Yeah it's also worth noting it's comparatively very easy to say a board is using PCIe4.0 signals and a different thing entirely to actually get two devices reliably interfacing with each other well, these X470 boards will be much more susceptible to noise when in PCIe4 mode. PCIe4 hasn't shortened the maximum channel/trace length from PCIe3 or changed any of the spec in that aspect, but the noise tolerance is about 60% of PCIe3 when using equal traces due to the higher switching rates(And subsequent insertion losses) so you do really either need shorter traces, to be using re-timers quite frequently, or using FR4 fibreglass PCBs which helps to start to negate a lot of the weird design rules discussed in the comment above. Personally I suspect the reason the TUF boards can work with PCIe4 is the use of FR4 materials for the PCB, this isn't really something you'd associate with improved product quality or performance but if you had to make a board that could cope in really weird scenarios like a TUF board with its military spec you'd almost certainly use that. The kind of environments you'd used to associate with needing FR4 would make it kinda laughable to consider this worthwhile previously in a gaming enthusiast board like the ROG designs where the complexity of all the features mean it will never reach the same level of reliability as a board designed for extreme environments(It's not a particularly expensive or exotic material and has other small downsides with regards to ease of build, until now the key benefits were more around its physical properties, resistance to fire, humidity and so on).
Last edited:
