Thursday, July 11th 2024
The B650E Aorus Stealth Ice is Gigabyte's First Motherboard for AMD CPUs with its Connectors on the Back
Gigabyte's new Stealth series of motherboards has to date only had a single product, the Z690 Aorus Elite Stealth, but now, Gigabyte has added its first Stealth board for AMD CPUs. The B650E Aorus Stealth Ice not only has all of its connectors on the back of the board, but it also has a white/silver PCB with a similarly coloured front and back cover. Apart from the DIMM slots, all connectors are also in somewhat matching colours, although judging by the pictures, the colours don't quite match on all the connectors and slots. That aside, the B650E Aorus Stealth Ice is a pretty competent board, as long as you're not interested in adding anything more than a graphics card and some NVMe SSDs, as it has zero additional PCIe expansion slots. It's a rather bold move by Gigabyte, but at the same time, most gamers and consumers don't tend to add PCIe devices to their computers outside of additional storage these days.
Besides the PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, you get two M.2 sockets wired to the CPU, one PCIe 5.0—with its own, larger heatsink—and one PCIe 4.0, as well as a third PCIe 4.0 M.2 socket via the chipset. There's also support for four SATA 6 Gbps drives if more storage is needed. Gigabyte has also added an internal HDMI 1.4 port that's limited to 1080p30, which is intended to be used with Gigabyte's LCD Edge View display. Other connectivity on the back of the PCB includes a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) port, a USB 3.2 (5 Gbps) pin-header as well as the usual USB 2.0, fan headers and LED headers that you'd expect from a modern motherboard. The VRM design is a 12+2+2 design with a 60 Amp DrMOS configuration for the 12+2 phases for the CPU and GPU.
Around the rear of the board you'll find a single HDMI 2.1 port which is limited to 4K 60 Hz, a USB Type-C port that delivers 10 Gbps of data in most instances—but will support USB4 with the right APU in the CPU socket—that also offers PD Alt Mode support for up to 4K 144 Hz. There's also a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port, Gigabyte's newWiFi EZ-Plug for the WiFi antenna, which is connected to a MediaTek MT7925 WiFi 7 / Bluetooth 5.4 module, which sadly is limited to 160 MHz channel width. Finally there are two 10 Gbps USB Type-A ports, five 5 Gbps USB-Type A ports and four USB 2.0 ports, three audio jacks connected to the old ALC897 audio chip and a Q-Flash Plus button. Overall it looks like a pretty competent B650E board, but with the 800-series chipset just around the corner, it might have been wiser to release this as a B850 board, at least to win over consumers that don't know that the two are the same chipset. Gigabyte provides a list of compatible chassis here.
Sources:
Gigabyte, via VideoCardz
Besides the PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, you get two M.2 sockets wired to the CPU, one PCIe 5.0—with its own, larger heatsink—and one PCIe 4.0, as well as a third PCIe 4.0 M.2 socket via the chipset. There's also support for four SATA 6 Gbps drives if more storage is needed. Gigabyte has also added an internal HDMI 1.4 port that's limited to 1080p30, which is intended to be used with Gigabyte's LCD Edge View display. Other connectivity on the back of the PCB includes a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) port, a USB 3.2 (5 Gbps) pin-header as well as the usual USB 2.0, fan headers and LED headers that you'd expect from a modern motherboard. The VRM design is a 12+2+2 design with a 60 Amp DrMOS configuration for the 12+2 phases for the CPU and GPU.
94 Comments on The B650E Aorus Stealth Ice is Gigabyte's First Motherboard for AMD CPUs with its Connectors on the Back
You've clearly missed the fact that the 800-series AMD chipsets are the same as the 600-series by large, with the addition of USB4 on the higher-end SKUs.
www.techpowerup.com/323052/amd-shuffles-feature-sets-of-its-800-series-chipset-x870-is-b650e-successor
Admittedly the X870E would offer more connectivity, if that's what you're after, but this board clearly isn't it then.
videocardz.com/newz/asus-diy-ape-revolution-project-is-an-attempt-to-improve-pc-cable-management
www.techpowerup.com/305910/msi-also-working-on-motherboard-with-connectors-on-the-reverse-side
videocardz.com/newz/colorful-launches-b760-igame-ultra-z-motherboard-with-backside-connectors-at-167
Mini-ITX, not really, but this xinese company makes a few oddities.
www.techpowerup.com/323432/maxsun-showcases-unique-mini-itx-motherboard-and-other-models-at-computex-2024
It just sounds weird calling this the "bottom"...
That backside HDMI will be fantastic for inside the case displays. Looks clean alright! PC cases better start making way for it :)
I love proprietary standards that fail to gain traction and force people to throw out the motherboard or buy an add-in card if they damage the original. The good news is that nobody ever rips off the WiFi antenna by accident because they don't stick out the back or anything like that, so it's probably a moot point.
/s obvs.
I would qualify those words with "surface" to remove that ambiguity, i.e. "top surface" and "bottom surface". "Underside" works but it doesn't really have a common complementary antonym; "overside" and "topside" are correct but not often heard. Yes, English is a dumb language.Proprietary BS seems to be this year's bright idea from the intellectually bankrupt hardware vendors, because that's a lot easier then actually innovating. Probably "AI" told them to do it... pity it didn't tell them that the only reason the PC ecosystem works is because it's non-proprietary.
My only concern is is imagine a first time PC builder with a limited budget buying this used motherboard 10+ years from now and buying the cheapest case they can find that isn't compatible with cable routing.... yikes
Yeah - I get it.
Some cases may be setup to allow this but at the same time, now you'll have the privilege of hunting trouble on both sides of the board at times.
Someone's "Better Idea" which, to me is a "Bastardization" of the core concept just to be different can turn out to be a nightmare too.
Being different in itself is easy to do..... I mean it works but like it is with automotive designs, the engineers behind it only need to worry about whether it actually works or not - Actually working with it (Fixing it) is someone else's headache.
If you like what you see, by all means do go for it but personally I'm not gonna touch one of these.
The point is, you won't find many USB-C ports on the rear panel because USB-C devices are almost exclusively portable devices that would need a case connector on the front. A dual-port header is included on just about any modern motherboard and if your case manufacturer is being a d*** by not including the relevant ports, blame your case manufacturer, not the motherboard vendor or AMD. If you really need more USB-C ports, you can adapt the USB 3.2G2 19-pin header for 10Gbps, and even the 3.2G1 9-pin headers if you just need basic connectivity for an input peripheral or charging. Adapters are on Amazon and Ebay globally for very low prices and you can get them for mere cents from Aliexpress if you have two weeks of patience.