B650 vs X670 architecture deep dive. Which AMD AM5 Ryzen Zen4 motherboard chipset is the best pick?

[@ryansinclair3462]

Man. What a hidden gem. Keep this up man and let the algorithms do it's work. Top quality content and only a matter of time before this channel is blows up. Literally such a knowledgeable video that left me taking screenshots for notes! 😂

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, appreciate the encouragement!

[@adrian32772]

This is such underrated content, I'd love to see additional manufactures in this type of content as well. love the graphics overlay on the motherboard!

[@sometechguy]

Thank you for the feedback and for watching, I will take a look at the Intel offerings also.

[@StingyGeek]

Good luck growing this channel. Off to a cracking start.

[@sometechguy]

Thank you. Appreciate the encouragement. 👍

[@onlyeyeno]

Thanks for this great video, breaking it down to the "basic but vital" info needed to get an overview. Best regards

[@sometechguy]

Glad you liked it, thank you for watching.

[@PClanner]

Yep, this earned a subscribe and a like for the awesome work making understandable and easy-to-understand content.

[@sometechguy]

Thank you. 🙌 Working on more, appreciate the support!

[@Mvmajor3m]

This was a well-made video! I am full convinced to stick with my AM4, just getting a better processor (580X3D) and a better video card (maybe a 7900 GRE) for my troubles and move forward after 5 - 6 years.

[@montecorbit8280]

Just found this channel. It appears relatively new. Watch the two videos and have enjoyed both of them. I think I will subscribe, thank you for making them....

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, appreciate it.

[@rangersmith4652]

April 2024. I have not yet built an AM5 system. When I do, I'll select an X-board simply because they offer greater flexibility than the B-boards. Board makers tend not to scrimp or cut corners on X-boards (not since the X370 boards when they were still scared of AMD), so you buy just about any mid-range X-board and be confident it's not junk. High-end X-boards tend to be mostly E boards as well, and that kind of bites because I don't see any reason to go PCIe5 and would rather not pay for it.

[@tatsbeniya5091]

Awesome video mate, very to-the-point, easily understandable and great pics showing what is connected where with how much bandwidth. Anyone considering an AM5 platform should look at this video before making their mind up about what M/B to get! (and I also have the same opinion, B650(or B650E) should be plentiful for 90% of the users out there)

[@sometechguy]

Thank you! Appreciate the feedback, and yes, unless you have a specific need its hard to see how those very expensive X670E boards especially bring value.

[@jayandran2007]

Great content, now I understand the differences. Thank you so much for your hard work.

[@sometechguy]

Your welcome, and thank you for dropping a note to me. Its appreciated.

[@aqualung2000]

Just way more accurate than the average "tech review" video you're going to get elsewhere. Really outstanding job. Not only did I find your breakdowns to be accurate, I also agreed with your conclusions.

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, appreciate this feedback. I have long been interested into getting to the detail on things and digging deeper. And I like to make my own content based on this and not copy what others are doing. It’s always good to hear if it resonates, and as I build my channel I hope to always improve the content I make and maybe build something a little different. So support like this is a big help. Thank you! 🙏

[@klipk7296]

thanks for putting emphasis on cutting through the marketing. It can get very overwhelming to do market research on motherboards due to the sheer amount of gimmicks. The manufacturers put way too little emphasis on the the core engineering side of the product. I have also seen some pretty low quality documentation for specific products (looking at MSI)

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, yes I think way to much noise in the attempt to push buyers up the product stack, and I just don’t think the value is there often and the best buy is actually way down the range. Unless you just love to have the fastest, prettiest board. In which case, more power to you.

[@Xarvix]

Great video! Keep up the good work and I'm sure you'll be able to grow your channel, since I'm surprised it is as small as it is.

[@sometechguy]

Thank you for the encouragement. Much appreciated!

[@RickBeacham]

Brilliant deep dives. Subscribed! It would be interesting to see if micro form factors that are similar in size to XBOX X or PS5 are worth it? Do these microATX based builds lead to overheating or any other disadvantages or advantages other then space. What builds are best for Racing Sims with more advanced wheels and bases offered from Fanatec and MOZA.

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, really appreciated! That is something to look into. I didn’t build a small fork factor build in quite some time and higher end GPUs have become huge. So depending on environment, heat management is going to be a key factor.

[@jfogerty77]

This was very clarifying video, you could easily endup paying for unnecessary jank on your board if you do not understand what you are actually buying.

[@larsbartha17]

G.O.A.T Level review. Absolutely killed it with tech info and no cosmetic bullshit . Great jobb!

[@sometechguy]

🙏

[@TheSibler]

yeah i sub too . after my pc is finished i do not care about hardware for another 7 years ^^ but this is really a great video , i thank you very much Mr Techguy

[@sometechguy]

Greetings, and thank you. 😊

[@saleh3521]

Amazing video. I have 2 questions, The first one, in 23:23, why did you use PCIe4 8x when talking about storage? Why not PCIe5 4x like everyone else? Normally when talking about NvMe storage, we always use 4x. So why did you use 8x here? I know that PCIe4 8x = PCIe5 4x. So is it just a simple case of bandwith? You just switch between 4 8x and 5 4x since they have the same bandwith. Or is there another reason? Since it is very strange to mention a NvMe storage using a 8x interface. Even if they have the same bandwith, we always use 4x for storage. Secondly, at 24:10. Could you explain this more? Why is storage that far behind? We know GPUs right now dont even need PCIe4 16x. PCIe3 16x will give the same result. So a PCIe 5 GPU is not needed anytime soon. What about storage? Why did you say that both PCIe 5 and storage will be behind that when talking about PCIe 5 GPUs? 1) why will storage be behind? 2) and why will the actual PCIe 5 interface be behind also? How can a PCIe standard be behind where GPUs use that same PCIe?

[@sometechguy]

Thank you for the comment, and the feedback! To try and answer, what I was saying at that point is that currently Gen5 PCIe Storage is not yet breaking 10GBps, which is below the bandwidth capacity of even PCIe4 8x, e.g. well below the current bandwidth limits of PCIe4 GPU slots. To be honest, there is a lot of reference to the bandwidth of various interfaces on different PCIe Gen speeds, so could easily be unclear, and apologies if it was. On the second question. For gaming workloads, much of the bandwidth used on the GPU slot is for tasks like loading textures and other graphics assets, the GPU will be often loading those assets from storage, such as NVMe. Especially with DirectStorage. So, even once you have NVMe capable of using all available bandwidth on a PCIe5 4x bus from the M.2 slot, that data could still only consume 4 lanes of Gen5 to the GPU, or even 8 lanes of PCIe4. So even if GPUs are able to use more bandwidth, they could still be constrained by how quickly the M.2 slot can transfer data. Hopefully that is clearer, and hope it answers the question. Thanks again. 😊

[@AidanMacgregor-Personal]

what an awesome analysis on these chipsets, Subbbed!

[@sometechguy]

Thank you! Appreciate it. 😁

[@yrsyxhtmfdt]

i love your channel its like technology connections but for PC hardware nerds :)

[@sometechguy]

Thank you. I am doing my own thing and not trying to replicate other channels, so appreciate the comment and support. Lots of content in the works currently and always trying to level up what I am doing. 👍

[@ivoivic2448]

this video is pure gold.

[@sometechguy]

Appreciated, and glad you found it useful. 😀

[@netiturtle]

Thank you, nice breakdown. I already opted for and spent unreasonably long time researching equivalent Intel chipset offerings, task not really suited for most of us. Leaving many among us at mercy of marketing slogans, unnecessary features and pretty lights

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, appreciated! I was thinking of doing a similar break down for Raptor lake boards.

[@lusankya2132]

Great video bud!

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, appreciate it. Working on making new and better content for you all.

[@ricardosicupira]

Excellent explanation!

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, appreciate the comment and the feedback!

[@kumaSOevl]

Best explanation video. Wow

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, appreciated. 🙌

[@jillisnijmeijer7393]

Good video bro! Keep up the good work!

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, appreciate it. 😀

[@lideruploader6577]

Thanks for the info, very useful 👌 subed.

[@sometechguy]

👍

[@circawut]

Im stuck on b650 or x670 and i kinda would rather future proof as much as i can paired with a 7800x3d.

[@dgillies5420]

We got the Asus Tuf x670e board. It's about $300. It's the cheapest x670e board available and has all of Asus's most recent innovations and 14 VRMs. The idea is that this is the 1st-generation of AM5 and the board can last us 5 years - we can hopefully change out the CPU for 2 more generations, assuming AMD didn't blow the design. The GPU is 7900xtx which is still PCI4 and probably won't get upgraded for many years. The only time we'd cry is if somebody releases a cheap PCI5 GPU that beats the 7900xtx by a wide margin - probably 3 years away ... Gen5 PCIe drives currently do not run measurably (more than 5%) faster than Gen4 PCIe drives in windows benchmarks.

[@sometechguy]

Thanks for sharing, the 7900XTX is a great GPU, and there is really no strong benefit from PCIe5 as yet.

[@nickbarkas5774]

Why dont they make 40 or 48 lanes standard? Am5 mainboard prices are close to xeon/epyc mainboards anyway.

[@kiranks1984]

brilliant tutorial! I have been catching up with such content but very little info is actually available especially how IO ports further share the available lanes. when I was planning to build an Intel PC kast year, "BuildorBuy" had videos about some older gen asus motherboards who used to provide such detailed deep dives. Unfortunately he is not active anymore {hope he is ok}. I ran into your video now that I was planning to build an AMD one instead! Your video cleared up a lot of questions. Thank you so much! Based on my current understanding, I have the following observations and questions. 1. The first bottleneck AMD should change is the gen4 4 lane dmi lane connecting CPU and chipset. Its clear now as to why pci5 is not needed for even GPU but DMI should. The current 4 lane PCI4 lane will restrict the bandwidth to only one gen4 nvme drives on the chipset if I understand the architecture correctly. 2 The DMI lane and teh subsequent PCIlanes connecting the m2 slots on chipset need the first upgrade and 3. what about simultaneous data transfers from two m2 slots chipset to m2 slot on cpu. isnt that a bottleneck already given that AMD has just 4 PCIgen4 lanes as DMI between CPU and chipset 4, assuming amd had 8 pci4 lanes between cpu and chipset, is such data transfer even possible for data to move from 4+4 pci4 m2 slots on chipset to 4 pci5 slots on m2 CPU? or data transfer only happens lane to lane i.e 4 pci4 lanes to 4 pci5 lanes. 5. intel processors have 8 dmi lanes and while b760 boards support just 4 lanes, z790 boards support entire 8 lanes! that does nto seem to be the case with amd counterparts! 6. While Gigabyte aorus master boards for z790 had USBs via chipset, their x670e counterparts show USBs with CPU!. how do these boards have USBs with direct CPU! Can you please check their specs and clarify! 7. The 32 pci4 lanes listed for both B650 and x670, are they usable lanes or available lanes? because, shouldnt the available lanes in x670 increase because of daisy chain configuration?

[@sometechguy]

Thank you for this, appreciate the attention to detail on the comment! The DMI channel does appear to be a bottleneck, especially given the high speed storage (NVMe) available off the chipset. But the calculation there may be that it is not often that it's really fully utilised and that the DMI interface provides plenty of bandwidth in most situations. However, as you point out, I think the Intel 700 chipset is better equiped there with the 8 lanes. The limitation may simply be on the chipset itself ability to switch PCIe traffic. In short, it depends on the workload if that 4 lane DMI really becomes a bottleneck. High speed access to the storage is probably not a big issue short term, but as GPUs increase in power and NVMe can handle faster transfers, this will be a key performance area. Dedicated NVMe on the GPU itself could also help if the GPU can address it directly for textures etc. On your item 4, yes. PCIe is actually pretty interesting and its not a circuit based connection, but its really more of a packet switching technology under the covers. So its possible for a lane to carry traffic and for that traffic to be destined to different destinations, or for multiple source lanes of traffic to be aggregated into a single lane to a common destination. For USB, its possible to have USB directly on the CPU socket, or via the Chipset and again it comes down to lane availability as all this would be typically carried over PCIe, it may not be documented that way as the user doesn't need to know this but almost everything is carried over PCIe. But there can be a USB controller that is connected to the socket directly, or to the chipset. And in the case of the AMD architecture, it can be on one of the X670 Prom21 chips, which is then connected to the other, which is then connected to the socket. Really that is down to the board manufacturer. For item 7, those are the usable lanes The X670 has additional PCIe3 lanes due to the extra Prom21 chip. So the X670 has 44 total lanes compared to 36 on the B650. The daisy chaining unfortunately only provides 4 more PCIe4 lanes because the Prom21 chip has 12 PCIe4 lanes on it, but the interconnect between those chips costs 8 lane connections, 4 on each end of the connection. So the net gain is only 4 lanes. And the X670 also has the additional 4x PCIe5 lanes. If the PCIe5 lanes are enabled on the B650, this is at the cost of 4 of the PCIe 4 lanes. So hence why the total lane count differs. Hopefully that is clear.

[@graysonpeddie]

Could the X670 boards consume more power than Intel Z790 motherboards assuming that the idle power consumption for the CPU is the same? What's important to me is the number of SATA ports and I wouldn't want to have a PCIe SATA controller if I can help it. I'm planning on only using the NVME drives that connect to the chipset rather than direct to the CPU. I cannot provide the link to the source, but from what I know, connecting the M.2 drives only to the chipset actually puts the CPU into a deeper sleep than connecting the NVME drive directly to the CPU. Of course, this depends on whether the peripherals support the L1 ASPM (Active State Power Management).

[@baukemid5735]

Wow verry clear good job i go whit the b650

[@sometechguy]

I think a great choice. Good luck with the build! 👍

[@tonydillinger2553]

I'm looking at the x670e gigabyte to go with 7800x3d

[@jedsithor]

After the 7800x3d debacle with the ASUS x670 boards I'll be looking to buy from a different manufacturer.

[@sometechguy]

I assume the issue with the chips destroying themselves? I don’t know if we know all the details on that yet, I think Asus are not the only boards, but until that it resolved, I totally understand that perspective.

[@sometechguy]

I was traveling this week but just caught up on the latest with Asus response, pretty terrible.

[@louismatherne6808]

That was great! Can you do the same for Intel motherboards?

[@sometechguy]

Thank you! It’s something I plan to look into. Stay tuned…

[@stacyswift191]

when you're searching for a mobo that can support two sets of 16x and no one makes one..

[@jeffjiang5272]

Was EXPO enabled during the test?🤣🤣🤣

[@sometechguy]

No CPUs we’re harmed in the making of this video… 😂

[@AvroBellow]

There are two motherboard brands I will NEVER buy, MSi and ASUS. I;ll never understand people's obsession with ASUS and MSi is just a bad company.

[@sometechguy]

Is this just down to bad experiences with the products? Or is it around feature/pricing? And interested which you prefer.

[@adrs2]

Asus is good when it works, when it fails it becomes a poor frisbee. Support is poor. With my 10 years old Gigabyte board I sent a message to the support team if there is a possibility to run tpm 2.0 because there is a header. They supplied me with unofficial upgraded bios with tpm 2.0 support and NVMe booting.

[@MrArcanjoGabriel]

Why did you use the worst boards to explain chipsets? Prime has the worst power delivery out there, and asus has shown to be a anti consumer brand.

[@sometechguy]

I get the current hate aimed at Asus, but this video was made before this debacle happened, and the video is about the chipset and not power delivery. The boards were just examples to show how the PCIe lanes are provided on the AM5 chipsets. Hope that makes it clearer.

[@MrArcanjoGabriel]

@@sometechguy you are right, sorry. But i give it a like :) . But now asus is worst than S*** for me and others.

[@sometechguy]

@@MrArcanjoGabriel it’s fine, and I understand. Asus really gave themselves a self inflicted wound. And I think if they don’t fix that quickly, it’s going to hurt them.

[@ajnorfield]

@@sometechguy Do you think they will be able to solve all issues with bios updates, or might some things actually be unsolvable? I've got a ASUS TUF Gaming X670E-PLUS on the way for a new build, and it is really annoying that it is taking them so long to have some clear communications and problem solving out into the world...

[@sometechguy]

I am not that close to it, but as long as it’s not a fundamental design weakness then it should be fixable with BIOS updates. But it looks to me they just need to communicate better, and test more thoroughly and panic less. I think sometimes technical problems get mistaken for PR problems and get managed badly.

[@JCSWW]

One massive ad for Asus!

[@sometechguy]

The Vid is really about the chipsets, which are the same on all the manufacturers boards. But I had to pick one to use as examples, and Asus is a popular choice historically. Mixing boards would have made it harder to compare price points and feature comparisons. But I guess you could accuse me of advertising for any brand that I had chosen. But in any case, I did advocate for not buying high end mobos and sticking with the B650 for most cases, so if its an ad for Asus, it probably isn't the one they would have preferred. 😜

[@cinemaipswich4636]

The only motherboard maker I trust is Supermicro.

[@sometechguy]

I don't believe Supermicro make AMD Desktop boards. They mostly target server boards more generally, though I believe they do Intel workstation boards. But I also like Supermicro, great for server builds. Though they have had their own issues, remember the Chinese spy chips on their boards? 😒

[@fofofullero]

👍