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…and still only two PCIe slots. Do you remember when you could slot four cards into your mainboard without going to a “Pro” or HEDT platform? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
I remember when 7 expansion slots was pretty normal. Of course, one would be your video card, one would be a graphics accelerator, one would be a sound card, one would be a modem, one would be an Ethernet NIC, and one would be a SCSI adapter. now a lot of that shit is either obsolete or built right into the motherboard.
It sounds to me that it's really targeted for music production and like, where you have a whole bunch of interfaces to connect like pads, keyboards, mixers, etc. In that case you don't really need a lot of PCIe slots. We don't really use PCIe for audio interfaces anymore since USB has gotten so fast.
VR sim racing. So, so many USB devices.
Oh yeah, good call. Or Star Citizen / MSFS sim pits.
That makes sense. I’m just sore because I had to upgrade to a somewhat unstable X870E board to get 4 slots for my main GPU, capture card, storage controller, and secondary GPU.
We're still doing secondary GPUs? What do you use it for? I haven't done SLI since my GTX660Ti's.
Video editing. I record 4k, 10-bit, 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, and the first nvidia consumer GPU that supports decoding that in hardware is the 5000-series. I have a 4090 and no desire to jump to a 5090. Swapping from a 7800X3D on a B650 board to a 9950X3D on an X870E and chucking an Arc A380 on there for encode/decode cost less than half of a 5090.
From what I've read,it's that the 870 chipset mandates a PCIe 5 slot which means less lanes for more slots.
And the tendency to provide numerous m.2 slots.
Give me an x4 slot and I can slide a m.2 adaptor in, but if it goes the other way, it's only by way of a janky hacky mess.
The CPU on that motherboard is going to be like "What do you want from me!?!?"
Also, the potential powerdrain is asking for stability issues.
We have had multiple slots for decades without problems. And you can get threadripper CPU/motherboards that require even more power yet have plenty of slots.
Imo the lack of slots is companies saving money.
13 USB A and only 3 C ports? Could have done with 3 less A and made 6 more C.
That’s because two of the C ports are 40Gbps USB4. I bet there’s a PCI-E lane limitation they’re hitting.
They're also kinda expensive connectors on their own. We probably never will go 100% USB-C.
I'm guessing they're all just behind an internal hub.
https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/chipsets/am5.html
The x870e chipset only provides 2 20gbit ports (type c only) 12 10gbit and 2 5gbit ports. No idea how the USB 4 ports fit into the equation, but I think the 2 are mandatory.
Yes, I really wondered what the advantage of putting all these ports on the mobo instead of just using external powered hubs.
This seems like the mobile phone crazy development cycle from the 1990's.
"We're just gonna try this, perhaps people will buy it."
In this case, I'm going with:
"Item discontinued due to lack of interest."
Genuinely curious: what’s the use case?
I would be interested if I was building a new pc. This would make connecting all of my SIM rig nice and easy, as well as my other controllers and peripherals. It is a bit excessive, but I have no doubt every port would end up used.
I can see a couple cases:
Scientific/hobbyist applications where you want to direct connect a lot of data collection sensors.
Or
Developers working with embedded devices who want to have many connected at a time.
Sometimes with speciality hardware hubs can give you issues, or if you need higher overall bandwidth per device they need a connection to the actual controller.
None of these touch the normal consumer though.
25 ports is a lot, but I can see anyone making music or streaming wanting this. Keyboard, mouse, microphone and camera (sometimes multiples of both,) controllers, phone, tablet, stream deck, external drives, etc.
So... get a hub or two?
or for the price, get a motherboard with a shitload of USB ports.
The extra long USB cables you'll require are going to eat up any economy
I could connect all my electronic music gear without hubs. Fun times to get cabling right though.
The headline is a touch sensational- nine of them are bare headers on the motherboard for the front of the case. The I/O shield 'only' has 13 type A and three type C.
I would still need an external usb hub, because the cables are often too short from desk to PC.
I ended up with two hubs. One sits on top of the desk mostly for transient devices, and one is taped to the bottom of the desk for semi-permanent devices. Then there's only two cables to the machine.
I am about to set up this exact setup too. But finding the correct and best hub is not easy.
pornhub?
no sry, hubporn.
Especially USB-Sticks.
this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2025
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