Review Gigabyte B650E Aorus Master Review: A PCIe 5.0 M.2 Party

[Admin]

The Gigabyte B650E Aorus Master is an affordable mid-range motherboard capable of driving the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X processor. At under $350, it’s a fully equipped board with four PCIe 5.0 M.2 sockets, 13 USB ports on the rear IO, and a premium neutral appearance that blends in with most build themes.

Gigabyte B650E Aorus Master Review: A PCIe 5.0 M.2 Party : Read more

 

[-Fran-]

Why are these morons trying to market these things up to the point where they put themselves out of the friggen' market! WHY?!

All of that garbage in these motherboards is just not needed. Get rid of all that plastic, keep the same quality component and go a bit more barebones for the midrange chipset. We want cheap and functional, not stupid bling for parts which are meant to be cost effective. Yes, there's cheaper parts, but they not only cut trivial stuff; they also cut things that are actually good to have (WiFi+BT, audio codec, 10Gb LAN, etc).

EDIT: Thanks for the review as well. I forgot to mention it!

Regards >_<

 

[TechieTwo]

Unfortunately bling sells. Some consumers are even swayed by the fancy box that the product comes in. I never could figure out how the box made the product perform any better... 😕

 

[mikeebb]

Yes, bling sells. But in most cases there's a "Pro" line or something similar that's plainer but with similar guts. Perhaps fewer USB ports (which can be a problem, e.g. I have a MSI Pro board that works great but has only 5 back-panel USB and 3 on-board headers for internal, which I have filled except for one USB C internal header and one USB C external (most of my add-ons are happy with USB 2)). But plain-vanilla doesn't check all the boxes for a magazine review; bling does.

 

[Elusive Ruse]

Since reading a rant about massive VRMs os cultists network it's become a pet peeve of mine to spot these unnecessary additions. Mind you, I'm not so well versed in this subject; if someone can explain why I would need a 20 phase VRM I'd love to hear it.

PS: Thanks for the review, I was wondering if you got some reviews for cheaper AM5 boards in the pipelines as well?

 

[Oldcompsci]

Why do motherboard makers keep wasting lanes on USB ports? Give us more x4 and x8 PCIe slots and we can expand the NVME solutions via vertical, vice horizontal, expansion options. I'd also like to see a revamp of SATA. Base it on USB 4.0 and make removable, hot swap, hard drives useful again.

 

[RichardtST]

I'll probably upgrade next year when the 3D CPU versions come out, but what I'd like to see is more love given to the NVME slots. I copy massive multi-hundred-gigabyte files around and can easily overheat them. I need more space for fancy-schmancy-oversized nvme coolers. I can't keep 'em cool when they're stuck under the graphics card.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

A B650 series motherboard that costs more than my X570S Aorus Master motherboard...Yeah, really makes me want to update to Socket AM5...

 

[Math Geek]

A B650 series motherboard that costs more than my X570S Aorus Master motherboard...Yeah, really makes me want to update to Socket AM5...

so you've clearly not been paying attention to anything since AM5 came out. ALL the AM5 boards are more expensive than their 4 and 500 series AM4 parts.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/why-amds-ryzen-7000-and-motherboards-cost-so-damn-much

 

[-Fran-]

A B650 series motherboard that costs more than my X570S Aorus Master motherboard...Yeah, really makes me want to update to Socket AM5...

Compare these two:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...ocket-am5-ddr5-atx-motherboard-mb-6j5-as.html

vs

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...-lga-1700-ddr5-atx-motherboard-mb-6jh-as.html

The Z790 is more expensive and has worse features. I don't know if that's the rule of thumb, but I'm finding more and more examples of it. That's one aspect of why they're more expensive on the average, but I'm starting to doubt it's without reason on the chipset front. All the extra bling is still annoying and dislike getting charged for it.

Regards.

 

[alceryes]

I didn't even know Tom's had a review on this board.
After researching, this is the one I ended up with for my 7950X build. Truthfully, the BIOS was an unfinished mess out of the box. I had to do the no-CPU BIOS flashback to put the latest BIOS on to get it to post (memory used is on QVL). Once I got the latest BIOS on and tweaked settings to my liking it's been rock solid though.

The 'Con' about a last-gen audio codec is misleading. The ALC1220 on this board has identical performance and fidelity to the ALC4082. The 4082 is NOT the successor to the 1220.

 

[MrEntropy]

I bought one for my 7900X setup. Flashed the new BIOS, which solved the XMP issues. However, I have an issue where the on-board audio does not work after awake from sleep. Anyone else seen this issue?