Intel Motherboard Differences: H670 Specs Explained vs. Z690, B660, & H610 (2022)

[Music] this isn't exactly a hot take but paying 240 or more for a b660 motherboard is generally a bad idea in this video we're going to walk through the chipset differences between z690 b660 h670 and h610 these are intel's chipsets available for alder like cpus the goal here is to provide you the firm specs differences explain what the chips have to do and why they're different and to what extent that difference might matter for you and then also go over where you can potentially save some money in a way that won't be a 240 dollar b660 board because then you're just kind of going backwards let's get started before that this video is brought to you by thermal grizzly thermal grizzlies hydrant and cryonite thermal paste are high performing thermal interfaces for use on cpus and gpus you can bring an old card back to peak performance by replacing it and doing preventative maintenance and thermal grizzlies hydrant is ideal for water cooling and air quote for new and old cards alike cryonot paste is one of the top performing pace for extreme overclocking with cpus and gpus and has been used in several world record scoring machines learn more at the link in the description below we'll time stamp the video if you want to jump around but the first thing we're going to do in this video is define chipsets at a more technical level go through what they do and the difference between where the cpu provides support for i o versus where the chipset steps in and how hsio lanes are split we'll talk about dmi uh spi and everything else in between and uh also hopefully guide you here a quick note for our core audience here thank you for being a regular viewer but we are going to include the most basic details here as well so you're getting the usual depth you get from us the explainers but the language will be brought down a couple levels so that we can help people out who are brand new to pc building or maybe been out of it for a little while we're trying to get everyone kind of caught up to speed on the same page here as we said in our ces news roundup when these new motherboards were announced following the z690 launch it is just a waste of money to spend 200 plus dollars on a non-z series motherboard but there are really good b and h series motherboards that can help you save some money versus z690 z690 starts pretty high we'll scroll through some offerings but they're about 200 at sort of the low end of the price range and that is ddr5 or ddr4 first and foremost is to get this out of the way if you buy a k sku intel cpu so 12 900 k 12 12700k anything with a k at the end of it you should be buying a z series motherboard to go with it there is nothing other than z690 that will support the unlocked factor that is designated by the k skus and so you're wasting your money potentially in two ways then if you buy an unlocked cpu but a motherboard that's locked where it can't overclock it that's all that means very basic stuff most of you know this at this point but just want to make that clear k skus go with z690 non-k skus should buy basically any other board except z690 unless you're at some weird price parity where it just the higher end board happens to cost the same as the lower end board which happens sometimes if you have no intention of overclocking the cpu at all you should just go with h670 or b660 most likely h610 can kind of be ignored for most of our audience it has its moments we'll talk about those later now as of the 500 series chipset launch intel made some significant changes both the h blank 70 and b blank 60 chipset families that now support memory overclocking if you look at a block diagram for really any z590 z690 it doesn't matter you're going to see a memory supported frequency attached to the cpu you'll see this in intel's arc spec pages as well that number is not the actual maximum frequency that the cpu imc or integrated memory controller can support but rather it's the maximum that is considered the stock specification and so even if it's just xmp that's considered overclocking on the memory once it goes beyond that number that's designated in the specs table the change here as stated is just that non-z motherboards now support memory overclocking which might include simply enabling xmp you should basically do that on any gaming type of system we'd still really like to see intel mimic amd and bring cpu overclocking down to maybe its highest of the lower end chipsets so something like h670 for example would be great to see cpu overclocking there but they're not doing it yet now all of this is caveated by one thing which is that technically you can still overclock and tell us all to take cpus that are non-k uh by using other methods like b clock being one of them and that's a different piece for a different time but just something you should be aware of we'll put a quick specs table up on the screen now showing the differences in hard numbers we're going to walk you through all these and talk through them as well but this is what it looks like the hierarchy is very simple z690 h670 b66610 that's what it boils down to b660 is a clear step down from h670 you can see that in this specs table because the link to the chipset only gets half the bandwidth this limits what manufacturers can connect to the chipset and thus the motherboard and so your simultaneous throughput or usage of the bandwidth uh will be limited there h610 has another obvious step down it has zero oc support whatsoever including for memory and that also runs one dim per channel that means for two channel cpus which is all of alder lake on this desktop platform you'll be running two sticks of memory big limitation there if you're on a tight budget you could go with an h610 board for an ultra low cost build relative to the options but we don't recommend that for really any gaming builds and most of our audience it's also limited in the same way that b660 is for dmi it doesn't get any raid support and there's no 20 gigabit per second usb support so that'd be usbc at its max speed and obviously the other big difference is the hsio lane availability or pcie lane availability and we'll go over that that's the absolute need to know basics now for explaining everything the primary function of a chipset is to add i o capabilities to the rest of the system through the motherboard it's possible for cbs to provide all of the i o that's needed in a system you see this on amd where the amd ryzen cpus they have a chiplet design there are three pieces of silicon at most at least with the current generation under the ihs or the integrated heat spreader the io die is one of them it's a larger process node so it's cheaper to make uh than the other chiplets that contain the ccx's with the cores and that io die is capable of running all of the i o for the system sans a chipset so you could run an amd motherboard with what amd calls an x300 chipset which really just means no chipset at all and everything goes through the cpu there are a lot of limitations here it severely limits your i o options i o would be sata usb pcie nvme drives things of that nature 10 gigabit ethernet severely limits you there but you could do it slightly cuts down the motherboard size slightly cuts down the cost ultralight cpus run 16 pcie peg lanes for graphics out of the cpu typically this runs to the first pcie slot and then there's an extra four lanes for nvme ssds that's all cpu support the cpus run imc still so that's integrated memory controllers and they are also responsible for memory support including both ddr4 and ddr5 memory controllers though you'll only ever be able to use ddr4 or ddr5 at one time the link between the cpu and the chipset is called dmi or direct media interface you'll see this in the block diagrams intel produces part of the reason it's referred to as direct media interface is because it's a dc coupled pathway this means that there are no capacitors present within the pathway between the cpu and the chipset and that allows the full frequency spectrum to pass between the two the sample rate across the link in its current version 4.0 is 16 giga transfers per second so that's equivalent to pcie gen 4 basically that's a doubling from dmi 3.0 by 8 which was presented in z590 chipsets are given a fixed amount of high-speed i o lanes or hsio by intel these feed 10 gigabit ethernet pcie slots high speed usb and drive connections so some of these are fixed but motherboard manufacturers have freedom to allocate hsio lanes to some extent for different i o options on the motherboards the reason for this is one to make sure there are actually differences one board to the next other than just the heatsink and the led location but two it allows for cost cutting or cost increasing depending on what the motherboard maker wants to do so that's where they stand out they get a number of hsio lanes assigned uh as they choose all provided by intel based on the chipset type that is used and obviously that's you start seeing 10 gigabit ethernet more prevalently or more sata ports fewer sata ports higher speed usb options in addition to what the cpu is already providing things of that nature other design options are also available outside of the chipset with the use of add-in controllers as media is a common choice for an extra two to four sata ports 10 gigabit ethernet for example can be tacked on with a chip from mar-vell or from a quantia and pcie lane bifurcation or branching can be done with pex plx controllers these are less common today because they're expensive but that brings up the other point which is that every added chip means more added cost so although the capabilities can be expanded outside of the chipset the complexity increases potential for more issues uh and then also the cost increases moving on to the basics of the 600 series just in general chipset information here there are a few things that all of them have in common whether they are bh or z series chipsets in the 600 series the package size for example is approximately 28 by 25 millimeters and the tdp is just six watts here now a tdp of six watts operating power consumption of about six watts means that you basically will will only ever see a simple aluminum heatsink maybe a copper heatsink if they're spendy on the chipset and nothing else you don't need a fan on these chipsets you don't need water cooling if you see water cooling on the chipsets it is a gimmick that's great that they're doing it it's not actually helping you so if you're buying a monoblocked board that's got water cooling on the chipset that's fine as long as you're aware that it's pointless if you're okay with it just being for looks that's that's good that means uh you know what you're getting and uh and there's there's no tomfoolery going on with the manufacturers hoodwinking you uh by claiming that it adds value used a lot of funny words here in the last sentence additionally none of these chipsets provide pcie by 8 gpu connections so additional gpus are not well supported because they will be relegated to by one uh by two or by four connections nvidia can't run sli or nv link on buy four or at least not officially anyway and amd can tactically run multi gpu with buy four but it's not gonna work well multi-gpu also just doesn't work well period but it's okay if you wanted to do something like multi-card rendering for blender and basically build a small render box in one pc because then the additional envy link bridge or crossfire bridges they don't provide as much value other than shared memory for cards that support memory pooling and so in these situations it can be useful it's just you're not gonna get more than buy four out of the chipset is the short of it you can get two by eight from the cpu at best let's jump over to a block diagram for z690 we'll start with the high-end chipset and then we'll compare that to the others we can see the specifics of what i o is controlled by the cpu versus the chipset here starting in the upper left corner the two possible configurations for primary gpu and primary m.2 are one by 16 plus one by four or two by eight plus one by four that first number the peg option is pcie 5.0 and the second one is 4.0 and just to be clear pcie 5.0 offers no value right now it may in the future but no cards today support it thankfully there's no confusion regarding the primary m.2 slot like there was with z590 and 10th gen comet lake cpus so you won't have to consult your motherboard manual and tab through the million references of the word hyper to find out whether or not your primary m.2 slot will work with your cpu with alder like that weird caveat is gone z690 is equipped with a buy 8 dmi 4.0 link to the chipset this is where it becomes an up to mess though the motherboard designers have to choose what to do with intel's allotment of hsio the nice thing is that z690's maximum io limits are mostly higher than what z590 offered we say mostly because z590 offers up to 24 pcie gen 3 lanes from the chipset while z690 only offers 16 of them so on a technicality it offers more pcie gen 3 lanes than c690 but that's completely negated when you consider that z690 also offers up to 12 pcie 4 lanes and z590 has zero so combined z690 runs a total of 28 pcie gen 4 and gen 3 lanes combined that's a lot of options at least for desktop platform gigabit ethernet is branch from the chipset but 2.5 gigabit ethernet is optional and becoming a little more common now audio and wi-fi also come from the chipset here with the wi-fi support getting a slight boost to wi-fi 6e from just wi-fi 6 previously as for what that means it boils down to wi-fi connectivity having access to an additional frequency band ranging from 5.925 gigahertz to 7.125 gigahertz this is also meaningless if your router doesn't support it so keep that in mind because most don't finally here an spi link where a serial peripheral interface connects the chipset to the management engine firmware and a firmware implemented trusted platform module or ftpm is also connected here tpm probably sounds familiar thanks to the release of windows 11 and being a requirement to have tpm 2.0 support and ptt which is used here does have that support finally the block diagram wraps up by showing optional connections for optane memory rst and raid while raid chose as optional the diagram though you'll be hard-pressed to find a z690 board that doesn't have it enabled here's our specs table again we're talking about h670 now which shares a lot in common with z690 with a few downgrades as with past intel offerings the biggest difference between z and h is that h loses cpu oc h670 gets the full 4.0 by 8 dmi link that was introduced with z690 h670 offers a max of 24 pcie lanes with up to 12 pcie gen 4 lanes and up to 12 pcie gen 3 lanes the drop off and pcie between the two chipsets equates to basically one pcie gen 3x4 slot or some other hsio h670 is the only chipset in the stack to offer the same cpu pcie connectivity as d690 if you want a motherboard equipped with two pcie 5.0 by 8 slots you'll be choosing from one of these two chipsets b660 and h610 are both limited to a single 5.0 by 16 slot from the cpu sata and raid support are the same for h670 and z690 at eight ports and support for either pcie or say to raid configurations usb is where h670 sees the largest comparative reduction because it can only supply 220 gigabit per second usb ports z690 gets four of those four 10 gigabit per second ports where z690 gets 10 eight five gigabit per second where z690 gets 10 and then they're the same for 480 megabit per second which is 14 for each now with the h670 just be a little careful of the price we looked around briefly and a lot of these really creep on the z690 prices or basically equate them so or exceed them in some situations so don't overspend here b660 is up now and the immediately obvious difference is the cut down dmi to buy four from by eight this limits the maximum count of pcie lanes at 14 instead of 24 on h670 or 28 on z690 otherwise memory oc support is the same and the cpu oc is still restricted the number of possible sata ports is also cut in half from eight to four raid support is limited to sata only and that means you can use m.2 drivers for storage but there's no hardware rated support to combine them usb is the same as h670 for the 20 and 10 gigabit per second ports but decreases by two ports each for five gigabits per second and the usb 2.0 480 megabit per second ports finally we'll reveal h610 on the table this is firmly locked into the budget space it doesn't offer more than one dim per channel that's the biggest change here it has the half sliced dmi link like b660 does it has zero support for pcie gen4 even though the core processors technically provide four lanes of it that means no primary m.2 slot with pcie gen 4 from the cpu either sata support is the same as b660 with the halves value of four ports but this time there's no raid functionality at all usb 20 gigabit per second is a no-go and there are cuts in the number of other available usb ports as well down to two 10 gigabit per second four or five gigs per second and 10 480 megabit per second h610 is designed to maybe be used in industrial or commercial applications where there isn't much demand on the pc something like maybe a pos system would be suitable for this which is appropriate because it'd be a pos system as well uh we don't think it's a great fit for most of our viewers unless maybe it's being used in a mini itx httpc or something like that oh you're still pretty limited there so uh this is probably the one that most of you will skip over and if you know you need it then you'll know the biggest change with alder lake was the introduction of p chords and e cores so we looked around we tried to find if there's any actual difference in how these are leveraged or interacted with because of the chipset the answer is basically no uh the closest thing we could find was the extreme tuning utility which has some connection to the chipset uh that had some settings to adjust e cores but for the most part it looks like everything related to the new architecture is self-contained within just the cpu doesn't get complicated beyond that so then as for the choices it's pretty simple if you are planning to do any overclocking of the cpu at all it's the z690 that's it that's what you're buying plain and simple if you don't care about that your options are pretty wide first of all you shouldn't be buying a case q cpu and then when you buy the motherboard just again be aware of price equivalence between a step down chipset and the cheapest of the higher step up chipset because the feature set's not too different the price difference in the chipsets is maybe enough to allow for a little bit of an i o change there but not like an attitude controller or something but not really something that most people will care about from what we're seeing today if you don't plan on overclocking and you're maybe mostly gaming and use lots of io then h670 boards at around 160 price point would be a good fit the extent of which those are accessible we're not sure right now it changes it seems like every day but 160 h670 boards would be a good one to consider do not buy 240 b60 boards please please don't encourage the manufacturers uh just get something either cheaper and save your money which is totally fine you can use it for something more useful or get z690 instead h610 is maybe good for a business machine but not something you want in your home system for entertainment and uh that should pretty much recap it so that's it for the differences thanks for watching hopefully this helped you you can subscribe for more as always go to store.gamersaccess.net or patreon.comgamersnexus tell us how directly and we'll see you all next time

Channel: Gamers Nexus

Views: 377,815

Keywords: gamersnexus, gamers nexus, computer hardware, intel chipsets, intel chipsets explained, intel chipsets 2022, best chipset, best chipset for gaming pc, z690 vs h670, z690 vs b660, z690 vs h610, h610 vs h670, b660 vs h670, b660 vs b550, z690 vs x570

Id: opD_cG1dbLY

Length: 19min 37sec (1177 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 29 2022