Why are the latest DDR5 motherboards so tiny?

[rkd29980]

A single decent gen 3 NVMe drive will still crush any SSD or HDD raid setups. HDD erw cheap for the capacity you can get now. No reason to have multiple in a normal system nowadays. When I built my NAS I got rid of all the 1, 2, 4tb drives I had in my main system. Most people don't need 4 SATA ports let alone 10. Get with the times old man.

Old man? I am in my mid 30's and most of my drives are 10TB or above. Higher capacity drives means I can download and store more stuff. Yes, there is still a need for more than 4 SATA ports.

You know, back in the early 2000's, there was a local computer repair shop that had been around for decades and at the time, hard drives were going up to 500GB at the highest and most expensive capacity and I got into an argument with one of the guys there who said he had an 80GB HDD and that's "all he'll ever need". Well... I bet if he could take back his ridiculous and asinine statement, he would.

Anyways. The point is that you sound just like that guy.

With Seagate planning 120TB HDD's by 2030 and Samsung planning 1,000TB SSD's by 2030 there may indeed come a time when storage capacity has outpaced the ability of rabid data hoarders like me to use it all and having a shit-ton of SATA ports really is unnecessary but that time is not now and you are a fool for thinking it is.

 

[rkd29980]

If you don't like M.2 you can use a M.2 to U.2 converter. You can also get M.2 to SATA converters cheap. I read about a 10 gigabit m.2 NIC being made awhile back.

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Thanks for the suggestion. I didn't know about these and this will help me plan my upcoming build nicely.

 

[rkd29980]

M.2, NVME, is more expensive per gigabyte because it vastly outperforms and/or outlasts those other options. You're not comparing things properly or trying to do something in a less efficient way than available technology can do it.
There's a reason only the slowest maintream Intel CPUs support ECC. They don't want i3, i5, and i7 cannibalizing the server market. Celeron and Pentium CPUs have support ECC memory for years but none of the higher end stuff will. Motherboard manufactures probably tailer their motherboards as a result. You probably want to look at the W680 chipset motherboards.

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I don't care about pure performance, I care about capacity. I only need 1 high performance, high capacity drive for the OS and my games. So it isn't necessary for motherboards to have multiple/many M.2 slots and for these drives to even be twice as expensive.

As for U.2 drives? I have never used or owned one and don't care about them.

I appreciate the W680 suggestion but I am looking to build a new gaming focused PC with gaming/enthusiast hardware not enterprise/workstation hardware. You need only look at https://hardforum.com/forums/ssds-data-storage.29/ or https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/ and the related/linked subs to see that there are plenty of people out there with storage needs that M.2 can't satisfy and the newest generation of motherboards isn't helping by eliminating SATA ports.

 

[pendragon1]

if you know so much, what are you doing here other than whining?

 

[rkd29980]

if you know so much, what are you doing here other than whining?

That is such a dumbass response. What, did I hurt your feelings or something?

 

[ochadd]

I don't care about pure performance, I care about capacity. I only need 1 high performance, high capacity drive for the OS and my games. So it isn't necessary for motherboards to have multiple/many M.2 slots and for these drives to even be twice as expensive.

As for U.2 drives? I have never used or owned one and don't care about them.

I appreciate the W680 suggestion but I am looking to build a new gaming focused PC with gaming/enthusiast hardware not enterprise/workstation hardware. You need only look at https://hardforum.com/forums/ssds-data-storage.29/ or https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/ and the related/linked subs to see that there are plenty of people out there with storage needs that M.2 can't satisfy and the newest generation of motherboards isn't helping by eliminating SATA ports.

I don't think you are building a gaming focused build. You want a gaming machine and a large amount of slow storage and large amount of PCIe slots. You have servers but don't want to turn them on or utilize them more.
M.2 is an interface that can be used for more than just M.2 NVME drives. Such as the M.2 to 6 SATA ports card I posted earlier. If the motherboard has three M.2 ports then you can have one boot drive and 12 Sata ports + onboard SATA ports.

 

[ND40oz]

I don't think you are building a gaming focused build. You want a gaming machine and a large amount of slow storage and large amount of PCIe slots. You have servers but don't want to turn them on or utilize them more.
M.2 is an interface that can be used for more than just M.2 NVME drives. Such as the M.2 to 6 SATA ports card I posted earlier. If the motherboard has three M.2 ports then you can have one boot drive and 12 Sata ports + onboard SATA ports.

Yeah, at this point, have a gaming pc and have a NAS and then you have another NAS that you back up your main one. If you're a DataHorder, you're not doing all your hoarding and gaming on one system. You have multiple systems dedicated to just the data hording aspect of your hobby. All in one boxes are just compromises at every step of the way.

 

[rkd29980]

You want a gaming machine and a large amount of slow storage and large amount of PCIe slots.

YES!

Like I have been saying. I have been looking at the new Asus and Asrock DDR5 motherboards and all I would like is for them to take either the X79 Extreme11 or X99 Extreme11 and update it with all of the latest tech.

Is that really too much to ask?

Lots of USB4\Tunderbolt and USB3.2 ports, lots of other ports/jacks, lots of SATA ports, lots of full PCIe x16 slots, lots of M.2 slots, lots of RAM slots, lots of EVERYTHING. I just want a big beefy EATX overkill gaming motherboard that has more features, tech, slots, and ports than I am ever likely to use and looking at what's currently on offer right now, NONE of what is out meets my very simple needs, needs that you can clearly see have been met with various DDR3 and DDR4 motherboards.

So when are we going to get DDR5 motherboards with the same expanded feature sets or are these puny offering all we can expect going forward?

 

[lopoetve]

How many active PCIe 5.0 cards of any type are available?

How many PCIe 5.0 NVME Drives are available?

Crossfire / SLI are both dead.

What do you need all these PCIe 5.0 lanes for?

I tend to have 10G cards and SAS cards in them - later - when I repurpose them as servers, but I also buy HEDT.

OP here.

So in my current PC, I have my 980Ti, a Mellanox ConnectX-2 10G NIC card, a USB 3.1 C card and a card to add more SATA ports.

On the new build I am planning, I will have an RTX 3 card and I will keep the Mellanox ConnectX-2. I can eliminate the USB 3.1 card since the new motherboard with have plenty of those and some USB 4.0 ports built in and I only briefly used the SATA card since my Z97 Extreme6 has 10 SATA ports which has served me well and I could eliminate that as well since it is old as fuck but looking at these new Z690 and Z790 motherboards, they only have 6 SATA ports so to use all 10 of my drives and to add more drives (I do have servers and am a general data hoarder) I would need to keep and start using the SATA card.

Because almost no one builds systems like that anymore - it's just the truth. They build NAS devices or buy a NAS and stick it all on there - purpose built, lower power, not tied to the active state of your workstation (or failures thereof), etc. As someone who has a much larger active data set than you - it tends to go to NAS/block storage devices instead of internal to the system.

So that would use up all 3 PCIe slots on one of these new $500+ DDR5 motherboards and leave me with no room for a capture card and any other cards I may want or need if decide to get into game streaming or if I decide to start making YouTube videos. It leaves me no room for a dedicated sound card either.

Which takes me back to my original post. What gives? Come on manufacturers, don't be assholes!

https://www.asus.com/us/motherboards-components/motherboards/workstation/pro-ws-wrx80e-sage-se-wifi/

Your older Rampage board is HEDT. This is what HEDT is now - it's expensive as heck, because you're an edge case, like me. The Storm Peak boards should be out later in 2023 at some point - I'm waiting on those and Sapphire Rapids for a couple of my builds, but you have to pay to play now. Alternatively, you could buy an older X299 or sTRX4 board.

But I don't use or care about M.2 drives. I get that they are faster but 2.5" SATA SSD's are still plenty fast and are a lot cheaper and can you even RIAD M.2/PCIe drives?

Yes, you can RAID M2/PCIE, even multiple ways across expansion cards and M2/etc.

I would rather have many cheap high capacity mechanical SATA drives in a RAID than several really fast over priced M.2 SSD's and with my current motherboard, when I used the M.2 slot, it disabled several of my SATA ports so I now have a 500GB M.2 SSD that I wasted money on many years ago that I actually forgot about until now and if these newer motherboards do the same thing of letting you use either the M.2 slots OR the SATA ports but not both then fuck the M.2.

That's because consumer kit doesn't have the lanes to support everything anymore - because most of it is built in, and we're the extreme edge case. I get it - I want that too, but it doesn't exist now without paying to play.

And yes while I have servers, I only power them on when I need them. I only really use them for storing backups, media and things I would want to access rarely. Everything else I like to have on hand locally on a bunch of SATA drives.

14 servers in the house. 14 in site B. Always running, ish - they're all virtualized workloads so we do shut some things down for power savings at times.

No, as a data hoarder who has literally spent many many thousands of dollars on hard drives in just the last decade and is well up on storage trends, I think it is you who needs to "get caught up on storage options".

Just looking at Newegg and nowhere else, the cheapest 8TB M.2 SSD is $1,075 while the cheapest 2.5" 8TB SSD is $640. I got my 8TB QVO off of ebay for $450 and those who are patient and willing to wait and shop around for deals and holiday sales can always get a 2.5" SSD for half the price of an M.2 SSD. And those who are willing to deal hunt and/or take a chance on a used/refurbished or shucked drive can get a 20TB for around $300.

Look used - SAS SSD in the 7.68 TLC variety are pretty affordable now. I've got a stack of the things. SAS cards are cheap too, and can easily handle a LOT of drives in a single slot. Also those drives are WAY longer living than a consumer drive, especially in any kind of parity or Reed-Solomon RAID.

So yes, my statement still stands. M.2 drives are way over priced.

Not for what they're designed for - and their design is what the majority of consumers are looking for (performance with enough capacity). I won't get into the actual limitations around the SATA protocol - probably doesn't count for your use case (but does for mine).

I don't care about pure performance, I care about capacity. I only need 1 high performance, high capacity drive for the OS and my games. So it isn't necessary for motherboards to have multiple/many M.2 slots and for these drives to even be twice as expensive.

You're the oddball.

As for U.2 drives? I have never used or owned one and don't care about them.

They're the same as M2, just a different connector type (simplifying).

I appreciate the W680 suggestion but I am looking to build a new gaming focused PC with gaming/enthusiast hardware not enterprise/workstation hardware. You need only look at https://hardforum.com/forums/ssds-data-storage.29/ or https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/ and the related/linked subs to see that there are plenty of people out there with storage needs that M.2 can't satisfy and the newest generation of motherboards isn't helping by eliminating SATA ports.

Then buy a server board or HEDT board - for people like us, that's what you have to get. Or build a NAS and stick it all on there. I've got 5 of the things now, for different use cases. 3 are built on consumer hardware of various forms (1x Synology, 1x B450, 1x somethingintelitsinacornerandIdon'tknowanymore).

There will not be a change in the consumer landscape the direction you're hoping - it's the antithesis of what the majority of people are looking for, and since our needs can be satisfied in other ways, the manufacturers (specifically Intel and AMD in this case) don't have a particular need to chase our tiny segment of the market.

YES!

Like I have been saying. I have been looking at the new Asus and Asrock DDR5 motherboards and all I would like is for them to take either the X79 Extreme11 or X99 Extreme11 and update it with all of the latest tech.

That's HEDT - that's either old now (x299 had it's last CPU release in 2020, sTRX4 the same), or takes something like the Sage board I posted above. Both of those were HEDT platforms as well (x79 and X99) - I've got an X99 system still in use (it's a mixed virtualization and NAS host).

The consumer CPUs literally don't have the lanes to do it - even most X99 CPUs had 44 PCIE lanes. ADL and Zen4 are 28 - and the usage of those is fixed. sTRX4 was 64, x299 was generally in the same ballpark.

Is that really too much to ask?

Yup.

Lots of USB4\Tunderbolt and USB3.2 ports, lots of other ports/jacks, lots of SATA ports, lots of full PCIe x16 slots, lots of M.2 slots, lots of RAM slots, lots of EVERYTHING.

HEDT.

I just want a big beefy EATX overkill gaming motherboard that has more features, tech, slots, and ports than I am ever likely to use and looking at what's currently on offer right now, NONE of what is out meets my very simple needs, needs that you can clearly see have been met with various DDR3 and DDR4 motherboards.

So when are we going to get DDR5 motherboards with the same expanded feature sets or are these puny offering all we can expect going forward?

HEDT. Sometime next year. CPUs will likely be in the $1500-2k range minimum (I'm budgeting 3k), and boards will likely be around $1k-1.5k. Guessing based on prior history, at least. I built exactly that in 2020 - cost me close to $5k for all the parts (3960X, 128G, etc).

 

[lopoetve]

Oh, and for this exact reason I picked up a used X299 board with a 7940X in it - it's getting to SAS cards to feed a massive S3 archive target for backups. Will also be capable of playing some games, and running a bunch of VMs. That dance takes HEDT. Sadly, you skipped the entire transition period we all already went through - DDR4 timeframe is when all this changed, and it ain't coming back unless you want to pony up on the current HEDT or server-like platforms

 

[GregTombstone]

The slots are still there, they have just taken a different form. Your lanes are being taken up by M.2 slots. They are in essence, mini-PCIe slots. Also, M.2 is a stupid form factor for the desktop as it takes up a ton of space on the PCB. The connector is small but the device lays flat on the PCB taking up about as much room or more than a conventional PCIe slot does. With two, three or more M.2 slots on some of these boards, there isn't any physical space for more PCIe slots even if you had the lanes for them. Besides, how many PCIe slots could you possibly need? Again, non-HEDT platforms lack the lanes to run much more than what we are given anyway. You are going to use a single GPU that's going to take up two or three slots of space. You could use two with NV-Link, but that's for niche applications and uses. You might need one more slot for a controller or something. What else? Modern PC's generally don't need a ton of add-in boards. If you want better audio, or network ports, buy higher end boards. Obviously, there are some limitations there but it is what it is.

The X79 board you linked with 6 PCIe slots was an HEDT motherboard. The HEDT market is pretty much dead now. Outside of some very niche scenarios, there is no justification for HEDT as a gaming platform anymore. It has no inherent advantage and quite a few disadvantages. The last real HEDT platform we got was during the Ryzen 3000 series days and it had reached costs of around $1,000 or more for the motherboards and $2,0000+ for the CPU's. With SLI being dead and gone, the need for 32 PCIe lanes just for graphics cards died off. Mainstream CPU's and their platforms provide more PCIe lanes than they had before making HEDT an absurdly expensive proposition with little to no upside for the gamer or even most enthusiasts. HEDT still exists, but pretty much in an OEM only type of format. At the DIY and enthusiast level, it's pretty much dead.

The demand for more lanes and more cores on the mainstream side (and fervent competition between AMD and Intel) lead to the mainstream segment overlapping with HEDT. HEDT ended up getting moved up to ridiculous core counts and PCIe lane counts that became more costly and much harder to justify. Essentially, the high end mainstream segment ate the mid-range to lower end HEDT market alive. That and a shift in how the lanes are used (more and more are going to M.2 slots) are why you won't see motherboards with 6 traditional expansion slots. We may never see something like that ever again.

Great post