Do most x470 boards support PCIe gen4 ?

[thekingofmonks]

I'm asking because I wonder if I could just save money and get an x370 instead to pair with a Zen 2 CPU

[Levent]

AFAIK only select B450 and X470 boards do. Fucking AMD.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

3 minutes ago, thekingofmonks said:

I'm asking because I wonder if I could just save money and get an x370 instead to pair with a Zen 2 CPU

Country?

Budget for the full build?

Usecases?

Existing parts?

 

X boards are a waste of money unless you need the extra pcie slots and you are better off with a b board unless the x board is the same price and the same tier or above the b board in that case might aswell get the x board

 

I assume you are looking at used boards? In which case you are atleast on the right track cause its stupid to buy new overpriced am4, just specify what boards and cpus are available and for what price

 

As for pcie gen4 thats useless unless you have a 6500xt or have a gen4 drive (which are in turn completely useless for gaming) so dont really have to worry about it

[PDifolco]

29 minutes ago, thekingofmonks said:

I'm asking because I wonder if I could just save money and get an x370 instead to pair with a Zen 2 CPU

What do you need in terms of PCIe lanes ?

Why a X470 over a B550 ?? It doesn't make much sense to me

[mariushm]

PCI-e 4.0 requires better quality pcb, better trace layout... you could  get the signal quality required by pci-e 4.0 with more pcb layers (and routing traces on multiple layers), and it just so happens that SOME x470 chipset motherboards were made with more layers, like server motherboards. x370 boards were in general lousy, not worth buying one today.

 

Even with x470, use or more layers  made the circuit board more expensive so they saved somewhere else, like in VRM quality for example, and using older onboard audio chips... there's quite a few B450 motherboards that have much better VRMs than x470 motherboards. It was only worth over B450 if you really needed to be able to separate the 16 into 2 x8 slots.

 

 

[YoungBlade]

There were B450 and X470 boards that supported PCIe Gen 4. Unfortunately, AMD required that their board partners patch out support, as they wanted to keep PCIe Gen 4 exclusive to B550 and X570 boards.

 

So if you luck out and get a B450 or X470 board that at one point had the functionality, and happens to still have a BIOS that allows for PCIe Gen 4, or are able to load one on, then yes, you can get Gen 4. Unfortunately, these BIOSes predate Ryzen 5000 series, so you can't get both 5000 series and PCIe Gen 4 at the same time - only Zen 2 (3000 series) would give that option. Even then, it'll only be for the primary M.2 slot (if that) and the graphics card slot. Any secondary PCIe or M.2 ports will be Gen 2 or Gen 3.

 

IMO, it's not worth the hassle of trying to set up such a system. Not only are you trapped on an old version of the BIOS that isn't going to have the latest security and stability improvements, and that will limit your upgrade path, but in general, PCIe Gen 4 isn't that useful for general consumers. Apart from x4 GPUs like the RX 6500XT, it really only helps in situations where you need a lot of fast sequential read/write performance, which for most folks is just hi-res video editing, and large file transfers. So unless you work with large files all the time, or do high-res video editing, you really won't feel a benefit to Gen 4 anyway.

 

And if you really, really need Gen 4, the only platform that will let you get it for multiple M.2 slots on AM4 is X570 - even B550 only has it for the primary slot. And if you're buying multiple Gen 4 drives, I think you can afford the premium to go X570 over X470.

 

Basically, unless you actually are doing video editing, or you do something that involves moving big files around all the time, don't worry about Gen 4. Just get a quality drive (either Gen 3 or above) and use it. You'll be fine.

[StarsMars]

On 4/15/2024 at 6:43 AM, thekingofmonks said:

I'm asking because I wonder if I could just save money and get an x370 instead to pair with a Zen 2 CPU

It's not worth the $20 you're going to save. B550/X570 have better ram compatibility and pcie gen 4.

From what I recall, x370 and x470 used kind of a generic chipset and "made it work."