Why Are There No Motherboards That Support PCIe Gen 5 SSDs and GPUs?

[xxSoulKilla22xx]

So I've been thinking about buying a pretty high end PC, and wanted to future proof it as best as I can, but after looking at Motherboards, I've realized that there aren't any that can support a PCIe 5 SSD and GPU at their full speeds. One lane (usually the GPU) will get cut to PCIe 5 x8, and I've been wondering, is this because current CPUs/Chipsets can't handle the bandwidth, or do board manufacturers not see a reason to start producing boards that powerful. Or is there another reason I'm not thinking of? 

[Jurrunio]

That's because Intel 13th gen only has 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes. The rest are PCIe 4.0

[GuiltySpark_]

There certainly are. My board, X670E Taichi can, for instance. Not the only one. 

 

[xxSoulKilla22xx]

27 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

That's because Intel 13th gen only has 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes. The rest are PCIe 4.0

So unless next gen CPUs have 24 or more PCIe 5 lanes, there won't be any boards that can support a full speed PCIe 5 SSD and GPU?

[Alex Atkin UK]

36 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

That's because Intel 13th gen only has 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes. The rest are PCIe 4.0

Which of course is fine, given the best CPU on that platform is pretty much tapping out on an RTX 4090, which I do not believe is maxing out PCIe 4.0.  So a GPU that needs PCIe 5.0 will be WAY too powerful for a 13th gen to keep up anyway.

 

2 minutes ago, xxSoulKilla22xx said:

So unless next gen CPUs have 24 or more PCIe 5 lanes, there won't be any boards that can support a full speed PCIe 5 SSD and GPU?

No, as mentioned above, AM5 can handle it and is the only platform likely to get a CPU powerful enough to not bottleneck on a GPU fast enough to need PCIe 5.0 anyway.

 

Most games are bottlenecked by single-thread speed still on an RTX 4090 and current Intel boards aren't likely getting any faster CPUs.  So that counts them out of being future proof anyway.

[SupaKomputa]

At this generation, there are no GPU that support pcie5, top of the line Nvidia / AMD still using pcie4, they simply don't need it.

Secondly you wont see the benefit using pcie5 SSD, unless you are running high bandwidth applications like rendering.

The only chipset that support full / mostly pcie5 is X670E.

Ask again in 2-3 years when theres actual gpu need pcie5.

 

[ewitte]

On my B650E board I have a 5.0 GPU slot and 1x 5.0 NVME slot.  The rest are 4.0.

[ewitte]

51 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

At this generation, there are no GPU that support pcie5, top of the line Nvidia / AMD still using pcie4, they simply don't need it.

Secondly you wont see the benefit using pcie5 SSD, unless you are running high bandwidth applications like rendering.

The only chipset that support full / mostly pcie5 is X670E.

Ask again in 2-3 years when theres actual gpu need pcie5.

 

Really it isn't about the need it is about the ability to use x8 or even x4 on the GPU, get full speed and have those lanes available for other things.  The same thing goes for NVME drives if you have to ability to limit to x2, etc.

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, ewitte said:

Really it isn't about the need it is about the ability to use x8 or even x4 on the GPU, get full speed and have those lanes available for other things.  The same thing goes for NVME drives if you have to ability to limit to x2, etc.

That's not really going to matter when the other slots are PCIe 4.0 anyway which is more than enough for anything else you need to slap into a slot.

 

The problem is the faster PCIe gets, the more layers you need on the motherboard to wire them up.  So a 16x slot and a single M.2, both right next to the CPU, is pretty much all you're likely to get on consumer boards at any sane price.  As to go higher than that you're building a board effectively at enterprise costs.

[Jurrunio]

4 hours ago, xxSoulKilla22xx said:

So unless next gen CPUs have 24 or more PCIe 5 lanes, there won't be any boards that can support a full speed PCIe 5 SSD and GPU?

Well there's the HEDT platform (X299/TR4 replacement) that could do that if they decide to put those on the market and would count as "current gen", but your "relatively high end build" budget won't keep up with their prices.

 

5 hours ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

There certainly are. My board, X670E Taichi can, for instance. Not the only one. 

He's talking about PCIe 5 x16 to a PCIe slot and PCIe 5 x4 to an M.2 slot at the same time. Your board can only do it separately.

[GuiltySpark_]

2 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

He's talking about PCIe 5 x16 to a PCIe slot and PCIe 5 x4 to an M.2 slot at the same time. Your board can only do it separately.

Really? It looks to have dedicated x16 Gen5 lanes to the PCIe slot(slots if done x8/x8) and then another dedicated x4 Gen5 lanes to the top M.2. 

[Jurrunio]

9 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

Really? It looks to have dedicated x16 Gen5 lanes to the PCIe slot(slots if done x8/x8) and then another dedicated x4 Gen5 lanes to the top M.2. 

 

My bad, should have take a rest

[ewitte]

18 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

That's not really going to matter when the other slots are PCIe 4.0 anyway which is more than enough for anything else you need to slap into a slot.

 

The problem is the faster PCIe gets, the more layers you need on the motherboard to wire them up.  So a 16x slot and a single M.2, both right next to the CPU, is pretty much all you're likely to get on consumer boards at any sane price.  As to go higher than that you're building a board effectively at enterprise costs.

Future looking the higher PCIe goes the fewer lanes you will need for the same bandwidth.  And yes, if you have a 2nd 4.0 slot you can run the GPU at 4.0x8 in that and put a 4x4 card in the 5.0 slot as long as it supports PCIe bifurcation.

[GuiltySpark_]

3 minutes ago, MikadoWu said:

 

For the record I want to Future proff too, however...  Please link the PCIe 5.0 M.2?  Wait, they are at least 2-4 years away.  Samsungs latest M.2 the 990 Pro does not Saturate the PCIe 4 lanes, though it is close.  I have run this test on my system. 

 

 

 

 

I'd like to say for the record I am not arguing for people needing drives like this but some things should be corrected. 

 

I'm not sure if you just don't follow tech news but Gen5 drives can be bought today. In the US at least for the last week you could walk into Microcenter and walk out with their TD510 that'll do 10GB/s sequential read/write.

 

Others are launching around this time to so to say they're 2-4 years away, I think you're simply just out of the loop. 

 

Again, the usefuless of drives like this for normal people though is indeed extremely silly. 

 

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

4 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

 

I'd like to say for the record I am not arguing for people needing drives like this but some things should be corrected. 

 

I'm not sure if you just don't follow tech news but Gen5 drives can be bought today. In the US at least for the last week you could walk into Microcenter and walk out with their TD510 that'll do 10GB/s sequential read/write.

 

Others are launching around this time to so to say they're 2-4 years away, I think you're simply just out of the loop. 

 

Again, the usefuless of drives like this for normal people though is indeed extremely silly.

Wow that's a janky card, surely needs a much better heatsink design for the fan to work effectively?
Even the ones with heatpipes, the slot will be right above a hot GPU so keeping the cards from thermal throttling must be fun.

[Ripred]

Because were still getting used to the shock of 4.0

[GuiltySpark_]

Just now, Ripred said:

Because were still getting used to the shock of 4.0

Is it a shock? You can pick up an SN770 or UD90 that'll do 5GB/s read/write for $60 for a 1TB, $120 for 2TB. I've got two SN770's in my current machine because the prices have been dropping like rocks. 

[Ripred]

Just now, GuiltySpark_ said:

Is it a shock? You can pick up an SN770 or UD90 that'll do 5GB/s read/write for $60 for a 1TB, $120 for 2TB. I've got two SN770's in my current machine because the prices have been dropping like rocks. 

Shock as in still trying to find useful real world workloads that can make use of what 4.0 provides 

[ewitte]

2 hours ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

Is it a shock? You can pick up an SN770 or UD90 that'll do 5GB/s read/write for $60 for a 1TB, $120 for 2TB. I've got two SN770's in my current machine because the prices have been dropping like rocks. 

QLC and no DRAM.  No thanks.  Maybe for unimportant things on a USB enclosure.

[Ripred]

Just now, ewitte said:

QLC and no DRAM.  No thanks.

Everyone gets so bent out of shape over no Dram

[GuiltySpark_]

36 minutes ago, Ripred said:

Everyone gets so bent out of shape over no Dram

Yeah it’s a bit of an outdated mentality these days for mainstream/gaming desktop PCs. You gain nothing with DRAM drives except a bigger hole in your wallet but people still feel like it’s the end of the world. HMB solved this issue for the majority of users on the desktop. 

[Ripred]

Just now, GuiltySpark_ said:

Yeah it’s a bit of an outdated mentality these days for mainstream/gaming desktop PCs. You gain nothing with DRAM drives except a bigger hole in your wallet but people still feel like it’s the end of the world. HMB solved this issue for the majority of users on the desktop. 

Well I can understand for certain use cases if your doing certain specific tasks that move large amounts of data all at once, all the time but besides that for the everyday user it seems like a diminished return now a days, my SN550 has no dram and I'm still amused by howmuch faster it is than my last SSD however besides gaining a few seconds loading times I haven't seen much use in upgrading yet, though nvmes are relatively cheap atm, might pick up a WD black for kicks just to keep around until my Blue fails  

[Ripred]

Though when Direct storage becomes a thing for PC gamers I might change opinions but that remains to be seen

[ewitte]

57 minutes ago, Ripred said:

Everyone gets so bent out of shape over no Dram

Drives with the buffer can handle higher workloads without latency adding up.  I hate latency.  Also, QLC drives after the buffer are worse than SATA drives with really bad write ratings.

[Ripred]

1 minute ago, ewitte said:

Drives with the buffer can handle higher workloads without latency adding up.  I hate latency.  Also, QLC drives after the buffer are worse than SATA drives with really bad write ratings.

Right, that's what I was getting at for larger workloads, and agreed QLC seems to have more issues than they're worth,I'm not over concerned with latency not for what I do but I am concerned about longevity which seems to be an issue with QLC at the moment atleast