ASUS ROG Strix X670E-I Chipset Sits on a M.2 PCB

[asdkj1740]

Hahahahahaha. Sure. Can you provide pictures?

Where is the connector for that?
And adding another chipset for a single usb2.0 port is just pure madness, even if it was there.


Why not just add a usb hub chip? They cost like 10 cents.

other manufacturers have more USB ports on a B650 board. I see no reason for the additional chipset based on that information. And to use an extra chipset to add a single usb2 port is just silly.

hub is hub, native usb is native, more is not always better if you are going to use them at the same time.
i didn't say the idea is smart.
btw, the thunderbolt's gen3x4 lanes are provided by the first chipset, but asus also put two usb ports from cpu to the tb4 type c for cpu internal grahics output.

 

[Tek-Check]

as i said, there is a usb 2.0 provided by the second chipset.

B650 chipset provides 6 USB 2.0 ports. This board provides, guess what, 6 USB 2.0 ports. Where does the second chipset provide more USB ports for?

 

[Dredi]

hub is hub, native usb is native, more is not always better if you are going to use them at the same time.
i didn't say the idea is smart.
btw, the thunderbolt's gen3x4 lanes are provided by the first chipset, but asus also put two usb ports from cpu to the tb4 type c for cpu internal signal output.

Where is the connection for the usb 2 ports from the second chipset? I don’t see any way to connect those.

And if the second chipset was used to add usb ports (still don’t see where the connection would be routed), it would be pure idiocy not to make them at least usb3 20gbps, seeing how there would be plenty of bandwidth for those.

 

[Tek-Check]

usb available from the first chipset and cpu has been fully utilized.

I calculated this, as above. Asus offers 16 ports, and CPU+chipset provide 17 ports.

 

[asdkj1740]

B650 chipset provides 6 USB 2.0 ports. This board provides, guess what, 6 USB 2.0 ports. Where does the second chipset provide more USB ports for?

the aura chip and bluetooth and alc4050 they all need usb.

I calculated this, as above. Asus offers 16 ports, and CPU+chipset provide 17 ports.

wrong calculation then.

usb hub is not a small ic, and most of them need extra flash ic and oscillator.
there is no room for that if you see the naked pcb.

 

[Dredi]

the aura chip and bluetooth and alc4050 they all need usb.


wrong calculation then.

How come strix b650e-f has 12 usb on the back, and still works with the b series chipset?

and how are the three usb2 ports routed from the second chipset?

 

[asdkj1740]

How come strix b650e-f has 12 usb on the back, and still works with the b series chipset?

i guess usb hub is used? do you have the pictures for the PCB?

 

[Tek-Check]

the aura chip and bluetooth and alc4050 they all need usb.

ok then, that 19 USB ports they need. B650+CPU provide 17 USB ports.
Are you suggesting that the only reason they installed the second chipset was to get access to two USB 2.0 ports?

 

[asdkj1740]

ok then, that 19 USB ports they need. B650+CPU provide 17 USB ports.
Are you suggesting that the only reason they installed the second chipset was to get access to two USB 2.0 ports?

the thunderbolt on board also takes two usb from cpu for graphics output.

i dont know, it could be.
and there is one only, there are two usb2.0 9-pin on the rog fsp-ii daughter pcb, and one of them is provided by the first pch on the main pcb, another 9-pin is provided by the second pch and there is just one port in that 9-pin, i believe asus calls it usb_aio something like that.

 

[Dredi]

i guess usb hub is used? do you have the pictures for the PCB?

No.

Do you have pictures of the pinout for the second chipsets connector for this board?

I calculated 33 pins per side, pciex4 takes 32 per side. There is no way to get 3 native usb2 ports with just the remaining 2 pins.

i guess you could re-use 12v lines and stuff, but the chipset and connected m.2 drive can use up to 10 amps of 3.3V. That means that there need to ve multiple pins dedicated to the power delivery, and any 12v lines free’d up are needed for the 3.3V delivery.

Standard pcie connector is rated at just 1.25 A per pin. That means that you’d need 8x 3.3V pins, meaning that you’d gain just one pin from the 12v pins -> 3.3v pins change in power delivery.

So three more at minimum need to come somewhere.

.. and it’s still stupid AF. You could just mount the USB hub on this glorified m.2 riser.

And how hot does it get? Not only the Chipset, but also the 2x M.2...especially the PCI-E Gen 5.

There is a max power consumption of 64 watts from that stack. 25W per m.2 and 7W per chipset.
Coolable? No.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Troll on/
There must be several PCIe lines that are used specifically and only for the RGB inscription "ROG". haha. So, pay yourself extra to be a "ROG"! /Troll off

 

[Dredi]

Troll on/
There must be several PCIe lines that are used specifically and only for the RGB inscription "ROG". haha. So, pay yourself extra to be a "ROG"! /Troll off

”We needed to add the chipset to get the usb for the rgb controller”

the aura chip and bluetooth and alc4050 they all need usb.

Use a hub for the three. There is no way that they can saturate the usb lane.

 

[Tek-Check]

the thunderbolt on board also takes two usb from cpu for graphics output.

i dont know, it could be.
and there is one only, there are two usb2.0 9-pin on the rog fsp-ii daughter pcb, and one of them is provided by the first pch on the main pcb, another 9-pin is provided by the second pch and there is just one port in that 9-pin, i believe asus calls it usb_aio something like that.

I included the two USB ports for TB4 in the original calculation.
For USB 2.0, B650 chipset provides 6 and CPU provides 1, so 7 in total.
There are 3 USB 2.0 at the rear, 3 in the two headers, and one for BT, audio and aura, so the board needs 9.

I struggle to understand that the only reason to include mounted second Promontory21 chipset was to add two missing USB 2.0 ports, and discard everything else that the chipset offers.

 

[Dredi]

I struggle to understand that the only reason to include mounted second Promontory21 chipset was to add two missing USB 2.0 ports, and discard everything else that the chipset offers.

Yep, and space for a hub solution is no issue, as we clearly see that there was space to mount the secondary chipset..

 

[TumbleGeorge]

So, again, we conclude that the only reason is to justify a premium markup on the selling price, not for additional functionality.

 

[roberto888]

The decision was deliberate and makes complete sense. Instead of having to design separate chipsets for mid-range and high-end, make one chipset for mid-range and just double it up for high-end - this is cheaper and helps with inventory. The trade-off is that you need double the space, but for the intended market of high-end - large motherboards with tons of connectivity - that isn't a problem.

But if you are stupid enough to do what ASUS has done here, and put a high-end double chipset on the absolutely smallest board that doesn't have enough room to expose the connectivity that is the whole point of the high-end chipset, thus entirely negating the whole point of using that chipset, then you are going to run into space constraints! ASUS have not solved a problem, they've invented one and then come up with a solution to it, to make themselves look smart and their products look good - because they are utterly incapable of innovating usefully, i.e. in a manner that adds value to consumers. Hence my "masturbation" comment.

If ASUS was actually smart, they would place the chipsets on the rear of the board and use a metal backplate covering the entirety of the back side of said board, to dissipate the chipsets' heat. But again, they're intellectually bankrupt, so they'll never do something as simple and effective as this.

How about making the chipset in a chiplet design like the CPUs? That way they could have B650 with single chiplet, and B670E or whatever with 2 chiplets, on the same substrate.

 

[Chrispy_]

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but isn't the X670E dual-chipset solution a marketing con that the mITX form factor can never actually use?

The dual-chip E-variant increases the number of PCIe lanes from the chipset (so ignoring the x16 primary PEG slot from the CPU) from 8x Gen5 to 24x Gen5. Honestly, how many M.2 slots can physically fit on an mITX board, and it's not like you can use one of the PCIe slots to add a riser because mITX only has one slot which is already running off the CPU at PCIe Gen5 x16.

It's like they wanted to put X670E in the product name to charge a premium but HOW in the hell could you ever take advantage of the extra lanes with no space on the board left and no slots available to plug in an M.2 SSD riser card!?

 

[erek]

For mITX, absolutely not. This is just masturbation by the motherboard manufacturers so that they can pretend they're innovating, and thus charge you more.

"Chipset" has been used to refer to what was formerly the southbridge ever since northbridges were integrated into the CPU. Not sure where you've been during that time...

Do you miss chipsets? Having a north and south bridge?

 

[Chrispy_]

Do you miss chipsets? Having a north and south bridge?

We still have chipsets, it's just that the Northbridge is now the CPU.

On Ryzen in particular, the function of the classic Northbridge chip (IO, memory controller, integrated graphics, expansion slot interconnects etc) is almost exactly the same subset of functions exclusively handled by the Ryzen I/O die on the CPU package. As it's a separate physical chip, that really is a "Northbridge", or at least it wouldn't be if that wasn't an Intel-specific name for the damn thing!

 

[Assimilator]

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but isn't the X670E dual-chipset solution a marketing con that the mITX form factor can never actually use?

The dual-chip E-variant increases the number of PCIe lanes from the chipset (so ignoring the x16 primary PEG slot from the CPU) from 8x Gen5 to 24x Gen5. Honestly, how many M.2 slots can physically fit on an mITX board, and it's not like you can use one of the PCIe slots to add a riser because mITX only has one slot which is already running off the CPU at PCIe Gen5 x16.

It's like they wanted to put X670E in the product name to charge a premium but HOW in the hell could you ever take advantage of the extra lanes with no space on the board left and no slots available to plug in an M.2 SSD riser card!?

This is pretty much what myself and others in this thread have been alluding to, although maybe not as directly. It's a scam to part fools from their money, and sadly it'll work.

Do you miss chipsets? Having a north and south bridge?

That's a very strange question.

 

[Chrispy_]

This is pretty much what myself and others in this thread have been alluding to, although maybe not as directly. It's a scam to part fools from their money, and sadly it'll work.

IIRC the single-chip X670 platform, as a whole, has Gen5 support for up to three M.2 slots, before dropping down to Gen4 lanes. One Gen5 x4 directly hanging off the CPU's lanes, and then two Gen5 x4 slots running off the chipset.

I could be wrong, but even those mITX boards I've seen that hide a couple of M.2 slot behind the motherboard only have room for three M.2 slots in total, which doesn't necessitate the additional lanes of an X670E

Other ancillary stuff like USB4 port(s) and even dual 10GbE NICs are all far lower bandwidth than even Gen3 lanes, so clearly not in the discussion unless I'm grossly misunderstanding gen/lane alloaction/bifurcation on the current-gen AMD chipsets.

 

[Wirko]

My first PC motherboard was something similar to this. The five VLSI chips around the 80286 make up an actual set, hence the name chipset. With 80386, five grew to eight. I still find it a bit funny when people refer to a single chip, or two chips at best, as a chipset.

 

[The Von Matrices]

IIRC the single-chip X670 platform, as a whole, has Gen5 support for up to three M.2 slots, before dropping down to Gen4 lanes. One Gen5 x4 directly hanging off the CPU's lanes, and then two Gen5 x4 slots running off the chipset.

I could be wrong, but even those mITX boards I've seen that hide a couple of M.2 slot behind the motherboard only have room for three M.2 slots in total, which doesn't necessitate the additional lanes of an X670E

Other ancillary stuff like USB4 port(s) and even dual 10GbE NICs are all far lower bandwidth than even Gen3 lanes, so clearly not in the discussion unless I'm grossly misunderstanding gen/lane alloaction/bifurcation on the current-gen AMD chipsets.

There is no single-chip X670 platform. A bit of a primer on AMD chipsets:

X670E is dual chip with PCIe x16 5.0
X670 is dual chip with PCIe x16 4.0
B650E is single chip with PCIe x16 5.0
B650 is single chip with PCIe x16 4.0

 

[AusWolf]

There is no single-chip X670 platform. A bit of a primer on AMD chipsets:

X670E is dual chip with PCIe x16 5.0
X670 is dual chip with PCIe x16 4.0
B650E is single chip with PCIe x16 5.0
B650 is single chip with PCIe x16 4.0

Also, the primary m.2 isn't always PCI-e 5.0 as AMD's marketing suggested. It only has to be 5.0 on "E" boards, but it's up to the motherboard maker to decide whether they go with 4.0 or 5.0 on non-E models.

 

[Chrispy_]

There is no single-chip X670 platform. A bit of a primer on AMD chipsets:

X670E is dual chip with PCIe x16 5.0
X670 is dual chip with PCIe x16 4.0
B650E is single chip with PCIe x16 5.0
B650 is single chip with PCIe x16 4.0

Ah yeah, I'm thinking of B650E, not X670.
mITX simply doesn't have enough real estate to hook enough slots up to the extra lanes of any dual-chip solution.