Is this your view? Many feel AM5 motherboards fall short in performance and compatibility.
Is this your view? Many feel AM5 motherboards fall short in performance and compatibility.
My present setup is an ASUS ROG Strix X570-E Gaming WiFi. Usually I wouldn’t pick an X570 chipset, but my cousin—always chasing the newest tech—gave me his after switching to AM5, making it a solid choice without any issues. It works well, and I haven’t had any complaints. Now I’m aiming to assemble an AM5 system from scratch, and I looked at the X670E-E as a possible alternative to the X570-E. The names seem very similar except for the chipset, but my expectations didn’t match reality. It feels like a step back in many areas, beyond just the obvious performance gains you’d expect from a newer platform. It reminds me of the RTX 5090—it’s definitely faster than its predecessor, but still faces criticism over price and limitations.
PCIe Expansion The X670E offers only three PCIe slots: two x16 and one x1. In contrast, the X570-E provides three x16 slots plus two x1 slots, giving more room for upgrades. Of course, none support PCIe 5.0, but that’s unlikely unless you need it. Most expansion cards today work fine with PCIe 4.0 or even 3.0, which is plenty for most needs.
Storage The X670E includes four M.2 NVMe slots—three PCIe 5.0 and one PCIe 4.0. This seems excessive, similar to the past trend of adding more PCIe slots than necessary. While PCIe 5.0 is gaining traction, it’s not essential for everyday use. For most purposes, PCIe 4.0 or 3.0 should suffice.
Back when PCIe 4.0 launched, the norm was one 4.0 slot plus others at 3.0. That setup was effective. The X670E’s configuration mirrors that, but it doesn’t offer much practical advantage.
IO & Features The X570-E has fewer internal headers—less fan control, RGB headers, and generic I/O pins. It’s a bit of a compromise. The missing segmented POST code display is another downside; it was a nice touch on my current board but feels like a missed opportunity.
Linux users often prefer Gen 5 slots for boot drives, so I’m considering using one for Windows tasks. However, I’m not keen on PCIe 5.0 drives—they tend to be power-hungry, generate more heat, and don’t deliver noticeable speed gains in real scenarios. I also doubt they’re affordable enough for large-scale use. SATA remains the go-to for bulk storage due to its cost-effectiveness and sufficient speeds for most needs.
The X670E has six SATA ports, but two are disabled when many M.2 drives are connected. I rely on M-DISC for archival tasks with an internal optical drive, though I might adjust that setup if needed. In my view, SATA SSDs are still the best choice for bulk storage—they’re fast enough for media and documents, and the 6 Gbps connection is more than adequate.
Overall, the board feels like a step back compared to what I was expecting, especially when considering practicality over raw specs.
Yeah, the combination of PCIe 5.0 and its higher cost of implementation + the cost of everything going up the past few years really did a number on AM5 motherboard pricing (and equivalent Intel boards too). We're absolutely paying more and getting less in terms of features. If you want to use a lot of SATA drives, the solution is probably to get an M.2-to-SATA or PCIe-to-SATA adapter. You should theoretically be able to run a whole bunch of SATA drives off a single PCIe 5.0x4 connection, presuming you can find an adapter that has the number of ports you want. But overall yeah I agree with you. Like, my MSI B550-VC board obviously doesn't have PCIe 5.0, but it does have a whole bunch of PCIe slots and eight SATA ports, so if what I need is I/O capacity rather than pure speed, it's in some ways better than most AM5 boards (at least, without buying an add-in card for storage expansion).
It does feel like user needs are changing and mobos are reflecting that. How many PCIe cards do people use? Apart from the GPU, I'm going to guess most will never add one. Maybe Wifi if the mobo doesn't have it built in, maybe NIC if you need faster than supported. Video capture card? We're getting very niche at this point. Sound cards? That's the 2nd part, how many of these use cases need more than 3.0 x1? Without checking, I assume two of the x16 slots are CPU connected, running either x16 + x0 or x8 + x8. The third one will likely be connected to chipset, and at most it would be wired as x4. Also expansion is possibly by USB. I went for a USB connected capture device over a PCIe one. That takes us to storage. That's where those lanes are going. Maybe 2 M.2s are enough for light users, but it is nice to have options on higher end boards. I think the average power user is more likely to run to a 3rd M.2 than needing more PCIe slots. SATA is only really great for bulk storage on HD. SATA SSDs don't make sense to me. I've not checked recently but there was no price advantage over NVMe, at a significant limit to performance. And optical drive? Today, that's extremely niche. Overall, if you have very specific needs, then look for a board that might deliver that, rather than complaining that a possible direct generational successor doesn't do it.
I own two PCIe cards in my setup: one for the GPU and another for an M.2 card. The M.2 card is just for showing off, since I’m a total geek. If I wanted, I could swap everything onto the main motherboard.
Included with the motherboard, it converts a M.2 x4 slot into 4x1 Gen 4 lanes for this purpose.
They’ve taken out PCie slots for M2, which are really limited. Mine has three 3x Gen5 and one 1x Gen4 M2 slots, plus two 16x Gen5 (only x16/0 or x8/x4) and a single 16x Gen4 at x4 lanes. This setup looks the most practical I’ve seen... Why bother with four M2 drives?