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Is there an AM5 motherboard that meets these requirements?

V

Vyr

n00b
Joined
Oct 29, 2014
Messages
27
It has been about 8 years since I last put together a computer, so forgive me if I sound ignorant or stupid. I am building a PC that is gaming/performance first and storage/media second. I want to know if there's a motherboard out there that will run and fit all of these specs without a problem:


View: https://i.imgur.com/WuYJYLM.png

-Compatible with Windows 10 and Manjaro (wifi, USB, etc.)
-At least negligible performance loss when occupying all 3 PCIe slots, and no SATA or M.2 slots disabled when in use or vice versa (1 video card, 1 HBA card, 1 sound card)
-Can use at least 2 M.2 nvme drives without performance issues in combination with everything else
-Need at least 6 SATA ports (8 would be nice)
-Can have all of its SATA ports occupied without performance problems
(I have the HBA card, but that is mainly going to be for using the case's hot swappable HDD bays)

-Not a necessity but has headers for USB-C and SD for the I/O panel listed
-Not a necessity but preferable if it had a PS/2 port in the event something goes wrong with USB

I know all of these requirements might too much to ask, but thought it wouldn't hurt to ask anyway. I don't have a budget limit really, I want a powerful motherboard that can meet these requirements (if there is one). I've asked AI, but it contradicts itself with every other sentence. Also asked this elsewhere.
 
For Windows 10, you should be looking at the first wave of B650/X670 boards. AMD offers W10 chipset drivers for the newer 800 series. However, any components not included in the chipset drivers of the newer boards-----may not have W10 compatibility.
MSI generally offered more SATA ports than other brands, on the 600 series boards. I don't think any boards had 8, though. If you need a lot, you'll need to get a PCIe card.
 
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didnt say anything about being cheap... ;)
with a want list like that, you wont find it, or youre going to be bending over.
 
MSI Pro x870e-P WiFi

I've not had problems with mine and NONE of the PCIe/m.2 slots share lanes and none of the m.2 slots share with SATA. The tradeoff for that is some slots run at lower PCIe gen speeds.

Layout includes:
1x 16-lane x16 PCIe, gen 5
1x 4-lane x16 PCIe, gen 4
1x 1-lane x16 PCIe, gen 3
1x 1-lane x1 PCIe, gen 3 (my SoundBlaster AE5-Plus lives here just fine)

1x 4-lane m.2, gen 5
2x 4-lane m.2, gen 4

4x SATA (use a PCIe SATA card for the rest of your SATA drives)

Bonus: no RGB, 5G NIC, WiFi 7
 
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My X670E TUF does most of this except for 8 SATA (using a PCI-E card for the additional 4 ports though I should probably just sell my SATA drives at this point).
 
mvmiller12 said:
MSI Pro x870e-P WiFi

I've not had problems with mine and NONE of the PCIe/m.2 slots share lanes and none of the m.2 slots share with SATA. The tradeoff for that is some slots run at lower PCIe gen speeds.

Layout includes:
1x 16-lane x16 PCIe, gen 5
1x 4-lane x16 PCIe, gen 4
1x 1-lane x16 PCIe, gen 3
1x 1-lane x1 PCIe, gen 3 (my SoundBlaster AE5-Plus lives here just fine)

1x 4-lane m.2, gen 5
2x 4-lane m.2, gen 4

4x SATA (use a PCIe SATA card for the rest of your SATA drives)

Bonus: no RGB, 5G NIC, WiFi 7
Click to expand...
Also want to say I'm using this board with W10 and Bazzite and haven't run into any driver issues yet.
 
I was in a similar situation last as OP after not building a new PC in several years. Lots of hard updates in between those times. I recommend researching before making any purchasing decisions. Took me a few months before I completed my PC parts build list.

May want to look at a external enclosure solution for all your HDDs. It'll help save weight and size on your actual rig. Doing this enabled me to build a mATX gaming PC that is easy to move around when its time get the dust out.
 
I like how msi does lanes...

For example on the 870e boards amd says you need usb4 so everyone is allocating four lanes for something im not sure anyone uses. Msi said ok, we will do it but we are going to be able to disable the usb4 in bios and reallocate those lanes to an m.2.
 
I'll point out that the MSI X870E Godlike doesn't have a PS/2 port. I'll further add that wanting one in case the USB fails is also pretty ridiculous. USB is pretty reliable and odds are you wouldn't lose all of your USB ports at once. I believe it has more than one USB controller. Most boards have an internal USB hub to multiplex the ports into more. Some, more expensive boards will have additional controllers beyond the chipset controller.

I've been a hardware technician in a couple of high volume service centers, done IT for a lot of years and as a former hardware reviewer, I've reviewed more than a couple hundred boards at this point. I've never seen a complete failure of all USB ports on a motherboard. This is out of thousands of systems. The only boards where this would have been a potential concern was the earliest motherboards which only had a couple ports anyway. That would have been back in the USB 1.0 days during the Pentium and Pentium Pro era.

For the sake of transparency, I did see widespread USB issues on NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI boards and subsequent 780i SLI boards. However, these all traced back to defective chipsets. Those chips would delaminate and were constantly being overvolted like everything else by the reference BIOS code. This is the only point in history I ever saw USB port failures that took out a lot of USB ports and even then, it normally didn't take out all of them. Just most. I'd also point out that when these boards started to fail, you had bigger issues than their USB port problems. Namely, the thing was on the verge of totally shitting the bed.
 
Dan_D said:
I'll point out that the MSI X870E Godlike doesn't have a PS/2 port. I'll further add that wanting one in case the USB fails is also pretty ridiculous. USB is pretty reliable and odds are you wouldn't lose all of your USB ports at once. I believe it has more than one USB controller. Most boards have an internal USB hub to multiplex the ports into more. Some, more expensive boards will have additional controllers beyond the chipset controller.
Click to expand...
Zen 4 and 5 do some of their USB directly to the CPU. So, virtually all AM5 boards have more than one 'controller'. As the chipset needs its own controllers, to provide the additional ports.

With Arrowlake, Intel finally did Thunderbolt directly to the CPU. But, no other USB.

Here is the topology for my Gigabyte X870 ITX X870E Pro ICE
AM5 ITXproICE.png

And here is their ATX x870e-aero x3d dark wood (I don't own this one. Just an example)

AM5 darkwood.png

As you can see, some very different ways to split it all out. But the point is double underlined, you always get multiple controllers/points of potential failure, on AM5.
 
Requirement are too obscure. Need PCIe requirements. I mean, if all NVMe and PCIe slots are x1, many things are possible. But maybe not desirable.
 
Thanks for the help everyone, what about the Asus ProArt X670E-CREATOR WIFI? It's only got 4 SATA ports, but I've just decided to use my LSI card with cables for the SATA SSDs. If I place the cards and the 2 NVME drives in a specific order I wouldn't really run into performance issues right? This motherboard seems to mostly be what I'm after but I just want to know for sure before buying anything.

Dan_D said:
I'll point out that the MSI X870E Godlike doesn't have a PS/2 port. I'll further add that wanting one in case the USB fails is also pretty ridiculous. USB is pretty reliable and odds are you wouldn't lose all of your USB ports at once. I believe it has more than one USB controller. Most boards have an internal USB hub to multiplex the ports into more. Some, more expensive boards will have additional controllers beyond the chipset controller.

I've been a hardware technician in a couple of high volume service centers, done IT for a lot of years and as a former hardware reviewer, I've reviewed more than a couple hundred boards at this point. I've never seen a complete failure of all USB ports on a motherboard. This is out of thousands of systems. The only boards where this would have been a potential concern was the earliest motherboards which only had a couple ports anyway. That would have been back in the USB 1.0 days during the Pentium and Pentium Pro era.

For the sake of transparency, I did see widespread USB issues on NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI boards and subsequent 780i SLI boards. However, these all traced back to defective chipsets. Those chips would delaminate and were constantly being overvolted like everything else by the reference BIOS code. This is the only point in history I ever saw USB port failures that took out a lot of USB ports and even then, it normally didn't take out all of them. Just most. I'd also point out that when these boards started to fail, you had bigger issues than their USB port problems. Namely, the thing was on the verge of totally shitting the bed.
Click to expand...
There's been a few times where my mouse and keyboard just stopped working on Windows 10 and I'd have to plug in a PS/2 mouse or keyboard to reinstall the drives, it hasn't been an issue I've encountered for years though. It's not an absolute necessity for me, it's just been a nice fallback option in the past.
 
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