with more cores and threads, great. If not, new platform.

 

[Nebulous]

Thanks for all the great info/suggestions. I'm still able to to play games on my dead socket rig. I'm ready to buy now, but again I don't want to make the mistake the socket is dead 6 months down the road as it happend.

I managed to save up enough for a new board and chip. I know I won't be able to get much for my current rig, so I decided I'll pass it on to my kid. All he does with a PC is school work anyways as he's not a gamer.