The Best AMD X670E Motherboards: 22 Board Roundup, VRM Thermal Test

[gderreck]

Greetings,

Excellent article. Your recommendation of the MEG ACE is just about spot on. What disqualified the board for me, was the total lack of Thunderbolt/USB4 support. No onboard, no support for addin card.

I ended up going for the Hero. Very stable and glitch free...so far; with onboard Thunderbolt 4, which was a desirable option for me. If I didn't require Thunderbolt (and I realize many don't) I would have seriously considered the ACE.

I do have one question. The two pcie full size slots are set as 16 or 8/8. If I were to use the second full size slot, would the performane of my video card (GTX 1660 Ti...I'm not a gamer ) suffer?

 

[neeyik]

If I were to use the second full size slot, would the performane of my video card (GTX 1660 Ti...I'm not a gamer ) suffer?

Not to any noticeable degree.

 

[waclark]

Was considering an AM5 platform, but with Intel's 12th Gen Z690 motherboards going for so cheap last year I couldn't justify the price. Ended up going with a heavily discounted Z690 Gigabyte Aorus Master for $270 vs the same brand & model for $500 on AMD's Z670E platform. No regrets, and have it equipped with a 13700kf @ 6ghz. Will put the $230 savings towards a nice graphics card.

I recently looked at a Core i9 build and a 7950X build. I wasn't trying to go budget, but I wasn't looking for top-of-the-line everything either. The Intel build was about $200 cheaper at $2400. It had 32GB DDR5-6000, 2TB SSD, 1000W PSU, Lian Li case w/RGB, Lian Li 360 AIO for the CPU and a 4070Ti. Normally I would go for the Intel build, but the AMD build is compelling because you will be able to upgrade the CPU without a mobo change. Honestly, either off them will get you 5 years down the road with, maybe a GPU update in 2-3 years, but the AMD can also do a CPU next-gen upgrade which might be worth the $200. Of course, I could go with a 7900XTX instead of the 4070Ti, and maybe that will be fine. I'm a little hesitant for the AMD GPUs right now and don't really want to spend $1000 for a GPU so there's that.

 

[godrilla]

There's really no reason to choose a X670 board over a B650 board for ITX, as the only difference is the number connections, and there is physically very little space on a ITX board for those extra connections.

I don't disagree. Honestly I was looking for a good B650e board itx form factor at the time of purchase and there was maybe one Asrock board but there was a lot of questions about ram compatibility so I took a leap of faith with this one. If you look at the itx strix both b650e and x670e are plagued with memory compatibility long boot times from dissatisfied reviews.

 

[Shirley Dulcey]

There might be a point to the Godlike if you're trying to set cryo-cooled speed records. Otherwise, forget it; you won't need that power delivery setup for anything else.

 

[Avro Arrow]

The obvious choice is to wait for the B650 round up, as the B650 has enough connectivity for most users, and buying an X670 board is just a waste of money fo these users.

I agree but I have an even better idea than that. Ignore the X670 and B650 boards altogether and get an A620 board. See, the least-expensive X670 board is $260 which drops $115 to $155 for the least-expensive B650 board. There has been talk of Gigabyte producing an A620 motherboard for $125 but that's not cheap enough and it would be DOA. Almost anyone would be willing to pay the extra $30 for a Gigabyte B650M DS3H over ANY A620 motherboard. I believe that the prices for the A620 boards will actually start at or below $100.

This will be not only because nobody will buy them at $125 but also be because I believe that the A620 boards will become the darlings of companies like Dell and HP. The amount that those companies will order will be huge so they'll be mass-produced enough to drive the price down to $100 or below from $125.

So, take that $100, add $115 for 32GB of Team Vulcan DDR5-5200. Now you have the board AND 32GB of RAM for less than the cost of an X670 board alone. Now for the secret weapon - slap one of the upcoming R7-7800X3Ds on it and you'll have an instant gaming monster platform for $664! Remember that X3Ds don't support overclocking so what's the point of paying extra for a motherboard that does? Also without overclocking, you won't have to worry about the motherboard's VRMs because X3Ds only run at stock speed.

Don't worry about the RAM speed either because it's still faster than DDR4 and X3D APUs don't really care about RAM speed anyway. Their giant L3 caches make RAM speed more or less of a moot point. This is why the 5800X3D has shown its sweet-spot to be DDR4-3200 with all faster DDR4 having a negligible effect if any at all. The 7800X3D will have the same 96MB of L3 cache as the 5800X3D and I believe that this will render DDR5 faster than 4800MHz or 5200MHz inconsequential.

 

[Rheaz]

Greetings,

Excellent article. Your recommendation of the MEG ACE is just about spot on. What disqualified the board for me, was the total lack of Thunderbolt/USB4 support. No onboard, no support for addin card.

I ended up going for the Hero. Very stable and glitch free...so far; with onboard Thunderbolt 4, which was a desirable option for me. If I didn't require Thunderbolt (and I realize many don't) I would have seriously considered the ACE.

I do have one question. The two pcie full size slots are set as 16 or 8/8. If I were to use the second full size slot, would the performane of my video card (GTX 1660 Ti...I'm not a gamer ) suffer?

There is always a possibility that you will run out of lanes and get BSOD. You will have to go through trial and error to get an answer to your question.

 

[McMurdeR]

Many thanks for an excellent roundup. Man, motherboards are absurd at the moment. I mean this chipset supports products that won't exist in any realistic form before 2024. Seems to me a lot of these boards are overengineered and overdressed in order to be overpriced. Arguably anything more expensive than the Asrock Steel isn't worth bothering with. That would be my honest advice.

I have the Asus TUF myself. It was the cheapest x570e I could find at the time, and it's basically flawless. In all honesty a B650 would have done the job, but of course they were delayed for no good reason other than to sell this lot.

 

[McMurdeR]

Connectivity is terable on all this mobos you get 3 PCI-e slots at most, it's either use the on-board garbage or get out

To be fair, these are positioned to be forward-looking products. The kind of user looking at these would prioritise nvme slots over pci, because the number of users using more than two pci slots in a modern build would have to be in a tiny minority. Besides, the modern GPUs these people will be looking at will cover most of the board.

 

[Hodor]

Thanks for the comparison, especially that table at the end. Very useful.

Also, I think that robot attempted to steal the CPU.

 

[Rockfella]

ASRock is the clear winner here and I think that they owe this, at least in part, to Steve Walton because Steve had the cojones to call them out over some of their previous models' terrible thermal performance. If that hadn't happened, they might not have improved to the degree that they have while still offering more value for money than their competitors.

I think that for 99% of people, the obvious choice is the ASRock X670E PG Lightning. It's the LEAST expensive X670 motherboard and it's an X670E. Yes, that's right, all the X670 non-E motherboards from other companies cost more than the X670E PG Lightning. Now, I don't know just how much of a difference having a PCI-Express v5.0 slot would have but in this case, ASRock is essentially paying consumers to take it for free.

Its thermal performance is "middle of the pack" but it's in the middle of a pack of motherboards whose thermals are ALL terrific. I think that ASRock has an ace in the hole here and there's no question that it's the one that I'd buy if I were in the market for an AM5 board.

Fortunately for me, I'm not in the market for an AM5 board and won't be for years to come.

Asus nowhere to be seen, gladly gigabyte trailing behind lol (I'm a giga fanboy). AsRock is ever improving. Good to know.

 

[Rockfella]

There's really no reason to choose a X670 board over a B650 board for ITX, as the only difference is the number connections, and there is physically very little space on a ITX board for those extra connections.

Itx makes no sense to me except it's for folks who have serious space restrictions or just love compact builds. Just an expensive rabbit hole imo. To each his own though. Connections are always limited on itx.

 

[Biostud]

Just ordered an ASRock pro RS X670E. I had my eyes one of their B650E boards, but for $60 more I decided this was the board for me.

 

[Rockfella]

Don't go by the manual as if now. Looks like they have generic ones for B650 chipset. Example: A2B2 slots on my B650M gaming A AX is different as shown in the manual than what it is on the board.

Great article.

FYI - The Gigabyte X670 Aorus Elite appears to be the same board as their X670 Gaming X. I downloaded the manuals for both and the io and features seem identical.

Gigabyte even lists a Rev 1.1 version of the Elite, which seems to be unavailable at this time.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Asus nowhere to be seen, gladly gigabyte trailing behind lol (I'm a giga fanboy). AsRock is ever improving. Good to know.

There's nothing wrong with liking Gigabyte. Their boards are fantastic and their business practices are sound (at least their PCB division is).

I'm quite sure that certain individuals involved with the response to the fire-hazard PSUs have been appropriately relocated (out of the company entirely).

 

[Julnor]

Give it another year and quality motherboards can be had for $100-120, even as low as $80 on a great sale. These companies refuse to admit the crypto bubble is over.

 

[HardReset]

Give it another year and quality motherboards can be had for $100-120, even as low as $80 on a great sale. These companies refuse to admit the crypto bubble is over.

No way. PCIe 5.0 requires expensive parts to keep signaling in place. That's expensive and has nothing to do with crypto.

 

[Gastec]

Ridiculous cost for budget boards $300 or less. When did $300 become entry level board... What are the motherboard companies thinking?

They are thinking what the GPU companies think and so many other companies (especially the energy ones): they seem to have the money, let's double the prices. They say it's because of inflation but let's get real, it's because of the people who got easy money from crypto-coins and "influencing" on YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, etc.

 

[Biostud]

X670E is not a budget chipset, that is B650.

 

[FlaJunkie]

I'd be really happy if you verified which motherboards actually HAVE an X670E chipset!

Some seem to use X670E in their names but only have the X670 chipset! They are different!

Please help clear this up!

 

[HardReset]

I'd be really happy if you verified which motherboards actually HAVE an X670E chipset!

Some seem to use X670E in their names but only have the X670 chipset! They are different!

Please help clear this up!

X670 and X670E chipsets are exactly same. Only difference is that X670E requires board to offer more PCIe 5.0 lanes.

 

[neeyik]

X670 and X670E chipsets are exactly same. Only difference is that X670E requires board to offer more PCIe 5.0 lanes.

That and the PEG bus on X670E is v5.0, whereas it’s v4.0 on X670. Not that it actually matters as there’s hardly a glut of PCIe 5.0 graphics cards on the market…

 

[FlaJunkie]

X670 and X670E chipsets are exactly same. Only difference is that X670E requires board to offer more PCIe 5.0 lanes.

I would think this makes them different:
GRAPHICS
X670E: 1x16 or 2x8 PCIe® 5.0
X670: 1x16 or 2x8 PCIe® 4.0
USABLE PCIe® LANES TOTAL/PCIe® 5.0(UP TO)
X670E: 44/24
X670: 44/8

What would the additional lanes mean for devices like M.2? Is this just a graphics enhancement in the chipset?

And the motherboard companies freely interchange 670 with 670E in their sales info.

I have gotten to the point, in my old age, of building a new system from scratch every few years. I don't game. I want an AMD chip and a supporting motherboard with decent HDMI graphics so that I won't need a video card. I also want blazing M.2 speed and the ability to support at least two of the 2+ TB M.2s. I don't want WIFI. 32G of DDR5 RAM is fine. The fastest USB ports are critical. I have had grief operating USB devices on my Gigabyte X570S.

Pretty simple?

 

[HardReset]

That and the PEG bus on X670E is v5.0, whereas it’s v4.0 on X670. Not that it actually matters as there’s hardly a glut of PCIe 5.0 graphics cards on the market…

Yeah but chipset only support PCIe 4.0. 5.0 comes from CPU. Chipsets are no different.

I would think this makes them different:
GRAPHICS
X670E: 1x16 or 2x8 PCIe® 5.0
X670: 1x16 or 2x8 PCIe® 4.0
USABLE PCIe® LANES TOTAL/PCIe® 5.0(UP TO)
X670E: 44/24
X670: 44/8

What would the additional lanes mean for devices like M.2? Is this just a graphics enhancement in the chipset?

And the motherboard companies freely interchange 670 with 670E in their sales info.

There is no difference on chipsets. With X670E AMD requires support for PCIe 5.0 on x16 slot (for graphics) and there are also 8 PCIe 5.0 lanes from CPU (one for x4 NVMe, another for whatever manufacturer wants, another NVMe x4 is possible).

X670 does not require x16 slot to be 5.0. However one NVMe x4 5.0 slot is required.

In short, X670E boards must offer 1x16 or 2x8 PCIe 5.0

X670 AND X670E must offer one PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe.

X670E also offers another x4 PCIe 5.0 from CPU.

All these come from CPU, chipset has nothing to do with them.

I have gotten to the point, in my old age, of building a new system from scratch every few years. I don't game. I want an AMD chip and a supporting motherboard with decent HDMI graphics so that I won't need a video card. I also want blazing M.2 speed and the ability to support at least two of the 2+ TB M.2s. I don't want WIFI. 32G of DDR5 RAM is fine. The fastest USB ports are critical. I have had grief operating USB devices on my Gigabyte X570S.

Pretty simple?

If you can manage with one PCIe 5.0 NVMe you can go with X670. If you want two or more, X670E that is. Simple.

 

[neeyik]

Yeah but chipset only support PCIe 4.0. 5.0 comes from CPU. Chipsets are no different.

I didn't say they were different. I was adding to your statement ("only difference is that X670E requires board to offer more PCIe 5.0 lanes") by pointing out that X670E also requires motherboards to provide PCIe 5.0 mode for the PEG slot.