SATA and mainboard surround sound are dying out
New AM5 mainboards illustrate a trend: SATA connections are becoming increasingly rare and direct surround sound is disappearing.
Two new X870(E) mainboards under an 11-year-old Haswell board.
(Image: heise online / mma)
If you want to accommodate many SATA SSDs or hard disks in your desktop PC, you will have to take a closer look when buying a motherboard in the future: Manufacturers are putting fewer and fewer SATA ports on motherboards, even though the chipsets have plenty of capacity for more.
This is illustrated by the new AM5 mainboards with the X870E and X870 chipsets: Of the 27 models currently listed, just two from Asrock have six SATA ports. 19 have four, and a further four motherboards only have two.
For comparison: 11 years ago in the Haswell era (Core i-4000), even mid-range motherboards with Intel's B85 chipset had six SATA ports, such as the MSI B85M-G43 shown here for less than 65 euros.
(Image: heise online / mma)
Since then, M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs have become increasingly popular. The cheapest X870 mainboards have three of them; the most expensive Asus models even have six. The advantages apart from saving space: With PCI Express (PCIe) 5.0 and 4.0, M.2 slots are connected much faster than SATA. SSD manufacturers are also focusing on M.2 cards, which is why they are often available at a lower price than SATA models.
Fewer audio jacks
In addition to the SATA ports, mainboard manufacturers are also reducing the number of jack connections on the I/O panels. The rule of thumb used to be: if a board has five or six jack connections, the manufacturer uses one of the higher-quality sound chips with better sound –, which is also advantageous if you only connect a headset to the PC.
(Image: heise online / mma)
Among the boards with X870E and X870 chipsets, however, there is now only one with more than three jack connections – Asus' TUF Gaming X870-Plus Wi-Fi (ab 338,01 €). All models have a microphone input and a stereo output. Some also have a line-in or an optical S/PDIF output.
The development comes as no surprise: surround sound systems that are connected directly to the PC are past their prime. Instead, PCs pass the sound signal on to a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) via USB: the sound systems practically have their own sound card. You can also retrofit one of these in your PC if you want better sound or more connections directly from the PC. Alternatively, digital sound output also works via HDMI.
DisplayPort connections for connecting monitors are also becoming rarer, at least on the 800 series mainboards. This is due to AMD's obligation that all boards must come with USB4, including integrated DisplayPort mode. The comparatively clunky DisplayPort connections are therefore giving way to USB-C ports, which are just as suitable for connecting monitors via DisplayPort.
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(mma)
