Your Asus motherboard seems capable, but consider upgrading if you need more performance or features.
Your Asus motherboard seems capable, but consider upgrading if you need more performance or features.
Hello, I own an Asus ROG B650E equipped with a Ryzen 7950X and 64 GB of RAM, along with a 3090ti. I plan to use the system for gaming and intensive 3D rendering. It functions well, and I've reviewed some user feedback. I intend to utilize 3 or 4 of the M.2 NVME slots and will employ 2 SATA 6 ports. In this review, I came across a comment on laurentschoice.com that raises concerns about the motherboard's capabilities. Specifically, it mentions that the B650E-E may not support RAID arrays on SATA ports and highlights the limitations of the four SATA ports, which include an outdated ASMedia controller (ASM1061) with a maximum speed of 400MB/s. This could significantly slow down HDD performance by about 35-40%. The reviewer suggests running a Crystaldisk benchmark using SSDs and HDDs to confirm this issue. They advise pointing out this major concern to help prevent buyers from purchasing the wrong product. The main worry here is the actual SATA III port speed, which is 400MB/s instead of the advertised 6Gbps. I intend to use SSDs for gaming (one dedicated M.2 slot for games, more for other titles) and HDDs for storage. If this affects performance and efficiency, I might need to consider a different board. Additionally, I'm curious about the suitability of this board for my intended use and whether upgrading to a X670E or another model would be better. Should I invest in Thunderbolt 4 or a 10Gb LAN?
How much fast storage do you actually require? With 3 to 4 PCIe SSDs, you should be fine for anything a typical user needs. They now offer 8TB or bigger drives, and even if you keep some HDDs, speed is already limited. MB RAID isn't very useful either... SATA is mostly just an old interface for using outdated hardware. It doesn’t serve as a foundation for building high-performance systems. Just stick with what you have until you need more.
You can utilize 8TB (or bigger) drives and divide them to limit the total number. I’m not sure if 4x8TB covers your needs. However, a 32TB setup puts you in the premium range. Partitioning also offers adaptability should requirements change. Unless you require an HDD so massive that an SSD becomes prohibitively costly, I wouldn’t opt for one. Regardless of SATA speed claims, HDDs will be notably slow, particularly with seek times. Are you planning a backup as well? Just to simplify cabling, I’d cut down on SATA devices. The only SATA SSD and HDD I retain are for specialized uses since I’ve kept them for a while and don’t want to discard them. No chance I’d purchase anything new in 2024. You can incorporate more M.2 SSDs using PCIe adapters beyond what’s already available.
I don’t have 32 TB of storage. My setup includes a 1TB and a 2×2TB M.2 drive on my PC. I plan to add an SSD for extra game storage since it’s more affordable, and an HDD for general use. I’ll also rely on backups.