Gadgetory

the master key series of mechanical keyboards from Coolermaster features genuine Cherry MX switches and the flexibility of choice whether you want small medium or large you can pick your size and pick your color with RGB and clear white LED backlighting options click the sponsor link in the description for more information I feel like I should be more excited about today it is Monday June 19th and there is a new Intel high end a desktop platform on the market today you're going to be able to read or watch legitimate intel core x-series CP reviews and you can pre-order these chips today now as well but you shouldn't because pre-ordering things is generally a bad idea the actual for sale dates when these will ship out is June 24th so why am I not more excited about this I mean I've used in sells high-end desktop platforms since they kicked it off with x58 the first platform of triple channel memory I enthusiastically moved up to X 79 and X 99 when they launched the high-end Intel stuff usually gets refreshed about every three years and today marks the move from X 99 and the LGA 2011 - three socket - X - 99 and the LGA 2066 socket I think the subdued response to this launch though is caused by three things one is that it was definitely rushed and there's plenty of evidence that Intel wasn't actually planning to kick off this platform for another two months or so for example the 12 core and higher CPUs that they have announced are still just on paper and they aren't expected to Intel August to October 2017 and many reviewers including myself still haven't received a CPU samples to test directly from Intel to is that there's actually competition from Andy on the horizon with their recently announced thread Ripper series which will also be a high-end desktop solution and three the existence of to four core CPUs at the bottom of this CPU stack they'd only have 16 PCIe lanes and are essentially cable 8 CPUs the 7600 K and 7700 K stapled on to a much larger package with a higher TDP and no I GPU which also means no quick sync these two CPUs are the 70 640 X and the 77 40 X and since gigabyte was kind enough to lend me a 77 40 X so I could get up and running with today's video I've decided to make that the focus of today's video what happens when you plug in a 16 PCIe Lane kulick X CPU into one of these high-end motherboards that it's also designed for skylake X CPUs that might have 28 or 44 PCI Express lanes the short answer is a lot of stuff doesn't work so the example boards I have for you today are the gigabyte or is X 299 gaming 7 the MSI X 299 gaming Pro carbon AC and the Asus prime X 299 deluxe as of today the msi board will cost you about 360 dollars the asus is 490 and the gigabyte Oris is about 400 the cheapest x 299 board I could find on Newegg was 230 bucks and that's an as rock board that doesn't even launch until July 15 keep that price in mind as these are high-end desktop boards usually a full-featured mainstream Intel Z 270 or AMD X 370 motherboard can be found for 150 to 200 dollars now motherboard connects your processor to everything else in your system and today I'll be focusing on how it does that specifically the connection between the processor and your memory and the processor and PCI Express Lanes system memory is simpler so let's start there KB Lake X CPUs have a dual channel memory controller and skylake X CPUs have a quad channel memory controller basically this means that on every X 299 motherboard you can only use half of the memory slots if you pair it with a 77 40 X or 7640 x-48 dim boards like the ones that I have today that means the entire left bank of slots goes unused and for some X 2 99 boards that only have four dimm slots I mean you can only use two of them which is like having an ITX board all three of these boards list that limitation very specifically in the manual so you know which slots to populate based on your hardware and your memory kit so that's good CCI Express is next and that's where it gets a little bit more confusing remember that the pci express lane breakdown of 16 4 kb lake x + 28 or 44 for skylake X refers to PCI Express directly connected to the CPU these are usually routed to PCI Express expansion slots but those can also be connected up to em to friend nvme SSDs for example there's also 22 24 pcie 3.0 lanes that are available through the x2 99 chipset but the chipset is actually kind of acting like a big PCIe switch in this case there's actually four PCIe lanes available to the chipset which are multiplied via the switch to connect multiple devices like SATA drives USB ports network adapters and m dot 2 or u dot suits plots for SSDs the fact that these are a switch is usually not a big deal because the chipsets bandwidth rarely gets fully saturated but if you're accessing multiple high-speed storage devices like nvme SSDs it can create a bottleneck the upside to nvme SSDs connected through the chipset is that you can raid up to three of them together with Intel Rapid Storage Technology and yes that can be rated in a bootable array so with all this in mind let's see how these three boards implements the connectivity options that are provided by insel I'm going to start with this MSI board since they provided a block diagram in their manual as you can see it's clearly laid out that the CPU PCIe lanes are all routed to the full sized PCI Express expansion slots and everything else is connected through the chipset that includes a couple of these short little PCIe by one slots they also added a page or two of extra explanation for KB Lake X setups in the manual and here we can see that with a 44 Lane CPU we have by 16 by 4 by 16 and by 8 on all of these full-size slots but with a 16 Lane CPU it's cut down 2 by 8 and by 8 for two-way support or by 8 by 4 by 4 and in all cases with the 16 million CPU this bottom slot becomes useless moving over to storage since everything else goes through the chipset MSI used a switch to connect up the two m2s the u2 and the SATA ports fortunately again they use an extra page in the manual to explain how this all breaks down where you can see that the more MDOT you are you got to connect to devices that you have two fewer Sater reports remain active since they share bandwidth next let's look at the asus prime x 299 deluxe no block diagram here unfortunately but based on the PCIe breakdown in the manual we can see the Asus like MSI decided that with K be like X CPUs all lanes should be dedicated to PCIe expansion slots most likely for GPUs with a single by 16 at the top or by 8 and by 8 in the two primary slots being the two options this again means that the chipset lane handle everything else so your options become choose between your 8o 2.11 ad Wi-Fi and that top PCIe by one expansion slot I'd go with the Wi-Fi if you lose if you use the lower PCIe by one slot you lose a SATA port you get to choose between the second full length PCIe x16 slot and your front panel USB 3.1 porch I get to choose between the bottom full length PCIe by 16 slot and a couple more SATA ports and the vertical m dot 2 over there as well as the u2 connector share bandwidth and I'm not positive right now I'm still waiting on word back from Asus but that means that either you can't use them at the same time or they're going to split the bandwidth between them giving you by two PCIe gen3 on each in step by four and finally we have the Auris X $2.99 gaming 7 and for the CPU PCI Express Lanes gigabyte bucked the trend here and ditches the two-way SLI support with the KB Lake X CPU for this round your top and slot is going to be locked up by 8 and you can add another by 4 connection with the third slot on here the bottom slot just won't work at all and the second slot is actually a by 4 connection that is shared with the MDOT two slot that's right above it this means that that m dot 2 slot is a dedicated full bandwidth pcie 3.0 by 4 m dot 2 connection directly to the CPU which is cool but I wish that that slot location wasn't right under the main GPU location because it can get warm right there also there's no access to it from Intel Rapid Storage Technology 4 raid setups because it's not read it through the chipset so bear that in mind but possibly a great option for like a single boot drive or something like that now because they only wire it up to m dot 2 slots through the chipset though that means there's less interference with the SATA so you'll notice through the chart here that you're not going to lose too much SATA depending on what you connect in you're only going to lose 4 SATA ports if you have to use that bottom most m dot 2 slot so I think those are all the configuration changes for KB Lake X CPUs combined with these X 2 9 9 X 299 motherboards at least and I don't blame you if you're just a little confused let me reiterate that most of these conflicts we've talked about today will go away if you have a full fat skylake X CPU with 44 PCIe lanes in one of these boards but they'll start at $1,000 for the 10 core 7900 twenty-eight Lane CPU should hopefully be available soon as well to help bridge that gap it does kind of suck that the eight core only has twenty eight lanes this time around but anyway I'm sure there's much more to be said about this launch this platform and everything else in my opinion the KB Lake X CPUs still don't make a whole lot of sense for this platform Intel high-end desktop PCs are supposed to be about maximum performance and connectivity and you lose out on a lot of that with a 70 640 X or 77 40 X the main claim to fame of these CPUs is overclocking and they do seem to be very capable of hitting well above 5 gigahertz based on early tests I've seen and some computers even with just a decent air cooler or an all-in-one so that's kind of cool so I'll recommend this if you need a gaming PC consider Intel's mainstream Z 270 platform or the risin lineup from AMD you're going to spend a lot less you're going to get more bang for your buck if you really really like overclocking or if you just absolutely know that you love the enthusiast platform and you want to get in on it so you don't have that much money right now and you just need something to get you started but especially plan on upgrading to a higher core count CPU down the line especially once those really high core count CPUs are available later this year feel free to jump in and have some fun just remember that a and B has thread Ripper lurking just around the corner promised by the end of summer and supposedly it's not going to have all this PCI Express link confusion as all of their chips are going to have 64 pcie 3.0 links waiting to see how things play out in the next couple months I think it's probably going to be the smartest move you can make thanks a lot for watching guys we'll see you next time