Started by wiredmarlin5 · · 👁 39 views · 1.4K replies
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wiredotter14 said:That's a really weak cooler—you're better off getting a quality air cooler, especially if noise matters to you.
What are the prices on those motherboards? No point talking without looking at the numbers.
wiredotter14 said:You can't go wrong with the Noctua NH-U14S—it's a solid cooler, more than enough for Ryzen. Going liquid is just throwing money away and taking unnecessary risks. As for the motherboard, what do you actually need an X570 for? Which features matter to you?
wiredotter14 said:That cooler isn't too weak for a 5600X—honestly, almost any decent aftermarket cooler handles that chip just fine. It’s definitely not worth dropping cash on an entry-level AIO when you could get performance that matches or even beats it with a solid air cooler like the Noctua NH-U14S.
As for the motherboard, even that B550 you mentioned supports PCIe 4.0 and gives you two M.2 slots. One goes straight to the CPU—perfect for your main NVMe drive—and the second one runs through the chipset, which is plenty for a SATA SSD.
Total supports 2 x M.2 slot(s) and 6 x SATA 6Gb/s ports
1 x M.2_1 socket 3, with M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support(SATA & PCIe 4.0 x4 mode)
AMD B550 Chipset :
1 x M.2_2 socket 3, with M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (SATA & PCIE 3.0 x 4 mode)*
1 x M.2_1 socket 3, with M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (SATA & PCIE 3.0 x 4 mode)
6 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s)
Support Raid 0, 1, 10
wanderingbison9 said:@Robin Ruiz5/">@@Robin Ruiz5: how are you actually using Dolby Atmos? Headphones or an external setup? If it's headphones, do some digging into the board's audio section—the chipset, the isolation from the rest of the PCB, all that.
wiredotter14 said:The memory support for these processor series is just lazy—they didn't specify which frequencies they actually validated across all models. You basically have to dig through motherboard reviews to find the real details, though you won't run into issues if you stick to reasonable speeds.
Do you seriously need two PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives? That’s overkill even for pro-level video editing—for gaming, it doesn't matter at all.
Basically, motherboards have one M.2 slot tied directly to the CPU via the PCIe interface, while the second one connects to the chipset and shares its bandwidth. Everything else—SATA ports, other M.2 slots, etc.—runs through the chipset.
From what I can see, only the Counter-Strike has two PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots, meaning both the CPU-linked slot and the chipset slot hit PCIe 4.0 speeds.
Read the specs carefully to figure out what you actually need.
All the boards mentioned have two M.2 slots where you can plug in drives, but not all of them offer dual PCIe 4.0 M.2 support. They also have enough SATA ports to—
SLI and Call of Duty are dead, so that's irrelevant for 99.9% of users.
Maybe M.2_1 is listed twice because it bridges the CPU and the chipset—not entirely sure.
wiredotter14 said:Yeah, on most boards, your second M.2 slot would just run at PCIe 3.0 speeds—you wouldn't be getting the drive's full potential.
I honestly don't get why you even need a PCIe 4.0 drive for gaming or VR, let alone two. I wouldn't count dual PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots as some essential feature.
