For the better part of a month now I’ve been waffling on whether to purchase a #Gigabyte x870 Aorus Elite or #MSI x870 Tomahawk #motherboard. Both are at the top of my budget and offer really compelling design choices. For me the priorities are a PCIe 5.0 slot, at least two M.2 (CPU) slots, and USB4.
The Gigabyte x870 features a nice neutral design that compliments the rest of my build. The compromise is the ability to have up to three 5.0 x4 M.2 slots, but at the expense of half the lanes going to the first PCIe slot (x16 down to x8). Shouldn’t be a problem now but idk about the future.
The MSI x870 features an…interesting design with green accents that I’m kind of torn about. The compromise here is halving the number of lanes going to the second M.2 slot (x4 down to x2) to power both USB4 ports. Oof.
The case for the MSI board is stronger when you consider the higher quality audio chip, broader WIFI7 frequency, gold antenna threads, better power efficiency, lower chipset temps, and passes DDR5-8000 EXO validation. The new bios looks like a pleasure to use. Just all around a solid mobo.
The case for the Gigabyte board is the fact you will always have USB4 and if you’re fine with halving your GPU lanes to get three M.2 slots connected straight to your CPU, you’re working with a fantastic board. No compromises. The Gigabyte bios is a bit older but still good.
Today I’ve got some Amiga news I want to share.
