Three full-length expansion slots and an open-ended x1 slot are in the middle of the board. The top slot (PCIE1), primary for graphics cards, connects through the CPU and is your PCIe 5.0 x16 slot. The second full-length slot (PCIE3) also connects through the CPU and runs at PCIe 4.0 x4 speeds. The bottom slot (PCIE4) and the x1 slot (PCIE2) connect through the chipset, yielding PCIe 4.0 x1 bandwidth for both. You also get USB4 support, 10 USB ports on the I/O panel, high quality external audio, two M.2 ports, 2.5 Gbit LAN and WiFi 6E, so it's a super well equipped ITX motherboard, but of course it's not exactly cheap. These are great news to share: there are no bad X670/X670E motherboards. Surely prices might be a bit hard to swallow, but there are no duds, and that's a rare thing when reviewing an entire motherboard series. We hope you found this useful and expect a similar piece covering B650 motherboards. Shopping Shortcuts:

On the bottom left side is a fully exposed audio section using the budget Realtek ALC4082 audio codec. A few yellow capacitors are dedicated to the audio section, but it's missing premium features including EMI protection for the codec and integrated amplifiers/DACs. Many users will be satisfied with this audio setup, but critical listeners or audiophiles may want something better. The best high-end X670E motherboard is simply the MSI MEG X670E ACE. The stupid expensive Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme and MSI MEG X670E Godlike are excellent motherboards, but we can't justify the asking prices, especially in the case of the Godlike. Essentially both boards have the same amount of PCIe bandwidth, the Carbon can just better spread that bandwidth across multiple slots while almost 90% of the PCIe bandwidth of the F Gaming is eaten up by the primary PCIe 5.0 x16 slot. Across the bottom of the board are several exposed headers. You’ll find the usual, including additional USB ports, RGB headers, and more. Below is a complete list from left to right. Usually we'd go over each motherboard, talk about the key features, the heatsinks, and the VRM components, but we've got 22 boards, so spending a few minutes on each one isn't all that interesting for this roundup. Instead we'll jump straight into VRM thermal testing, then brush over a spec comparison table, before making some actual board recommendations, so let's get into it. Test System and NotesMoving to the bottom half of the board, we’ll start on the left side that houses the audio section. Hidden under a shroud is a premium Realtek ALC4082 codec along with an ESS SABRE9218 DAC designated for front panel duty. Poking out from under the shrouds and heatsink are a few red WIMA audio caps, while several other dedicated audio caps are hidden. The ALC4082 codec is one of the best integrated options available. An usual mid-tower would leave little to no room at the bottom slot for proper air ventilation. So it doesn't seem much of a mainstream solution to ask everyone to use the bottom slot (even aside of the mentioned issue of latency).

The OC Tweaker section holds the keys to fine-tuning your system. Here you can adjust voltages, RAM, and the CPU and save profiles for recall later. the closer to the cpu, the less latency in getting data to and from the cpu. that's why ram slots are as close as possible to minimize how far the data has to go thus lowering latency as much as possible. Asus is the only brand to offer a Mini-ITX X670E board, and they're also the only brand to also offer a MicroATX X670E board. So that means we have one Mini-ITX, one MicroATX and 20 ATX boards on hand.In the same price range, the Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi wins the award for the best X670E Mini-ITX motherboard by default, as it's the only one as does the Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Gene for the best and only Micro-ATX motherboard. But if one wants to be able to hit the ground running with Gen5 M.2 SSDs, without having to wait for improved M.2 cooler solutions and/or without having to rethink the entire rig cooling in use, then there are as mentioned already some motherboards to consider. Along the bottom edge of the board are multiple headers including additional USB 2.0 headers, two of the SATA ports, fan headers, a 5-pin Thunderbolt AIC header, front-panel audio, ARGB and RGB headers, a clear-CMOS jumper, and finally the front-panel header. For some reason Gigabyte spent their PCIe 5.0 budget on the M.2 drives, limiting the PCIe slot support to a single x16 slot. So while we guess four PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots is nice, we'd rather have the flexibility of having more PCIe slots. Let's talk about test conditions first. For this testing we've built a dedicated system inside the Corsair iCUE 7000X case. Powering it we have the HX1000 power supply and for cooling the Corsair iCUE H170i Elite Capellix.