Intel B660 motherboards may not support PCIe 5.0

While the 12th Gen Intel Core platform may have the latest PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 support, we have already seen that some boards will offer DDR4 support to accommodate more budget conscious upgraders. Along the same vein, the more affordable Intel B660 motherboards may not support the PCIe 5.0 lanes available from the CPU.

Intel B660 motherboards to drop PCIe 5.0 support and be limited to PCIe 4.0?

According to what should be the packaging for the ASUS PRIME B660 that was accidentally used when ASUS wanted to send a reviewer an Intel Z690 motherboard, the Intel B660 motherboard will only support up to PCIe 4.0.

While that might be a waste of the capabilities available on the 12th Gen Intel Core CPUs, gamers who are getting the Intel B660 motherboards probably aren’t going to be looking at the cutting edge PCIe 5.0 components anyway. With PCIe 4.0 SSDs only becoming mainstream, you can probably expect to still see quite some time before PCIe 5.0 SSDs become reasonably priced.

While graphics cards with PCIe 5.0 support should also arrive next year, you probably aren’t going to lose much performance even if you limit it to PCIe 4.0 x16. Current-gen PCIe 4.0 x16 graphics cards aren’t exactly bottlenecked even when dropped to PCIe 3.0 x16, and some cards like the Radeon RX 6600 series are even limited to PCIe 4.0 x8, to no ill effect.

If you want PCIe 5.0 but don’t plan on paying the premium that the Intel Z690 boards command, Intel should also be releasing the Intel H670 chipset that might include PCIe 5.0 support. In any case, stay tuned for more updates about the other members of the 12th Gen Intel Core family that’s set to arrive next year!\

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Pokdepinion: If dropping PCIe 5.0 helps keep the costs low, I see it as a win!