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Lekuo SouthBridge Max Puts An AMD B650 Chipset Onto A PCIe Card For More I/O

MrGuvernment

MrGuvernment

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Interesting way to get more I/O.. just put a chip like this on a card!

Lekuo SouthBridge Max Puts An AMD B650 Chipset Onto A PCIe Card For More I/O
https://www.phoronix.com/review/lekuo-southbridge-max


For those looking at expanding the SATA, NVMe, and/or the USB/USB-C capabilities of your system, the Lekuo SouthBridge Max PB65MX3 is an interesting creation that I have been trying out. The Lekuo SouthBridge Max puts an AMD B650 chipset onto a low-profile PCIe add-in card to provide all of the above without any bifurcation required. Given that it's an AMD B650 chipset, it also "just works" nicely under Linux.​


It's not often I get excited about a PCIe add-in card or eager to review one, but the Lekuo SouthBridge Max PB65MX3 is an interesting take on providing more SATA, NVMe, and USB connectivity to your system by making use of an AMD B650 chipset. The SouthBridge Max provides four M.2 NVMe slots, four SATA 3.0 ports, two 10 Gbps USB-A ports, one 10 Gbps USB-C, and one 20 Gbps USB-C ports.


The four NVMe slots, four SATA ports, and four USB interfaces are on this add-in card using a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. So if making full use of all the capabilities of the device they will be bandwidth constrained in sharing a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. Similarly, it's PCIe 4.0 and not PCIe 5.0 depending upon what NVMe SSDs you would be planning to use.

If connecting multiple devices to the SouthBridge Max, there is a 6-pin PCIe power connector on the card for ensuring sufficient power.

Even with PCIe 4.0 x4 bandwidth, it's an interesting add-in card for those wanting more storage devices and additional USB/USB-C ports. Best of all with using the AMD B650, the Linux support "just works" without any issues. The add-in card with SATA and NVMe drives attached worked without issue as did USB-A and USB-C. Via lspci it just appears as if there's an AMD 600 Series Chipset on the system. This is great given the well-tested state of the AMD chipset drivers on Linux rather than having to deal with other less-tested ASICs that may or may not have good Linux driver support or require additional out-of-tree modules/firmware. The SouthBridge Max works on Windows and macOS too.

The Lekuo PB65MX3 kit included the low-profile card, both standard and low-profile metal expansion slots, copper stands and screws for the NVMe drives, and a simple user's manual. The add-in card measures in at just 69 x 174 mm.
Click to expand...
 
AM5 only has 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes going from the CPU to the chipset, so it makes sense that the card would also only have 4.
But it's not like anybody really complains about the chipset on their motherboard.
But I too am happy to see cool shit being done again; prices of things making stuff like this a necessity for some is both sad and awesome!
 
MrGuvernment said:
Yup, even with it maxing out at a potential 64Gbps total, unless you are doing some extreme heavy I/O and pushing NVMe drives to sustained multi-gigabit speeds, most people wont even notice.
Click to expand...
Sometimes the functionality itself matters more than theoretical speeds.

In my head, the most likely use cases for this card have it running up against network bandwidth more than local bandwidth.

My first thoughts went to some Proxmox interconnects with the USB-C ports, but the B650 doesn't support Thunderbolt, so that's not an option.

But 4 small M.2's configured as a buffer for 4 slower, larger spindle drives, or maybe SSDs, can get you something fast and decently reliable at a price that isn't unreasonable.

The point is, it opens the door for a lot of interesting projects that generally aren't feasible on base consumer hardware, and it appears to be sold at an unusually reasonable price point, which certainly isn't something to complain about.
 
Exactly, it is what I did with an Asus card for my TrueNAS system on a Dell 5280 system, as I am using the front 4 bays for 3.5" drives, so I had to use some sort of card to add my NVMe drives I use for my VM disks off my desktop (25Gb Fiber between them)
 
And anyone know where you can purchase this? I just bought some new hardware to upgrade my home server and I would have purchased something completely different had I known this existed lol.
 
Tengis said:
And anyone know where you can purchase this? I just bought some new hardware to upgrade my home server and I would have purchased something completely different had I known this existed lol.
Click to expand...
Probably aliexpress. I don't know about this particular board but Wccftech (I know) mentioned this a few months ago. It might even work on an Intel CPU, people were suggesting last time I checked.
 
Lakados said:
AM5 only has 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes going from the CPU to the chipset, so it makes sense that the card would also only have 4.
But it's not like anybody really complains about the chipset on their motherboard.
But I too am happy to see cool shit being done again; prices of things making stuff like this a necessity for some is both sad and awesome!
Click to expand...

It's clearly a potential bottleneck, but you would have to be running things pretty hard to notice. And the premium am5 boards put a second chipset behind the first chipset anyway...

Seems like the right thing for people who need more lanes to interface with more things... but don't have a throughput cap.
 
toast0 said:
It's clearly a potential bottleneck, but you would have to be running things pretty hard to notice. And the premium am5 boards put a second chipset behind the first chipset anyway...

Seems like the right thing for people who need more lanes to interface with more things... but don't have a throughput cap.
Click to expand...
If I had my druthers, the AMD x970e (or whatever it's called) would have lots more lanes. But Lisa Su hasn't called me so far to ask what I want. :p
 
It's really not an unusual concept at all. That's how USB add in cards, storage controllers and NVMe expanders have always worked. Using a south bridge/PCH instead of a separate dedicated controller simply allows you to do all of the above on one card. That's what makes it somewhat interesting.
 
Dan_D said:
It's really not an unusual concept at all. That's how USB add in cards, storage controllers and NVMe expanders have always worked. Using a south bridge/PCH instead of a separate dedicated controller simply allows you to do all of the above on one card. That's what makes it somewhat interesting.
Click to expand...
Ya, I guess it is also a good way to use up inventory of SB/PCH chips that may be on the market due to excess...
 
MrGuvernment said:
Ya, I guess it is also a good way to use up inventory of SB/PCH chips that may be on the market due to excess...
Click to expand...
Excess AM4 chipsets got used as ultra budget AM5 chipsets. I suspect excess AM5 chipsets will be usable for AM6 as well.
 
Tengis said:
And anyone know where you can purchase this? I just bought some new hardware to upgrade my home server and I would have purchased something completely different had I known this existed lol.
Click to expand...
https://lekuo.shop/products/lekuo-s...sion-card-no-motherboard-bifurcation-required
It's $129 direct from them.

I feel like I might have used this to add USB-C ports to my aging AM4 system, but at that price, I could have bought a new motherboard.
If you need 2 or 3 of the features that it provides, it makes sense, but if you only need 1, like more M.2 slots, there are cheaper alternatives that don't require an external power connector.
It probably makes the most sense for Mini-ITX boards that serve some type of media center or networking role.
It's an interesting product!
 
this would be really nice for all of hobo people that use cheap used enterprise desktops for file servers. This one card would make up for all the limited I/O you see on Dell / HP / Lenovo desktops. Put this in the x16 slot and a 2.5GB network card in the x1 slot and your up and running. That’s assuming it does work with Intel boards.
 
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