They apparently mean that some or all of the PCIe slots (most likely some, the closest ones to the CPU) have been wired with traces and a robust enough PCB that are required to sustain PCIe 4.0 signals. Sure, they have no way to actually *test* that, since I don't think Rocket Lake-S exists even as an engineering sample yet. Yet they already have experience with PCIe 4.0 slots and motherboard traces from AMD's motherboards so they know what to do (kind of blindly though, they have no way to validate PCIe 4.0 compliance until they have Rocket Lake CPUs in their hands; so rather than "PCIe 4.0 ready" it's a case of "We are 90% sure that it is PCIe 4.0 ready").
PCIe 4.0 requires higher quality motherboards, I believe with more PCB layers, so that the integrity of PCIe 4.0 signals (which are clocked twice as high as PCIe 3.0, and that makes them twice as weak and more prone to cross-talk - so imagine how weak PCIe 5.0 signals, which double again the clocks, are going to be...) can be retained from the CPU to the PCIe slots and vice versa.
They are missing a golden marketing opportunity here with Aqua Man. I have a strong vibe that they same kinda of people that liked that movie would want to buy something like this.
not many folks will buy this board because not many of them are made available to the public (1k less the ones that go to tech tubers) and the ones that do buy it probably dont need any convincing from marketing to be dropping 1k on it.
As someone in the watercooling community, it appears 1000 is the perfect number, at least for x570. Plenty of people have them and never read a complaint about not being able to get one. The most recent one I saw was #800something.
It's a good thing they are only making 999 of them. I can't see this having a broad appeal given the shrinking desktop PC market and the pandemic sucking the wind out of the global economy.
This is the niche of the niche. Even in a growing market few would go for it. It's not meant to actually be sold but rather to promote the brand. If you're a true enthusiast (not just someone with money to drop on bling) you don't want a half-assed "integrated" cooling solution for your CPU. If I have to build a custom water cooling loop I'll do it all the way to my liking.
the silliness people buy... if only someone would tell them, that good air coolers with heatpipes are better at keeping your cpu cool (at lower noise levels!).
obviously a custom watercooling solution will be better, but that costs upwards of $500 for pump, pipes, tank, coolant, radiator, cpu+gpu block
I'm hearing AMD's Ryzen cpu lineup is taking the place of coal fired heating in the Northeast. At least that's the consensus of Ryzen cpus having idle temps with stock air coolers in the mid-to-upper 40's to 50's. Idle temps higher than comparable Intel cpus. Imagine that. And I still hear Intel are heaters, AMD are cool.......LOL! The 7nm cores seem to be creating a ton of heat in just idling and normal operations. My 3700X on a Noctua U12S gets hotter than my old Intel 4790k, and that was OC'd to 4.6GHz. Go blow your crap up someone else's shorts.
They allow routing Displayport from a GPU to a USB-C Thunderbolt cable, for use with a TB dock/KVM for example. It's fairly niche, but is also present on the X570 Creator/Aqua.
Slightly OT, but a question: why can't desktops with Thunderbolt pass display signals to the TB controller over PCIe like laptops do? I understand that this probably brings with it a lot of complexity in terms of working with heaps of different GPUs etc., but isn't this already standardized anyhow? TB3 GPU docks pass display signals back over the TB3 bus as a PCIe signal for the iGPU to output, after all, and before "G-Sync Compatible" FreeSync on GeForce people were getting FreeSync on Geforce through setting their Nvidia GPU as the rendering GPU while outputting display signals through AMD iGPUs. Why can't this just be another standard feature for any Windows GPU, enabled by drivers and firmware?
Excellent question. This used to be blamed on Intel something something motherboard layout something.
I read a while ago an explanation as to why it's so hard for desktop motherboards to pass the GPU signal to the TB controller, but I have completely forgotten it all. It was something to do with GPU cards being designed to only output through their ports, not over the system bus, but as you say, things have changed and people are now directing GPU pipelines through PCIe willynilly.
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shabby - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
Pcie 4 ready? Which part? There's nothing here that talks aboot pcie 4.Makaveli - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
lol its PCIe 4 Ready for Rocket Lake S which has no release date yet.Santoval - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
They apparently mean that some or all of the PCIe slots (most likely some, the closest ones to the CPU) have been wired with traces and a robust enough PCB that are required to sustain PCIe 4.0 signals. Sure, they have no way to actually *test* that, since I don't think Rocket Lake-S exists even as an engineering sample yet. Yet they already have experience with PCIe 4.0 slots and motherboard traces from AMD's motherboards so they know what to do (kind of blindly though, they have no way to validate PCIe 4.0 compliance until they have Rocket Lake CPUs in their hands; so rather than "PCIe 4.0 ready" it's a case of "We are 90% sure that it is PCIe 4.0 ready").PCIe 4.0 requires higher quality motherboards, I believe with more PCB layers, so that the integrity of PCIe 4.0 signals (which are clocked twice as high as PCIe 3.0, and that makes them twice as weak and more prone to cross-talk - so imagine how weak PCIe 5.0 signals, which double again the clocks, are going to be...) can be retained from the CPU to the PCIe slots and vice versa.
brontes - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
Approximately zero people will spend $1000+ for this board and then use a handful of mismatched fittings to save money.Operandi - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
They are missing a golden marketing opportunity here with Aqua Man. I have a strong vibe that they same kinda of people that liked that movie would want to buy something like this.Hxx - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
not many folks will buy this board because not many of them are made available to the public (1k less the ones that go to tech tubers) and the ones that do buy it probably dont need any convincing from marketing to be dropping 1k on it.brontes - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
As someone in the watercooling community, it appears 1000 is the perfect number, at least for x570. Plenty of people have them and never read a complaint about not being able to get one. The most recent one I saw was #800something.PeachNCream - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
It's a good thing they are only making 999 of them. I can't see this having a broad appeal given the shrinking desktop PC market and the pandemic sucking the wind out of the global economy.close - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
This is the niche of the niche. Even in a growing market few would go for it. It's not meant to actually be sold but rather to promote the brand. If you're a true enthusiast (not just someone with money to drop on bling) you don't want a half-assed "integrated" cooling solution for your CPU. If I have to build a custom water cooling loop I'll do it all the way to my liking.bernstein - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
the silliness people buy...if only someone would tell them, that good air coolers with heatpipes are better at keeping your cpu cool (at lower noise levels!).
obviously a custom watercooling solution will be better, but that costs upwards of $500 for pump, pipes, tank, coolant, radiator, cpu+gpu block
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
The latest round of Intel CPUs is going to need water.Or you can buy AMD and use air.
C'DaleRider - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
I'm hearing AMD's Ryzen cpu lineup is taking the place of coal fired heating in the Northeast. At least that's the consensus of Ryzen cpus having idle temps with stock air coolers in the mid-to-upper 40's to 50's. Idle temps higher than comparable Intel cpus. Imagine that. And I still hear Intel are heaters, AMD are cool.......LOL! The 7nm cores seem to be creating a ton of heat in just idling and normal operations. My 3700X on a Noctua U12S gets hotter than my old Intel 4790k, and that was OC'd to 4.6GHz. Go blow your crap up someone else's shorts.FakThisShttyGame - Tuesday, May 12, 2020 - link
Yes my 3700x is also very hot like 50C idle with U14S. Not sure if bios settings have anything to do with it.Commenter1 - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
For users intending to leverage Intel's integrated graphics, there is a single HDMI video input.input or output??
Whats the use case for the Mini DisplayPort input ports?
Slash3 - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
They allow routing Displayport from a GPU to a USB-C Thunderbolt cable, for use with a TB dock/KVM for example. It's fairly niche, but is also present on the X570 Creator/Aqua.Valantar - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
Slightly OT, but a question: why can't desktops with Thunderbolt pass display signals to the TB controller over PCIe like laptops do? I understand that this probably brings with it a lot of complexity in terms of working with heaps of different GPUs etc., but isn't this already standardized anyhow? TB3 GPU docks pass display signals back over the TB3 bus as a PCIe signal for the iGPU to output, after all, and before "G-Sync Compatible" FreeSync on GeForce people were getting FreeSync on Geforce through setting their Nvidia GPU as the rendering GPU while outputting display signals through AMD iGPUs. Why can't this just be another standard feature for any Windows GPU, enabled by drivers and firmware?Tomatotech - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
Excellent question. This used to be blamed on Intel something something motherboard layout something.I read a while ago an explanation as to why it's so hard for desktop motherboards to pass the GPU signal to the TB controller, but I have completely forgotten it all. It was something to do with GPU cards being designed to only output through their ports, not over the system bus, but as you say, things have changed and people are now directing GPU pipelines through PCIe willynilly.