Question Gigabyte B650M AORUS ELITE AX (Rev. 1.x) or MSI B650M MORTAR?

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Feb 26, 2023
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Hello! Which MB between of these is better and why? I own an Ryzen 5 7600X (bought it in mid-January this year) plus AMD Radeon RX6650XT and want to pair it also with an Kingston Fury RENEGADE Silver 32GB DDR5 6000 MHz kit. Any thoughts/opinions, pros/cons? Thanks in advance.
 
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I would avoid the Kingston Fury and Corsair Vengeance memory kits if you're going to run a Ryzen platform. They both have a pretty high incident of not playing nice with Ryzen hardware. Even if you see the model on the motherboard QVL, it means nothing with those kits because both Kingston and Corsair tend to randomly change the ICs (Memory chips) used on those series so a kit with a specific model that works fine with a certain board/CPU one time may well not do so the next time because it's composition may be changed from one production run to the next. It happens quite frequently and we see a lot of those situations.

I'd recommend sticking to G.Skill Flare X, Ripjaws or Trident Z5 kits AND I'd make certain any kit you buy is one that G.Skill says is compatible by looking at their Memory Configurator first. Otherwise, I'd stick to the higher end series from whatever manufacturer you DO end up buying from and in that case, aside from Corsair or Crucial who both have their own memory compatibility lists/utilities, that any kit you buy is actually on the motherboard QVL list. Generally speaking the higher end the kit is the less likely it is that they will just randomly switch ICs used for that model and that matters because those ICs have much to do with whether a given kit plays nice with specific hardware or not.

As far as the motherboard goes, myself, I'd recommend sticking with the Aorus Elite AX. I have several of them from several different generations of both AMD and Intel platforms and they have all been solid boards. Reviews seem to indicate THIS particular Aorus Elite AX is pretty solid as well.


The Mortar boards have been fairly decent in the past, but I wouldn't put them on the same level as the Elite AX.
 
I would avoid the Kingston Fury and Corsair Vengeance memory kits if you're going to run a Ryzen platform. They both have a pretty high incident of not playing nice with Ryzen hardware. Even if you see the model on the motherboard QVL, it means nothing with those kits because both Kingston and Corsair tend to randomly change the ICs (Memory chips) used on those series so a kit with a specific model that works fine with a certain board/CPU one time may well not do so the next time because it's composition may be changed from one production run to the next. It happens quite frequently and we see a lot of those situations.

I'd recommend sticking to G.Skill Flare X, Ripjaws or Trident Z5 kits AND I'd make certain any kit you buy is one that G.Skill says is compatible by looking at their Memory Configurator first. Otherwise, I'd stick to the higher end series from whatever manufacturer you DO end up buying from and in that case, aside from Corsair or Crucial who both have their own memory compatibility lists/utilities, that any kit you buy is actually on the motherboard QVL list. Generally speaking the higher end the kit is the less likely it is that they will just randomly switch ICs used for that model and that matters because those ICs have much to do with whether a given kit plays nice with specific hardware or not.

As far as the motherboard goes, myself, I'd recommend sticking with the Aorus Elite AX. I have several of them from several different generations of both AMD and Intel platforms and they have all been solid boards. Reviews seem to indicate THIS particular Aorus Elite AX is pretty solid as well.


The Mortar boards have been fairly decent in the past, but I wouldn't put them on the same level as the Elite AX.
Running an 16 GB DDR4 @3200MHz Dual Channel kit from Kingston Fury Renegade on my my entry/mid-tier PC machine (Ryzen 5 4600G, RX570 w/B550M Mortar, Windows 10 PRO x64) and didn't encountered any compatibility issues since. I've watched some videos and read that indeed some of memory kits doesn't or refuse to work very well or boot while using an Ryzen 7000 series, especially over 6000MHz speeds. Ripjaws S5 looks really sweet, especially they are low-profile and shouldn't be a problem using an air cooler tower type like Arctic 34 DUO, so I might get that soon but not sure if that memory kit (Ripjaws S5) is "AMD EXPO" compatible. I see the B650M AORUS Elitx AX does look really nice and the REAR I/O has like 11 or so USB ports, audio/mic jacks and digital ports (for my personal use it's more than just enough) and also has 1x PCI-E 5.0 for NVMe SSD which it will be very useful in near future when PCI-E 5.0 SSD will be available, very decent/good power stages (enough for my R5 7600X, will change it with an R7 7700 in a near future when it will be a bit more cheap) and so on. Not sure about the PCI-E release latch from Gigabyte board, if will interfere with the backplate of my RX6650XT XFX. How's the BIOS from Gigabyte in general? I know it does look very similar to ASUS PRIME/TUF/ROG STRIX boards, but different colors/font.

Edit: Sorry for the way I wrote since my English isn't my daily-use language.
 
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Both of the boards you listed as options, and in fact, MOST boards these days, have that style of PCIe lock release specifically BECAUSE the common style we are used to is incredibly hard to access given the size and width of graphics cards these days because they almost (Or completely) totally hide the lock release. While I haven't worked with one of the newer releases on a big card yet I'd want to assume that since it's not just one board manufacturer using this style of release, that they know what they are doing and that it shouldn't interfere (And should in fact make things EASIER) with any modern card's backplate unless you have some unusual configuration or custom backplate. They'd be really stepping on their own junk if they managed to alienate the owners of ANY card models by doing that, so I have to believe it's a non-issue.

Doesn't look like there are any Ripjaws S5 kits with EXPO, only the Flare X and Trident Z5 kits have it. To be honest, both those series are excellent anyhow and they don't look much different from one series to the next anymore with the new style heatsinks anyway so probably makes little difference. As well, just because a kit doesn't have an EXPO profile, does not mean it can't or won't work with a given motherboard. Even WITH an EXPO profile you should STILL check compatiblity because a kit that works fine with one AMD board might not work with another even if they are from the same chipset family and are using the same CPU.
 
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