Question AM5 Gaming Motherboard for Longevity?

[Captain_Krotch]

Hey Guys,

I am looking at building myself an AM5 gaming system in the next couple of weeks, and the amount of motherboards out there and the choices available is making my mind melt.

My current system was built in 2015, its an old 6600K with a 2070 super, which I'll give to my son.

I'm still deciding on the exact components, but I'm currently looking at a 7800x3d, and probably a 7900XTX. I mostly play games on this machine, with the odd bit of browsing and music creation.

What I look for most in my machines is longevity; generally I like to keep a machine for 5-10 years if I can, by upgrading the CPU and graphics card, and adding in more storage space.(so in the future I would like to upgrade to a "AMD 9800X3D" and a "NVidia 6080ti"). You get the picture

I don't have much in the way of other connections, I only really use a few USB ports (keyboard, mouse, cam, phone charger, midi keyboard).

For storage, I'll probably grab myself a 4GB spinning disk for movie, picture, etc. storage, plus a 2TB M2 card for OS and games.

I'm not fussy on motherboard brand, I've used Asus and Gigabyte motherboards in the past with no issues.
Can someone recommend a decent AM5 motherboard (I think 650 offers better bang for buck than 670)? I'm thinking I don't want to spend much more than £300 (so about ~$300).

While I don't want to break the bank, can someone recommend a good gaming board that:
- Offers a PCIe 5.0 slot so that I have that headroom in the future when cards start to need that bandwidth
- Allows me to install a 5.0 PCIe M2 Card in the future, again when the bandwidth can be used.
- Maximizes likelihood of a CPU upgrade path (i.e. "9800X3D" or a "9950X") should I eventually upgrade in 2-3 years.

I'm currently looking at the Gigabyte X670 AORUS ELITE AX, but I'm not sure if it offers everything I need.

Thanks

 

[hotaru.hino]

The only thing I could see increasing longevity of the system is the ability to upgrade the CPU.

PCIe 5.0 is a moot point for consumers.

• PCIe 4.0 cards don't see much of a drop going down to PCIe 3.0 (at least, until VRAM swapping happens, but that's another problem). Even the RTX 4090 sees only a 2-3% drop in performance, which for a lot of people is in the margin of error/noise.
• Faster NVMe SSDs provides no practical benefit to the consumer unless they're bouncing data back and forth around all the time between other NVMe SSDs. Faster SSDs don't really do anything for loading times.

 

[drea.drechsler]

....
While I don't want to break the bank, can someone recommend a good gaming board that:
- Offers a PCIe 5.0 slot so that I have that headroom in the future when cards start to need that bandwidth
- Allows me to install a 5.0 PCIe M2 Card in the future, again when the bandwidth can be used.
- Maximizes likelihood of a CPU upgrade path (i.e. "9800X3D" or a "9950X") should I eventually upgrade in 2-3 years.
...

I think pretty much all AM5 boards with "E" suffix chipsets fit that list of requirements for at least one gen 5 x16 PCIe slot and one M.2 socket. The X670(non-E) chipset based board you're looking at won't include a Gen 5 x16 slot. But being an AM5 socket it will support new Ryzen CPU's being introduced by AMD through (if I recall correctly) 2025. I assume any new AMD desktop processor architectures will include PCIe gen 5 and DDR5 support on at least some of the CPU's so you'll have that one licked.

As far as "longevity" goes, it's purely up to your expectations. I have an AM3+ system with a PCIe gen2 socket for the GPU, SATA 6Gbps SSD drives and DDR3 memory that is ample, smooth and fast for light gaming and office productivity useage on Windows 10 (probably on Win11 too if MS allowed it). Pushing 12 years old and still relevant, some would say that's the definition of longevity. But if your definition includes "bleeding edge" performance levels then nothing ever has more than one or two years of longevity, if that.

EDIT: corrected to qualify E suffix chipsets since the Gigabyte X670 AORUS ELITE AX doesn't have one, as it turns out. And to add a comment...

But also something to consider is that nobody seems to be clawing at the retail shelves to stock them with Gen 5 GPU's. Doubtlessly because they've yet to completely saturate 16 lanes of even Gen 3 yet. I've wondered if it might be a better use of the newer technology to make GPU's with 8 lanes, maybe even 4 of Gen 5, if it can help with cost to the consumer. But at any rate, insisting on a system spec'ed with Gen 5 PCIe sockets seems like an illusory, and expensive, way to ensure "longevity".

 

[Captain_Krotch]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

So paraphrasing, pcie 5.0 isnt anything to worry about for the next few years. That said, I'd rather have it than not, but its not worth paying much extra for.

On the subjectivity of longevity, I'd like this system to last at least 5 years. Hence the desire to have 5.0 "just in case". To put things in perspective, I can still play the latest games on my 8 year old machine(although I did replace the graphics card a couple of years ago), albeit I play at 1080p, and I have to turn off ray tracing.

I'm think that the asus rog strix 650e-f looks pretty good.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...

I'm think that the asus rog strix 650e-f looks pretty good.

Why are you picking this one? Personally, I don't like Asus, largely because I've had too much trouble with my current board (B550m Tuf Gaming).

You might run through this article to compare boards:

The Best AMD X670E Motherboards

For months we've been gathering as many AMD X670 motherboards as we could to test their VRM performance and see if they can all handle the Ryzen...

www.techspot.com

They differentiate mostly on features and VRM quality...but as he notes, at this price point the mfr's have pretty much overkilled VRM design on all the X670e boards. Especially because nobody conventionally overclocks them, going for undervolting with Curve Optimizer instead to peak out performance potential while not significantly affecting power draw on the VRM, usually even lowering it.

That's because Zen 4 is thermally constrained (as is Zen 3 to a lesser degree) and undervolting improves thermals a lot, allowing the CPU to boost cores higher/longer within the same thermal envelope. We don't know what Zen 5 (or Zen 6 if it comes out in time) will be like but I tend to doubt this trend will be broken.