Looking for a higher end motherboard with at least three m.2 drive slots
Posted by Beiki@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 10 comments
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High end gaming.
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$200
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I'm considering this but some of the comments have me concerned about updating the BIOS. This sounds a little involved for my level as I've never build a PC from scratch before. But I need a 5.0 motherboard for any sort of upgraded graphics card that I want to install.
Provide any additional details you wish below.
I'm looking at building a new PC with pretty much all new parts except I'd use the same boot SSD.
iamgarffi@reddit
No problem finding AM5 boards with 5 slots. Problem is always CPU PCIe lanes.
ROG X870E Hero comes with 5. Using all 5 though will either reduce throughput on main GPU slot, or reduce + disable the secondary PCIE 5.0 slot.
3 nvme is usually fine if you stick to:
As long as you don’t use M2_2 and M2_3 you’ll be fine and pcie GPU slot will thank you too. Today and in the future.
Others might debate if it’s really all that important, as with 5 nvme’s filled, your PCIE 5.0 x16 drops to X8 (PCIE 4.0 x16 equivalent).
On average in games difference is few frames. Today’s GPUs are nowhere near PCIE saturation.
Twitchz33_@reddit
To add into this if any ROG board have 5x m.2s usually the m.2_1 (the top most slot) is fully x16 and the bottom 2 x8 while the other 2 m.2s are an a special slot called dimm.2 right next to the RAM and are fully either gen 4 or 5 x16
iamgarffi@reddit
Yeah. Only few boards use dimm.2, mostly with 3 slots on the motherboard with extra 2 on dimm.2.
Notable mentions here are X670E Gene and X870E Extreme (my current daily driver).
Twitchz33_@reddit
Currently still on a x570 crosshair extreme board btw
AcrobaticNetwork5918@reddit
Just to clarify, why do you need 3 M2 slots?
Beiki@reddit (OP)
I currently have two and if I'm upgrading then I'd like to get at least one more.
Electronic_Muffin218@reddit
Not even just 3 - at least 3! I mean, we've all lusted after that Epyc mobo with the hypothetical 8 M.2 slots for sweet, sweet lightning-fast RAID10 action.
whomad1215@reddit
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/motherboard/#s=41&c=161,169,166,167&E=3,7&X=0,22160
Pick one that has the io you want
Sleepykitti@reddit
you probably won't need a pcie 5.0 motherboard for any gpu that you'd want to put in the PC, pcie gen 3 doesn't really get topped out by anything even a 5090 and pcie gen 4 should be good for quite some time. (outside of a few budget cards that screw themselves over by being so low spec)
Updating the bios is pretty easy. It's really not the kind of thing I'd worry about. https://youtu.be/FPyElZcsW6o
i'd probably go with one of these two.
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/compare/CvcgXL,Pq3WGX/
DZCreeper@reddit
That is quite common, here is a list of all AM5 boards with at least 3 m.2 slots.
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/motherboard/#E=3,7&sort=price&s=41
If you specifically want PCIE gen 5 support a B650E board for $190 will do the job. There is no real world benefit currently, maybe in 1-2 GPU generations.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/6mCCmG/asus-tuf-gaming-b650e-plus-wifi-atx-am5-motherboard-tuf-gaming-b650e-plus-wifi