ASRock Livemixer B650 Motherboard Review (Special Edition)

[@Xaltar_]

This is what I have always liked about ASRock, they do some really weird and cool things that no one else does. Here's hoping the card ends up launched for retail, if for no other reason than it's a neat bit of tech.

[@nojoojuu]

Like weird cool motherboard 939Dual-SATA2, AGP And PCI-E, AM2 CPU Board. Weird and cool. Lets hope they are back on that road!

[@Xaltar_]

@@nojoojuu I have an H170 Combo from them, it supports both DDR3 and DDR4 (not at the same time). That was as recent as 2015. I also had a P4 Combo back when, socket 478 and LGA 775 on the same board, that was awesome.

[@sabishiihito]

What they *need* to do is release a new OC Formula board for Z790

[@DocFr4nk]

I didn't know I was craving that expansion card until I learned of its existence today

[@patrickdergroenr1247]

Got this board in a deal for 199€, ca. 5 days ago. Cool to see a review of this board, it kind of deserves it. Tons of features, compared to the other B650 boards and a different look. Iam building a 7600 non X + 6700xt rig

[@shiks98]

Wendell looking good!! Very inspiring, big W.

[@treyquattro]

what do you mean?

[@greentea6013]

His weight loss journey so far.

[@jenesuispasbavard]

I'm glad at least one manufacturer is making these fun boards. I absolutely love my ASRock Z790 PG Sonic, best-looking motherboard I've ever had. Extra-special as a Sonic fan.

[@jondonnelly3]

It's a lovely board

[@ChrispyNut]

8:50 This animation is incorrect, it's the bottom PCIe slot that shares with the M.2, not the mid one. Rather late, but researching for purchase and noticed.

[@kebabliminator]

I haven't watched much of this channel, so I haven't seen Wendell much since shortly after Tek Syndicate went under, but damn he's lost weight! Good job man, keep it up

[@samuelschwager]

The Sonic and Evangelion motherboards are also quite something else.

[@yourma-uh5um]

I'd love to see the chipset go onto an optional board given how the cost of motherboards is going. Not to mention in the post multi-GPU age, there are a lot of unused PCIe slots on people's systems.

[@jamesbuckwas6575]

Well there's still a need for a chipset on most motherboards, for the sake of not having a limited amount of USB ports, M.2 slots, or chipset-connected PCIe 16x slots. Cards like these are still cool though, even if personally, I'd prefer a (admittedly expensive) multiplex chip for splitting up even 4 PCIe 5.0 lanes out to a PCIe 3.0 16x slot, but if that's not a possibility, something like Asrock's X670 Expansion card shown off here is very interesting

[@benhur2806]

"a lot of unused PCIe slots" Not if the new AM5 boards are anything to go by...

[@phillysupra]

my man pulls out the aviation sheers...love it

[@Gryfang451]

Straight cut tin snips, by the yellow handles. Red is left, green is right.

[@phillysupra]

@@Gryfang451 you're talking to an electrician who uses aviation sheers and dikes every single day for the past 27 years. Color of the handles means nothing. Klein is orange, milwaukee is red, yellow/black is dewalt.... Just like snips vs shears means nothing as well.

[@agenericaccount3935]

@@phillysupra Look out, we got a badass over here 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@phillysupra]

@@agenericaccount3935 me? Not a bad ass. It's like telling a plumber "hey thats not a plunger, it's a wrench"

[@profosist]

This was already one of the two boards that I thought were cool that secondary card makes it even cooler!

[@SirCrest]

Those sort of expansion cards are what I hope for more. For my uses I don't need lots of direct pcie. Just more things connected at once. Looks awesome.

[@FatJesusLive]

I just read about the M.2 expansion card slot for Raid 10 support to work. That is something he didn't cover in this video. I wanted to add 4 2 terabyte M.2 Platniums. Your computer is only as fast as your drive. You can have the fastest CPU in the world, but if your SSD drive is as slow as a snail, all that CPU speed is bottlenecked by information running from that SSD. Hence why M.2 is way faster and fantastic for putting your OS. I put all my major games I stream online on this M.2. Right now, I am looking for a second motherboard for a second stream machine to handle the mirroring of my gaming machine. This motherboard is perfect for my LED lights, cameras, controllers, stream decks, and GoXLR. Been still trying to figure out how to separate the two computers from the gaming computer, but the Gaming computer still communicates with audio through the Astro50s; the GOXLR might have to go because I have been trying to figure out how to combine it with both computers.

[@Elinzar]

WHAT? A Chipset addon card? That is sooo cool and makes a ton of sense! If you are Short on cash you can buy a live mixer (well if itself alone doesn't cost an arm and a leg), and a 7600 and down the line you not only get a cpu upgrade path but also a Motherboard upgrade path to improve the connectivity! Whoever came up with this idea, you are a genius

[@Elinzar]

Edit: aaaaand they ruined it... I hope we can see this for real in a future motherboard

[@gustavoroque8830]

@@Elinzar ruined what?

[@psyedk]

dude that's so awesome reminds me of the old DFI Lanparty mobos

[@chrisbullock6477]

Looking good man. See you trimming down a bit.

[@KaosArbitrium]

I'd love to see more happening on the Level1Linux channel. The projects there feel more detailed and approachable because of how they're presented. I'd also love to see projects presented over here like the Linux channel gets sometimes.

[@profosist]

Glad I'm not the only one that thought this board was something special!

[@reptilespantoso]

Here's another one. 😁👍

[@steves9260]

Please make the secondary card available for all AsRock!

[@darklink2000]

Design reminds me of DFI a bit back in the day.

[@wizpig64]

I love that lower chipset card!!

[@djsnowpdx]

I like this board! It’s orange, has optical audio, and supports AM5. What more do you need?

[@dakoderii4221]

Can it keep my bucket of chicken warm too? 🤔

[@jondonnelly3]

better overclocking features, like the asus rog series has, the asrock can only do 5.5GHz max boost speed on 4 cores and no more and then freq drops off the cliff. Whereas the rog strix b550-e can do 5.7GHz on all 8 cores of 7700x. Thats quite a big bump but on a 7700x it's not the end of the world. What if you have 16 core 7950x. Yeah... if you want to dial in a manual all core overclock at 5.2GHz then the board won't boost aboe that losing a lot of single/dual/ quad/ boost performance. The b550e give you PBO boost to 5.8GHz in lightly loaded, then switches automatically to all core manual overclock to 5.2GHz on a 7950x.13900xs beating in games and workloads for half the power use.

[@reptilespantoso]

@@jondonnelly3 5.35 GHz all (8) cores plus boost to over 6 GHz at PPT 86 Watt is good enough for me. It's obviously not an overclocker board. But yes, you're right, some better VRM management would've been nice. Buildzoid mentioned negative spikes with static overclock frequencies. I paid 220 euro ex. VAT for this board (now it's 200 euros), so you get what you pay for. If there's a Zen 6 generation in 4-5 years I'd probably get a new mobo anyway.

[@willmc55555]

I usually try to keep comments to the content, but DAMN you're lookin good there slim!

[@guy_autordie]

If the modified motherboard was standard WITH that addon card, it will be an instant buy.

[@D3S3RT-o6q]

I really hope they make these. just imagine 2 of them on on mobo that's insane i would never need that but i will get it as soon as it hits the market.

[@D3S3RT-o6q]

even if it it will cost like 80$ it would be insane.

[@YataLocK]

I want that expansion card!

[@eliotrulez]

yes 🤤

[@NateSnowstorm]

Ikr, that’s the card of my dreams

[@nagi603]

The 10G on the exp card means you don't need one for a NAS/homelab, AND you get a lot of other stuff as well. Great idea!

[@section279]

I miss DFI LAN Party boards they were ahead of their time.

[@Albertc0001]

Wendell is my tech guru. I don't fully comprehend the subject matter as well has he does but that's ok. I trust him to guide my tech life.

[@Djare915]

Wow finaly amd started doing their own chips for internet.That expoansion card impressive!

[@a.j.haverkamp4023]

I remember my Gravis Ultrasound soundcard, it was red instead of the usual green in the 90s.

[@SuperMari026]

It's almost time to shop for new, better fitting clothes Wendell! Very impressive weight loss 😁

[@isaacal-hindawi3394]

Yay, finally a black and orange motherboard the last one I remember was my gigabyte SOC.

[@leviathanpriim3951]

i do miss green pcb mobos

[@phillysupra]

lol thinking about it now i hated that era and the era with the tan pcbs. im glad manufacturers at least switched to black. this board is obv for the kids as the i/o is def not enough for any serious creator using it as income. just the wrong usb types even though you get 8 of them.

[@mattscomp]

Asus still make some. In their commercial range. Epox were nice back in the olden days. 💚

[@kenzieduckmoo]

im glad theyre finally starting to bring back the colored design choices, instead of everything just being white or black and expecting people to use lighting instead

[@RaulNigli]

Did they release the x670 expansion kit from 3:50? If so, where can I buy it because Google gives me nothing.

[@PsychoStreak]

Love the color scheme, like the amount of USB 2 ports and the other features. Would have liked to see a 2nd type C port on the back, even if it was 2.0 or 3.0. I REALLY hate the assumption that you're going to use a 3 slot GPU. An additional x8 or x4 slot would be far preferable. Still disappointed with B650 pricing overall, but that's true for CPUs & GPUs as well. This one however would be one I'd consider if I was moving to AM5 soon.

[@caseychaos3601]

Where is the separate video on the X670E Xpansion kit? I cant find it at all :( big sad is upon me.

[@stuartlunsford7556]

Nobody even mentions the extra 4 pcie lanes on Zen 4 to the CPU...then ASRock adds a second chipset lol.

[@NKG416]

holy shit that expansion card is awesome, 10/10 would buy if live mixer got the M version

[@s1ngularityxd64]

was the kit ever released?

[@tchakael]

hi Wendell, the mod team over at the r/asrock subreddit have a wiki with all BIOS if you want to take a look or get involved.

[@jstmag]

Wish this would have been released and I paid more attention the first time watching this video.

[@Gobeman]

If that expansion card becomes the norm on the market. Oh boy people will be happy

[@jeremymoon9088]

Been busy, I haven't watched a lot n the last 2mo...Wendell's losing weight! That's great, the world needs longevity out of Mr. Wendell...keep up the good work, homie

[@kougar7]

Did it default to a 1500 UCLK when using 6000 EXPO settings? Had that happen on my B650E Riptide, but I have to say it's just a nitpick. I'm really happy with ASRock's UEFI config and options. First board I've ever used where clearing the CMOS didn't wipe saved UEFI profiles either.

[@profosist]

I know right the whole point of profiles is that they don't just get completely deleted and removed any time you do something It hasn't been consistent but I have seen them stick around through bios updates as well

[@reptilespantoso]

Using a Kingston Fury 64 Gb kit with XMP settings at 6000 (timings of 5600 "agressive"). UCLOCK = MEMCLOCK it says. Infinity fabric is 2000 as usual. (B650 LiveMixer) I guess it depends which memory kit you use? Yep, UEFI saved profiles are saved when CMOS reset. Confirmed.

[@kougar7]

@@profosist UEFI updates I can sort of understand... On more than a few occasions I'd update GB UEFI's and applying the old profile would cause wonky things to happen, because it was trying to apply settings that no longer existed or were changed. My only gripe is to clear the CMOS on B650E I have to open the case and also flip the PSU off. For some reason the CMOS won't clear with only the PC off.

[@profosist]

@@kougar7 it should not apply settings that have changed and let the user know. As your your clear CMOS, yes its because the system with PSU on still has 5v standby current

[@kougar7]

@@profosist It shouldn't but it can. GB has shipped boards with alpha-level BIOS versions before where practically nothing works and even the RAM timings were hardcoded. By the time GB would get a proper version out a lot of things would change in the backend. X58 was particularly notable where after a year GB rewrote the BIOS code. I forgot the exact details, they are out there somewhere. But the core of the story was the new BIOS rewrite was incompatible with the old BIOS residing on the backup chip, and lots of chaos ensued for anyone that bought launch day boards with very beta backup BIOS versions. Gigabyte's solution was to pull the update, then re-issue it so that it manually flashed the backup BIOS then restarted updating the primary. First time I'd ever seen a UEFI update flash both in one go, but I made sure to learn how to also update the backup BIOS after that episode. As per the clear CMOS requiring the PSU to be off at the switch, this is the first board that's been the case. I've reset the BIOS on dozens of boards and none required the system to be both off with the PSU manually off at the wall. Boards with a clear CMOS button don't have to do that either.

[@SoWhat07]

This is one of the best channel. Can you benchmark a new desktop i9 ND compare with epyc server benchmarks.

[@Cooper3312000]

Makes me want a orange soda.

[@Charles_Bro-son]

Of course Wendell would like orange, a shame it doesn't come with a beverage.

[@Gunni1972]

With a name like Livemixer, i expected it to have a separate sound card. Lol

[@emperorSbraz]

how many of those chipset cards can you cascade though..

[@shiggins0069]

anyone else getting DFI LanParty vibes.

[@robertlawrence9000]

Why does it look like it was left outside with the pigeons?

[@gimmegaming5345]

I was just on caseking about to buy this motherboard then at 5 minutes heard the retail one doesn't support this :(.

[@kurtwinter4422]

Did Bjork name this board?

[@yarly3180]

Cool board but 6E WiFi + BlueTooth should be standard, installing a Wifi module after everything else has been installed is a big hassle.

[@reptilespantoso]

I got this motherboard. It's fine. Wendell can you please ask ASRock to also include Curve Optimizer single digit settings (!!) for the individual cores? It does offer that for all cores. Got my 7700x at -36 now. The -38 setting also worked but it's happier now at -36. It's an awesome feature !!!

[@TimBaoht]

where did you buy it?

[@vividas]

Debating on this or the Gigabyte Aurous Elite for my 7900x.

[@stuartlunsford7556]

Time for an Orange Crush PC!!

[@declanmcardle]

It matches your PDP 11

[@stephen1r2]

That chipset board is close to cool. What I'd like to do is split pci-e 4.0x4 slots into a pair of pci-e 3.0x4 (or 5.0x4 -> four 3.0x4) so I can double (or quadruple) the number of nvme drives It would be a weird pci switch application that no one seems to make

[@MrPhoenix1800]

Just bought this motherboard, new pc builder what do I look for when looking at a compatible WiFi card to go with this. Don’t need blazing speeds just something that will preferably work just plugging in and downloading drivers.

[@brahimsaad6287]

how is it so far ?

[@MrPhoenix1800]

@@brahimsaad6287 I got my setup complete. The motherboard was super easy everything worked out of box. The one down side is there is no wireless built in. I went with a m.2 wireless card and antenna at first and messed up one of the antenna connections. I said screw it and plugged In a PCIE wireless card and good to go and easier. I would buy this board again and it’s cost effective for what you get.

[@LeonPapa9966]

If you look under the trees in the morning you may have a better chance to find out how ASRock got the inspiration for this design.

[@IMviolet28]

Поддерживает SLI/CrossFire?

[@willt3223]

im dumb. why is that expansion card good?

[@bilo-fabioidrizaj728]

Is that expansion card included with the motherboard???

[@Level1Techs]

Only the special edition. Normally no

[@Tagiau]

I really want a new green g1 sniper, and a new mpower. Like no really uses yellow and green in motherboards anymore. rgb has allowed mb makers to be lazy on designing unique boards. Instead of cool coloured heatsinks, we just get weird looking heatsinks coated grey, and a black motherboard.

[@JohnyBravo-sj9vy]

Becouse of the lack of conectivity (expansion slots for pci-e) I switched to Intel z690. Even on Intel most motherboards go all the way with m.2 and there is not enough pci-e slots. Asus PRIME z690-P (or Z790) have 1x pci-e x16 lines, 3x pci-e x16 with 4 lines each (16 physical), 1x pci-e x1, 3x m.2 for ssd and even a V-M.2 for a wi-fi laptop module (pre-punched holes in the back plate (no antennas included). Didn't check the IOMMU groups yet. The motherboard has a small number of usb

[@errantalgae]

a friend showed me this thing and I will be buying this in a few months time when i got enough cash to buy a CPU and RAM along with a new cooler, my i5-6400 will soon go to retire

[@voltflake]

same but 7600k

[@fandomkiller]

is there a chance wifi 6/7 can cause interference when installed in the case? cheers

[@NateSnowstorm]

The cards have antennas that route outside the case

[@fandomkiller]

@@NateSnowstorm even m.2's? cool. ty

[@NateSnowstorm]

@@fandomkiller yup, those as well! the connections on them are tiny and might be a bit finicky to connect and the wires are usually thing but once routed it isn't a problem

[@jamesbuckwas6575]

One thing I wish they had included on this board is more SATA ports. I would like to eventually upgrade to an AM5 system and experiment with PCIe passthrough to VMs, and having the ability to use massive hard drives, SATA SSDs, or 5.25" accessories in a larger case would be nice, while also having access to two physical x16 slots for GPUs and one more for faster networking or another PCIe device. It is a niche request for sure, but considering most cases have space for at least 4 SATA devices, having only two on the Asrock board is a bit of a turn-off, especially when the ports are probably dirt-cheap compared to the $230 MSRP. Either that or they could sell that add-in card at retail, the faster networking and storage ports would be very useful as well.

[@DrexxLaggui]

yes, more SATA ports please! 8 or so... missed the days when Asrock made as much as 12 SATA ports

[@jamesbuckwas6575]

@@DrexxLaggui Hell with that many, you wouldn't even need an HBA to connect a lot of hard drives. You could use that third expansion slot for something like Asrock's X670 Expansion card, or a 2nd add-in GPU, or whatnot

[@eliotrulez]

That's a cost question. Most people ditched the SATA drives and moved them to a NAS. So NVMe is the way to go. If you need more SATA devices threre are some PCIe 3.0 SATA cards to get. 2 ports ~15$, 4 ports ~ 25$. You use it in the most bottom slot and off you go :)

[@jamesbuckwas6575]

@@eliotrulez Not everyone wants to use a separate device for storage, you can't speak for all the people who choose to use local storage for a massive steam library, or virtual machines, or large video collections, and those are just the use cases I have. If you do use a NAS, that's great, more power to you. But personally, until I can teach myself about setting up a NAS and not just use Windows 10 and network file sharing, I would like to keep my configuration of a 500 GB SATA SSD, 250 GB NVMe, 2 4 TB hard drives in RAID 1, and my optical drive, as well as any 5.25" hot-swap bays or other SATA devices I may plug in. NVMe can't be a blanket solution when there's only a limited number of PCIe lanes anyway, especially in cases that don't require massive amounts of bandwidth. If additional SATA connectors would increase the cost of the board by $10 for each port, I could understand that. But for a connection that barely saturated 500 MB/s per connection, having even 2 more would be an adequate improvement. Not to mention if I were to buy an add-in card instead, I would at least want the PCIe slot that could be used for an m.2 expansion card or more networking to have at least 8 SATA ports, raising the cost to at least $80 for the used enterprise cards I have seen on ebay.

[@evollllll]

will this work with AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D & AMD RADEON RX 7900 XT ??

[@floodo1]

Damn I want one

[@jmcmillen19]

This board would be amazing for flight sim of it was just a regular board. But still looks good.

[@mikes567]

only thing that is missing is analog audio outs for my 5.1 which is old ...otherwise thats an amazing board

[@RANDOMNATION907]

I think the Asrock B650M PG Riptide and a Ryzen 7700 would be a solid pairing.

[@reptilespantoso]

Rocking the 7700x on the LiveMixer: it's clocking 5.9 Ghz at 86 PPT. (real use 88W) Temperatures are 65 degrees Celcius-ish max (Noctua NH D-15 cooler). Use PBO2 and Curve Optimizer to get the most out of these chips (YMMV). AMD sold these set at the maximum thermal ceiling. Overclocking is now about efficiency. Finding the right mix of voltage and current. Cinebench r23 is around 20000 for the all core, and around 1970-1990 single core. Passmark is 38600 score (ish) It's completely stable. I had it at 84 PPT and then it started clocking at 6150 MHz on six cores, but an occasional crash (not all cores could keep up I suppose). So I put it on 86 and lessened the Fmax from 200 to 150, and it's good now. Another feature of the ASRock mobos is that you can set the Curve Optimizer in SINGLE DIGITS (all cores). Sadly not per core (yet) but I asked them to think about adding that to a next BIOS revision. Comparing to the hyped non-X Ryzen Zen 4: I bet those are good CPUs too! But I do feel that the critique of many reviewers, is undeserved. I'd like to see the 7700 clock stable at 5.9-6 GHz at less than 90 Watt. Not going to happen. Yes you can put more juice into it, with PBO2. However (and this is what most, if not all reviewers omitted) you'll run the non-X at much higher current and temperatures, than the X. So, to many people, I noticed, it doesn't make sense to put less juice in it, to make it run better. But here we are. Or maybe AMD told them: Sell these chips better than the flopped X series. Somehow AMDs marketing dept failed and they tried to equal Intel Raptor Lake raw speed and insane power use and temperatures. I don't need insane power use and temperatures. I run an indie audio studio. I want this thing to work in 5 years. I don't want 700 eurodollar monthly electricity bills. So.... With the X chips discounted, I think those are the real bargain here, if you know enough about computers to change settings in the BIOS. I assume ppl. who watch Level1Tech are capable of that.👍

[@jk-mm5to]

i want one!

[@blackmennewstyle]

$230 USD for an AMD BX50 motherboard o_O **Wallet running away noise** intensifies...

[@romevang]

Orange is the new black? 😅

[@dreamcat4]

hey asrock if you are listening! you need to make and release this special edition version of this motherboard. and people will actually want to buy it. with the the expansion card also for sale. for the extra ios. it help very much. very helpful just please do everybody a favor with the paint job, is so bad. all over the place. nobody wants this. what would be more broadly appealing is a neutral colors scheme like black if you must add some stronger bold color in places then i recommend you have yellow accents like on the oc formula. and not any other colors.

[@jondonnelly3]

Overclock it pls

[@YouTubeGlobalAdminstrator]

Waiting on cheaper AM5 ITX boards.

[@phillysupra]

It's still too niche.... I ended up not being able to wait and just for the strix x670e-i. That msi b650i edge wifi was my second choice but it wasn't out yet at the time. On newegg now it looks like the gigabyte b650i is now out too. I highly doubt these itx will ever be below the 250 mark for quite some time

[@alt5494]

ASRock B650E PG-ITX is a impressive motherboard at $290.

[@stephenreaves3205]

Day 5 of me asking Wendell for more OpenShift content

[@GamersGuard]

Does Asrock b650 pg lightning cpu performance presets use negative or positive curve optimizer? I tried the "PBO, TJmax 85c, curve optimizer, -40mv" profile cb23 crashes and rebooted pc right away...I disabled the profile and aer back my CO settings. CPU: 7800x3d

[@kubuntukowalski]

love almost everything about thje board except the slooooooow boot when expo profile is enabled.

[@sodapopinksi667]

You have it? Did you update bios? How long is the boot?

[@sodapopinksi667]

I'm asking because I'm interested

[@kubuntukowalski]

yeah its been dealt with with recent bios updates normal boot now, no ram checking or whatever it was doing @@sodapopinksi667

[@juice2]

PCIe south bridge!

[@bjn714]

Asrock LiveMixer Level1 Orange Crush Edition

[@TechnessCorner]

Wendel I want that card and mobo combo, and my old Hyper Gen 3 card running 3 nvme back in 2019 not realising that I technically broke the record on sequential speeds at just over 10,000 on Gen 3. Found out years later that there was a competition with "recognition" ahh missed oppurtunity. Peace! on a z390 ASUS strix board, 8 / 8 bificreation.

[@choppergirl]

I am so G.D> confused. who is this meant for? I'm looking for a motherboard for conent creators. Where are the PS/2 ports? Where is the HDMI out? where is the 5.1 surround sound out and mic? Where is the BIOS flash? The 7 segment BIOS post code.

[@denvera1g1]

Ok ok ok, imagine 10 sata ports on this daughter board, and then 2x118GB Optane drives for say, cache or meta, this would be a pretty cool solution for say small form factor home lab servers, imagine if that were an SFP28 and the network+M.2+sata were not bottlenecked by the 4x link to the CPU because they were all on the same card sort of like a DPU, but for the consumer space

[@GuzikPL4]

I almost bought this motherboard, but man... two SATA slots is just not enough.

[@Zombie101]

doing it wrong if you still use sata in 2023

[@GuzikPL4]

@@Zombie101 I still use HDD drives and i need a lot of SATA's. Imagine how expensive 4TB M.2 storage would be. SATA in 2023 for mass storage is still as relevant as 10 years ago, stating otherwise is ignorant.

[@Zombie101]

@@GuzikPL4 but if you need that much storage just go cloud. Surely a huge sata or two is more than enough? each to their own. I just don't get it, not when nvme exists and one or two satas if you absolutely must

[@voltflake]

@@GuzikPL4pcie expansion cards are your friend, but you have a valid point

[@bits2646]

Looks like perfect choice for 7900 + 6800/69x0 XT, kinda good amount of power for the money, 1600 with ram, storage, maybe 1800 with waaaay too powerfull PSU, too much ram for AM5 and case too expensive to not give a f...

[@dustinzimmerman6951]

Ryzen 5

[@MegaAshabasha]

Nice Legos bro...

[@amosgiture]

Wed 08/24/2022

[@holloweatmysoul]

Splatoon edition!!?!?!?

[@corross1]

Curious expansion card. But since it's limited to 64Gbit/s (PCIe4x4), you'd hit a bandwidth bottleneck by using all ports at the same time: networking (-10Gbit/s) + thunderbolt (-40Gbit/s) + USB-ports (-10Gbit/s each) + M.2@PCIe4x4 (-64Gbit/s each). The bandwidth limitation would vanish for the most part, when connected to a PCIe5x4 slot @128GBit/s. Will these PCH-on-riser-pigeons be available for other boards too (any universal design planned)? At what speed do they work in a PCIe5x4 slot or adapted to the PCIe5-M.2 Slot?

[@eliotrulez]

Does the bottleneck matter? You are limited by the chipset uplink as well, which is also PCIE 4.0 x4. So It does not make a difference. You can hope B760/X770 will have PCIe 5.0 uplink, where this bottleneck would be mitigated, but the cost of the boards will raise again due to complexity of the PCB.

[@corross1]

​@@eliotrulez good point. The PCIe4x4 X670 chipset uplink is another limiting factor here. - So the devices connected to this X670 expansion card must be under 64Gbit/s in total. I'd like to see a motherboard AM5/LGA1700 with three PCIe4x16 slots instead - for example to mount one GPU, one 4-times bifuricated expansion riser for M.2/U.2/PCIe4 SlimSAS and one 100Gbit/s network card. But with AMD's current specification for B650/-E/X670/-E, it's not going to happen. Instead, most boards have overbuilt VRMs and obscure PCIe lane allocation, compromising on USB/SATA/M.2/PCIe slots. This "chipset on a riser" is still a very interesting idea, adding a lot of connectivity to an affordable base.

[@christopherjackson2157]

Bring back the soc orange, gigabyte Black is the new boring

[@danchan5620]

ultimately, you are still limited to pcie4.0 4x uplink to the cpu. motherboards and chipsets are boring these days. without hedt sku.

[@lm4122]

the issue is the special edition is like a unicorn, nowhere to be found!

[@Gryfang451]

At least it's not Abit Orange with blue heatsinks! Yikes. Love the add on card too. Kinda takes me back to the days of drive controller cards that had IDE, floppy, and a printer port for good measure. Lol