Gigabyte removes PCIe 5.0 support from B650 motherboards in latest BIOS update
33 comments
·August 2, 2025amatecha
How does that work for the PC I just got a month ago that has this motherboard and was advertised as having PCIe 5.0 ? https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX00129652 I just lose capability that was clearly marked as a specific feature in the item I purchased?
Ah, I see that the PCIe 5.0 mentioned in the product specs is for the M.2 storage, not for the PCI slot for a graphics card. The post title should probably say "removes unofficial GPU slot PCIe 5.0 support" or something.
But yeah, considering I have a 5060ti 16gb on this motherboard, I guess I'll be staying with the current BIOS version indefinitely...
xmodem
It sounds like this only applies to boards that were never listed as PCIe 5 capable in the first place.
Semaphor
Confusing marketing. It supports PCIe 5 for storage, but not the GPU. Nothing official changed.
amatecha
Yeah so I just noticed, that is indeed confusing, though partly confusing on the post author's part. The marketing does indeed only mention PCIe 4.0 for the expansion slots.
kvemkon
It's only for single SSD M.2 storage slot directly connected to the CPU.
toast0
This happened on AM4 as well. https://www.techpowerup.com/258044/amds-latest-agesa-update-...
josephcsible
It should be illegal to retroactively take back features from products that you've already sold, regardless of whether the feature was advertised or how buggy it is.
bangaladore
The HN title does not match the actual article title. Didn't look super closely, but I don't see anything in the article suggesting the article title was changed after publishing.
> Gigabyte removes unofficial PCIe 5.0 support from B650 motherboards in latest BIOS update
It seems that the board was actually running in PCIe 5.0 mode, even though it was only supposed to (by the specs/manual) do PCIe 4.0
It was never advertised as supporting 5.0
accrual
Right, only the B650E chipset has official PCIe 5.0 support. The B650 may support it, but not officially.
This was the root of the article in my opinion:
> The issue may have emerged from the fact that PCIe 5.0 was enabled by default, and not clearly marked as experimental, and that may be something AMD did not like to see.
However, it seems to just be speculation. I too would like to know what the real reason was. Was Gigabyte dealing with returns/RMAs due to the feature? Was there pressure from AMD to stop allowing their lesser chipset to access PCIe 5.0?
Aurornis
> The B650 may support it, but not officially.
My guess (having some high-speed design and manufacturing experience) is that the boards were physically designed and qualified around the official spec, which was PCIe 4.0.
Then after some confusion they discovered that the BIOS team had enabled PCIe 5.0 on boards that were never qualified for it. Batch-to-batch variations of the boards could have caused instability because the manufacturing materials and test processes were only targeting PCIe 4.0
zaptheimpaler
I remember seeing a lot of people reporting instability & crashes that were tracked down to PCIe 5.0 being enabled. The signal integrity requirements are higher with PCIe5, so if the motherboard isn't actually specced and verified to support it in the factory, then i imagine it's kind of a lottery, where some pass but many crash and it will just cause headaches for customers.
good_stuffs
>Right, only the B650E chipset has official PCIe 5.0 support.
There is no AM5 chipset with PCIe 5.0 support. They are all on PCIe 4.0. The lanes come from CPU, they go to SSDs/GPU/chipset. All AM5 chipsets are linked to CPU via PCIe 4.0 lanes, none support PCIe 5.0 speeds.
bangaladore
> Was there pressure from AMD to stop allowing their lesser chipset to access PCIe 5.0?
Would be my guess. The fact that the B650 can even do 5.0 on the GPU lanes (it is able to do 4x 5.0 on NVME) makes me wonder if the B650 chipset is the same silicon as B650E and the speed is just really a configuration setting. Across the board the B650 seems like it is the exact same as a de-rated B650E.
It would surprise me if motherboard vendors who support 4.0 weren't actually compliant with 5.0 from a signaling / integrity perspective for future proofing and increased headroom.
karmakaze
At least users can go back to older firmware and get 5.0 back.
There was a story not long ago about some exercise equipment (I think) that remotely bricked the devices (when the company was being shutdown or something) though they could have worked offline just fine without that final update.
toast0
Lately, some BIOS updates have been advertised as not revertable. I'm sure you can still program the old firmware with an external programmer, but "for security reasons", the in-system update won't let you revert some updates that fix security issues.
Even without that barrier, it's not great when you have to pick between things like the bus speed and memory stability or other updates you want.
SoftTalker
I almost never install BIOS updates unless I'm encountering a specific issue. Vendors tend to discourage it as well. It's just one of those things where "if it works, don't fuck with it" is good advice.
fsflyer
This one?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/07/firmware-update-hind...
The company isn't shutting down, probably just an attempt to get more subscriptions.
The company used to support Strava integration from their app in Free Ride mode. That broke last year, the app still reports that a ride happened, but the ride is reported as 0 miles, 0 minutes long. I have the low end bike and rower from them. The machines are great physically.
baybal2
[dead]
oakwhiz
Were the lanes engineered for 5.0? Maybe this is a signal integrity issue.
SilverBirch
The way product segmentation works in this market it’s practically certain they’re physically identical to the board that supports 5 and the only difference is firmware locks and marketing.
dale_glass
PCIe 5 is 32 GT/s (~4GB/s) per lane, and of course double of that of PCIe 4.
It's a crazy rate that can't be trivial to achieve.
Some important information missing from the headline: B650 motherboards never officially supported PCIe 5.0 on the GPU slot. You always had to get a B650E motherboard for that.
You have to pay close attention to the difference between the M.2 slot (which can be PCIe 5.0 on B650) and the expansion slots (which were never advertised as PCI 5.0)
Leaving PCIe 5.0 enabled on the GPU slot could have caused problems if the designs and boards were qualified with the expectation they'd only run PCIe 4.0 speeds. If a board physically can't handle PCIe 5.0 but it gets enabled, it could lead to random crashes and instability, which turns into a higher return rate and angry customers.