AM5 ITX Motherboard Dilemma: ASUS ROG Strix B650E-I vs ASRock B650I Lightning WiFi
Planning a Mini-ITX build in the Lian Li A4-H2O. Deciding between two motherboards for my Ryzen 7 7800X3D:
1. ASUS ROG Strix B650E-I Gaming WiFi (~$319)
- PCIe 5.0 x16 + PCIe 5.0 M.2
- 10+2 105A power stages
- USB4 / Type-C with Alt DP
2. ASRock B650I Lightning WiFi (~$199)
- PCIe 4.0 x16 + PCIe 5.0 M.2
- 8+2+1 60A Dr.MOS
- No USB4, but $120 cheaper
Is PCIe 5.0 on the GPU slot actually necessary for next-gen cards, or is the ASRock the smarter buy for an SFF gaming box?
Responses 2
Even the RTX 4090 and RX 7900 XTX barely saturate PCIe 4.0 x16 (we are talking 1-2% loss on PCIe 3.0 x16 in extreme tests). PCIe 5.0 for graphics cards won’t be a real bottleneck for years. The ASRock B650I Lightning is widely considered the best value ITX board on AM5 right now—clean VRM heatsink and no noisy chipset fan.
One thing to note with the ASUS B650E-I: its VRM daughterboard and thick heatsink can cause clearance issues with some 240mm AIO tubes in the A4-H2O. The ASRock has much cleaner clearances around the socket. Save the $120 and put it towards 64GB RAM or a 4TB drive.
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