motherboard

[Tmjc]

-> Get a high end chipset, always.

I don't agree with that. Especially on and the b550 chipset is a very good alternative to x570. (As long as you don't plan on using more than two pcie 4 devices)

I'm no expert on AMD boards, but that's rather limiting. Most B550 boards I see have 2 m.2 nvme slots. If you use iGP or separate graphics card, you will need PCIe lanes for that regardless, so one of those slots is for show or impacting performance. That alone would disqualify a B550 board for me. And then there is all the other peripherals that are connected to the PCIe bus, like SATA, USB, ethernet, etc.

You still have a lot of pcie 3 lanes, which really should be fast enough for most people. IMO there are not a lot of people who really need pcie gen 4.

 

[supersargas]

-> Get a high end chipset, always.

I don't agree with that. Especially on and the b550 chipset is a very good alternative to x570. (As long as you don't plan on using more than two pcie 4 devices)

There are b550 boards with quite a lot of connectivity and with vrms good enough to run OCd 5950x without any problems.

The problem is, not all differences in features are explicit. There are features that I use today in my high end chipset that are not present in lower end ones. A friend once bought a lower end mobo for his gaming machine and got burned afterwards because he needed something that B chipsets do not provide.

I am not going to waste time in digging up those differences anymore, hence the recommendation. I am not even saying "buy a high end motherboard". Just the chipset. My own morherboard is low end, but it has a top end chipset.

 

[supersargas]

-> Avoid gamer oriented stuff as best as possible

-> Get a high end chipset, always.

-> After those two, decide based on wanted points, like NVME support, M2 drives, PCI specs, specific sizes for certain cases, etc.

Useful things to look at, but I'd take them in the opposite order.

If it hasn't got the ports you want, e.g. M.2/NVMe sockets, PCI ports, USB ports etc then it doesn't meet your requirements, no matter what the performance.

High end chipset, probably.

I "reinforce my claim". Chipset must be the first filtering point, because of my response above.

Gaming motherboard: well, it may have stuff you don't need, but that probably doesn't matter provided it does have the stuff you do need.

My problem with gaming stuff is that when manufacturers make gaming oriented products, they take advantage of the obvious distraction in aesthetics to cut costs in other things. The absolute example is Razer. Crap quality products sold for their weight in gold because of branding and looks. Cases on point:

1. A pair of over ear headphones that costed the same as my ATH-M40x (low-end studio monitors, neutral representation), that had horrid, disgusting, putrid representation of the whole spectrum, exaggerating the bass and making the mediums and highs sound like if you were listening with your ear inside a can.

2. A friend's experience; he bought one of the pricier mouses, and he, being an afficionate to competitive first person shooters, was disgusted of the ergonomics. He ended up buying a cheap SteelSeries and he was happy with it.

--
Simon

 

[Sean Nelson]

My problem with gaming stuff is that when manufacturers make gaming oriented products, they take advantage of the obvious distraction in aesthetics to cut costs in other things.

In other words: style over substance. In my book substance wins out every time over style, but if others put a different value on them then that's their prerogative. But they should make the choice with the knowledge and a clear understanding of what the tradeoffs are.

 

[teddoman]

I wonder if I'm the only one who is bewildered by PCIe lanes, even after reading an explainer. I know at a very conceptual level that lanes carry traffic, and that sharing lanes slow them down. I also get that some lanes are dedicated lanes. But that's all at a conceptual level.

I guess part of the problem is that motherboard manufacturers don't really draw PCIe diagrams in their marketing materials and make this info accessible to newbies. You probably have to read the manual.

How do you figure out how many extra lanes you'll have available after you add everything to your build?

To get the most out of your GPU, you want 16 dedicated lanes. On a motherboard with 24 lanes, that leaves 8 lanes for everything else? Of those 8 lanes, how many are already dedicated to a task?

Do people try to anticipate lane sharing that is caused by the motherboard? When does your GPU get bumped down to 8 lanes?

Do people actually read the manual to calculate how the PCIe lanes will work?

 

[Austinian]

Do people actually read the manual to calculate how the PCIe lanes will work?

I do. How else is the user going to properly configure the system?

Yes, "RTFM". Read The [Fine] Manual.

 

[supersargas]

My problem with gaming stuff is that when manufacturers make gaming oriented products, they take advantage of the obvious distraction in aesthetics to cut costs in other things.

In other words: style over substance. In my book substance wins out every time over style, but if others put a different value on them then that's their prerogative. But they should make the choice with the knowledge and a clear understanding of what the tradeoffs are.

I would keep it simple. Search for a brand that focuses on professional gear, check if they make lower end stuff (something that I can use/afford) and go with that. I haven't bought anything in 4 years, so I was merely nosing around: SuperMicro seems interesting, coming from a Haswell ASUS.

 

[teddoman]

Do people actually read the manual to calculate how the PCIe lanes will work?

I do. How else is the user going to properly configure the system?

Yes, "RTFM". Read The [Fine] Manual.

Did you diagram it or anything? Feel free to share any chicken scratch notes you took on your last build. I haven't really seen anyone discuss actual PCIe configurations of MBs and it'd be good to learn from what others have done.

 

[Austinian]

Do people actually read the manual to calculate how the PCIe lanes will work?

I do. How else is the user going to properly configure the system?

Yes, "RTFM". Read The [Fine] Manual.

Did you diagram it or anything? Feel free to share any chicken scratch notes you took on your last build. I haven't really seen anyone discuss actual PCIe configurations of MBs and it'd be good to learn from what others have done.

No need for that; the manual told me what would be disabled if certain hardware (like NVMe drives) was installed in particular slots, what slot was best for the GPU, etc.

 

[Sean Nelson]

I wonder if I'm the only one who is bewildered by PCIe lanes, even after reading an explainer. I know at a very conceptual level that lanes carry traffic, and that sharing lanes slow them down. I also get that some lanes are dedicated lanes. But that's all at a conceptual level.

I guess part of the problem is that motherboard manufacturers don't really draw PCIe diagrams in their marketing materials and make this info accessible to newbies. You probably have to read the manual.

Yes, that kind of technical information is in the manual. I wouldn't expect that kind of stuff to be in splashy sales literature.

For example, in the manual for my Asus WS-C246 Pro motherboard, Appendix A-1 (page 93 of the PDF document) shows exactly how all of the PCI devices (including embedded devices) are connected to the chipset.

 

[teddoman]

I wonder if I'm the only one who is bewildered by PCIe lanes, even after reading an explainer. I know at a very conceptual level that lanes carry traffic, and that sharing lanes slow them down. I also get that some lanes are dedicated lanes. But that's all at a conceptual level.

I guess part of the problem is that motherboard manufacturers don't really draw PCIe diagrams in their marketing materials and make this info accessible to newbies. You probably have to read the manual.

Yes, that kind of technical information is in the manual. I wouldn't expect that kind of stuff to be in splashy sales literature.

For example, in the manual for my Asus WS-C246 Pro motherboard, Appendix A-1 (page 93 of the PDF document) shows exactly how all of the PCI devices (including embedded devices) are connected to the chipset.

If I'm reading the diagram correctly, two of the x16 slots run over the same 16x PCIe lanes, so that seems like a shared lanes situation.

The third x16 slot only runs over x4 lanes.

The fourth x16 slot also only runs over x4 lanes and those lanes are shared with some SATA devices.

It shows that one of the m.2 drives run over x2 lanes and the other runs over x4 lanes. These lanes look dedicated.

Some of this is confirmed on p9 specifications.

Has anyone read a primer on how many dedicated or shared lanes are needed by each type of device? How many dedicated lanes do you need for m.2? Should a GPU have 16 dedicated lanes, or is 8 enough?

The manual doesn't actually specify how many PCIe lanes the motherboard has in total. If you count on the diagram, there are 36 lanes. When I read reviews, I see a lot of reviews that say the motherboard has 24 lanes. So that suggests many motherboards must have shared lanes for stuff that is dedicated on your mobo.

--
Ted
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tedchang/
C&C is encouraged, I'm always learning

 

[Sean Nelson]

...the manual for my Asus WS-C246 Pro motherboard, Appendix A-1 (page 93 of the PDF document) shows exactly how all of the PCI devices (including embedded devices) are connected to the chipset.

The fourth x16 slot also only runs over x4 lanes and those lanes are shared with some SATA devices.

It should be noted that the slot labeled "PCIex16_4" in that diagram is only "shared" in the sense that the motherboard can be configured to use the SATA4 thru SATA7 ports or the PCIex16_4 slot, not both at the same time. So there is no sharing of bandwidth between SATA and the PCI slot, merely a choice in whether you'd rather have the extra PCI socket or the extra SATA ports.

Has anyone read a primer on how many dedicated or shared lanes are needed by each type of device? How many dedicated lanes do you need for m.2? Should a GPU have 16 dedicated lanes, or is 8 enough?

Each PCIe V3 lane can transfer about 1GByte/sec. So if you have an SSD that can transfer data in excess of 2GByte/sec then it would best be connected to the 4-lane M.2 slot.

But, the sustained transfer rates you see in practice rarely get that high, and the lack of latency is a much bigger SSD benefit than its increased transfer rate, so you're unlikely to see any noticeable difference whether its connected to the 2-lane or 4-lane slot. You'd have to be pushing an incredibly intense workload through the SSD in order to saturate the PCIe bus.

The manual doesn't actually specify how many PCIe lanes the motherboard has in total. If you count on the diagram, there are 36 lanes. When I read reviews, I see a lot of reviews that say the motherboard has 24 lanes. So that suggests many motherboards must have shared lanes for stuff that is dedicated on your mobo.

A motherboard that has a different chipset than the C246 may well have a different number of PCI lanes. Check this Wikipedia page for a comparison of the capabilities of the different chipsets.

A lot of people spend too much time on processor and memory specs and ignore the chipset - this is to their peril since much of the overall performance and capability of a motherboard depends on which chipset it uses.

Motherboards with fewer PCIe lanes may simply have fewer PCIe sockets or fewer other I/O connectors that use PCIe lane pins on the chipset.

 

[teddoman]

The manual doesn't actually specify how many PCIe lanes the motherboard has in total. If you count on the diagram, there are 36 lanes. When I read reviews, I see a lot of reviews that say the motherboard has 24 lanes. So that suggests many motherboards must have shared lanes for stuff that is dedicated on your mobo.

A motherboard that has a different chipset than the C246 may well have a different number of PCI lanes. Check this Wikipedia page for a comparison of the capabilities of the different chipsets.

Don't know what to make of this but that wiki says the Intel C246 chipset only has 24 PCIe lanes. The diagram shows 36. Did I read the diagram wrong?

 

[Sean Nelson]

The manual doesn't actually specify how many PCIe lanes the motherboard has in total. If you count on the diagram, there are 36 lanes. When I read reviews, I see a lot of reviews that say the motherboard has 24 lanes. So that suggests many motherboards must have shared lanes for stuff that is dedicated on your mobo.

A motherboard that has a different chipset than the C246 may well have a different number of PCI lanes. Check this Wikipedia page for a comparison of the capabilities of the different chipsets.

Don't know what to make of this but that wiki says the Intel C246 chipset only has 24 PCIe lanes. The diagram shows 36. Did I read the diagram wrong?

The chipset has 24 lanes and the CPU has 16 lanes for a total of 40 lanes. The motherboard doesn't appear to be using all of the chipset lanes.

 

[teddoman]

The manual doesn't actually specify how many PCIe lanes the motherboard has in total. If you count on the diagram, there are 36 lanes. When I read reviews, I see a lot of reviews that say the motherboard has 24 lanes. So that suggests many motherboards must have shared lanes for stuff that is dedicated on your mobo.

A motherboard that has a different chipset than the C246 may well have a different number of PCI lanes. Check this Wikipedia page for a comparison of the capabilities of the different chipsets.

Don't know what to make of this but that wiki says the Intel C246 chipset only has 24 PCIe lanes. The diagram shows 36. Did I read the diagram wrong?

The chipset has 24 lanes and the CPU has 16 lanes for a total of 40 lanes. The motherboard doesn't appear to be using all of the chipset lanes.

Thanks, didn't realize there are actually two totally different sets of PCIe lanes on a mobo!

 

[PHXAZCRAIG]

I build all my own pc's and have since about 1999. I've never bought a motherboard with an upgrade in mind. In fact the newest one I have - an X570 motherboard - is the first one I've seen where a newer generation of CPU can just drop in without replacing the motherboard. (I'm not talking about putting on a cheap chip like a Celeron and replacing it with a better CPU when you came up with more money,)

So - what does make me buy one or the other? Features per price. And usage.

I also build a lot of test servers, though they are mostly virtual now. When I buy a motherboard for a server, it's aimed at what that server will do. The first thing I looked for in that scenario was a motherboard with a built-in video card. My servers almost never need a monitor, and they certainly don't need 3d gaming capability. A m/b with built-in monitor saves me buying an extra video card AND the associated fans and fan noise that go with them. Next would be RAM capacity - no 2-slot cheapies. And then it's pretty much just price - and price means combo of CPU, RAM and m/b, since they all work together. Since AMD has been cheaper, typically, on all three of these components, I saved a lot of money using AMD on my test servers.

For PC, the requirements are of course a lot different. Here I don't want a built-in CPU, and there are some features - sometimes obscure - I look at. For instance, now I want at least a 2.5Gbps NIC, but that's more a tiebreaker for a m/b without one. The last m/b I bought was chosen partly on the basis that it had three NVME slots and I wanted two NVME drives in it. What I never end up getting is the highest end gaming m/b which invariably costs $100 more for features I don't want. Partly because I also don't get the highest end video card (I typically get a mainstream $300 card). Even in the video card I'm buying as much for the connectors (need two DisplayPorts) as the performance. I don't do 3d gaming or it would bias my choices more.

My last m/b was a Aorus Master x570. Expensive, but this was a pc for me, and I felt like doing a little bit of a splurge. And this one has 3 NVME slots.

 

[Mystery member]

I build all my own PCs and have since about 1999. I've never bought a motherboard with an upgrade in mind. In fact the newest one I have - an X570 motherboard - is the first one I've seen where a newer generation of CPU can just drop in without replacing the motherboard. (I'm not talking about putting on a cheap chip like a Celeron and replacing it with a better CPU when you came up with more money).

I agree with that observation.

It may be different in recent years, but with any such upgrade, the economics is dodgy because you are throwing away a fully functional CPU for a relatively modest performance benefit.

 

[teddoman]

That requires the use of an AM4 socket motherboard which supports the latest CPUs. The best spec boards are those using the X570 chipset. My main requirements are:

• At least a 3 year warranty (rules out MSI & ASRock in the UK)
• Effective VRM design for cool running

This VRM explainer suggests more drop down phases on the mobo leads to more stable and cleaner low voltage power being supplied to the CPU. So it's not so much about cool running as much as avoiding BSODs.

Did you find that mobo marketing usually indicates how many voltage drop down phases the VRM module has? Which X570 mobos did you find with good VRM?

There are also criteria for good electronic components, which seems pretty esoteric and technical to me.

--
Ted
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tedchang/
C&C is encouraged, I'm always learning

 

[SC489]

That requires the use of an AM4 socket motherboard which supports the latest CPUs. The best spec boards are those using the X570 chipset. My main requirements are:

• At least a 3 year warranty (rules out MSI & ASRock in the UK)
• Effective VRM design for cool running

This VRM explainer suggests more drop down phases on the mobo leads to more stable and cleaner low voltage power being supplied to the CPU. So it's not so much about cool running as much as avoiding BSODs.

Did you find that mobo marketing usually indicates how many voltage drop down phases the VRM module has? Which X570 mobos did you find with good VRM?

There are also criteria for good electronic components, which seems pretty esoteric and technical to me.

That's a good link which I'll digest in due course. The mobos on my shortlist have good VRM temperatures but I haven't probed the issue in more depth. I did note some MSI boards have poor VRM temperatures but I had already ruled them out for their poor 1 year warranty. My current shortlist for mobos under £300 is listed below.

GigaByte X570 Aorus Ultra
Asus TUF Gaming X570-Pro (WI-FI)
Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming
Asus ROG Strix X570-F Gaming
Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus (WI-FI)

 

[kenmo]

Good and excellent points. But what if you are going the AMD route?