Here’s something that not every owner of GIGABYTE B650 motherboards may know: their motherboard technically works with PCIe 5.0 protocol, but this was never marketed as such, and it wasn’t validated to actually work either. As such, the motherboard vendor recently issued a BIOS update that removes this capability, in order to clear things up.
GIGABYTE’s New BIOS Update
Take GIGABYTE’s B650 GAMING X AX V2 motherboard for example – this model is only advertised with PCIe 5.0 support on primary SSD slot, while the GPU slot explicitly runs on PCIe 4.0 protocol regardless of which Ryzen chip is installed. However, it turns out that Reddit users have managed to enable PCIe 5.0 mode on this motherboard’s GPU slot, as the BIOS settings allowed them to do so.
Turns out the motherboard maker did take notice of this matter, and decided to close this “loophole” with the new BIOS version “F35”, although this version has been taken down (based on this Reddit thread) with the latest version now listed as “F36“. Now, this might sound like the company is intentionally removing it just to prevent users from accessing the feature, but there is a genuine technical reason behind this.
High-speed protocols like PCIe 5.0 require well-built circuitry to work, as signal integrity is often the major limitation when it comes to implementing these standards. Given that GIGABYTE never advertised the motherboard in question with PCIe 5.0 support on GPU slot, it is likely that this was never certified, even if the underlying hardware happens to be overbuilt just enough to meet the more stringent requirements from the newer standard.
Another reason likely comes down to compliance with AMD’s chipset specifications. Since B650 was never meant to support PCIe 5.0 standard (with the PCIe 5.0 SSD requirement entirely optional), users installing PCIe 5.0 hardware on these unsupported motherboards may cause unintended effects, of which some may end up in RMAs – and companies like GIGABYTE and AMD would prefer to avoid these issues wherever possible.
Pokdepinion: Seems like a pretty odd oversight.
