GIGABYTE B550 AORUS Master Waltzes Around Chipset

GIGABYTE B550 AORUS Master is the corporate’s most premium socket AM4 motherboard based mostly on the upcoming AMD B550 chipset. We described this board in some element in our older article masking an assortment of high B550 motherboards from producers, however missed a key bit. At the time we assumed that the PCI-Express lane switches situated under the board’s most important PCI-Express slot merely cut up its x16 connection from the AM4 SoC down to 2 x8 connections to share between two slots, on condition that AMD permits multi-GPU (together with SLI) with the B550. Apparently, the lane switches are there for a unique, extra fascinating purpose.

A BenchLife.data report factors to the opportunity of all three M.2 slots on this motherboard having PCI-Express gen 4.Zero wiring – one thing that should not usually be doable, since all downstream PCIe lanes put out by the B550 are gen 3.0. The approach we see it, the topmost M.2 slot has a direct PCI-Express 4.Zero x4 connection from the AM4 socket (because it usually ought to). The second- and third slots, nevertheless, pull their wiring from a sequence of lane switches that cut up the principle x16 PEG slot to gen 4.Zero x8/x4/x4. It’s doable that one of many two x16 (electrical x4) slots has an extra lane sharing association with one of many two M.2 slots.

When paired with a “Matisse” or “Vermeer” processor, the principle PEG slot will run at full x16 bandwidth till one of many backside two M.2 slots is populated, at which level the x8/x4/x4 configuration is engaged. When paired with a “Renoir” APU, nevertheless, it is possible that the underside two M.2 slots are utterly disabled, because the APU solely spares Eight lanes towards PEG, which make up the primary 8 (everlasting) lanes on the PEG slot. The B550 chipset’s 8-lane PCIe gen 3.Zero finances is spent driving the board’s varied onboard controllers (besides HD Audio, which is wired to the CPU), and one of many x16 (electrical x4) slots. GIGABYTE is anticipated to launch the B550 AORUS Master someday mid-June, 2020.