New Ryzen motherboard recommendations?

[bizzybody]

I have an Asrock B450 (not B450M) Pro4 with a Ryzen 5 3600. 32gig DDR4. PCIe slot #1 seems to have conked out on it. A USB 3.0 card in it quit working, stopped the boot process cold as long as the SATA power connector was attached. The USB 3.0 card works in other PCIe x1 slots and in another computer. A 4 port SATA RAID card quit working after I put it into that slot, didn't work in another PC either. So I'm not trying anything else in that slot.

The B450 Pro4 has some issues (without one bad slot) where installing a PCIe SSD into M.2 slot one disables the second PCIe x16 slot, which is only connected as x4. All the other slots are just x1 size. Doesn't work for installing x2 or x4 or x8 cards. Another thing is the board has just one USB-C port on the back and no Type-E connectors for front USB-C ports. Currently I have a USB 3.0 card (two external, one header) and a card with one Type-E and a header in x1 slots 3 and 5. I contacted a lot of PCIe card manufacturers, with no luck, asking why nobody makes a PCIe x1 card with Type-E, just x2 or longer, when they all make x1 cards with a USB-C external port. If USB-C works on x1 there's no reason to not make a x1 with Type-E! Could be repeatedly prodding all the bears worked. A couple of months ago someone sent me a link to what was then the one and only source for that sort of USB card, now they're everywhere. It just took someone going first, then the rest would copy.

So I'm wanting a better motherboard (but definitely not a mini board for this 7 slot Corsair case) where I can have my WD Black 1TB PCIe M.2 SSD *and* use all the slots, and be able to plug in more than one x16 GPU and a bunch of x1 cards. It also needs at least one Type-E connector. If I need to upgrade the CPU to support more PCIe lanes I can do that, but would like to stick to 65W TDP, absolutely not an APU with built in video. I have a GTX 1050. The only way I'd go with an APU is if it had better hardware HEVC encoding ability than the GTX 1050, which they don't (yet), and AMD's lags behind nVidia's.

It does NOT need to have more than one M.2 connector. Every board I've looked up with two of those, even if using the first one disables nothing, the second one always does, usually some of the SATA ports. I have four internal 1TB drives (two soon to get replaced with 2TB) in addition to the 1TB boot SSD. I also have a DVD burner and a BD-RE, so that's at least 6 SATA ports required just for my stuff. I also work on other computers so more SATA ports are useful for doing things like rescuing / backing up files.

I'd rather not have support for RGB lights, water pumps, onboard video and other things I don't need. It's too bad there isn't a nice and big board that still has one PCI slot because I have two really nice PCI sound cards.

Edited June 9, 2022 by bizzybody

[puntoMX]

If you go with your old CPU, check out a motherboard with the X570 chipset, something like this (no type 'E' USB): MSI MPG X570 Gaming Edge (wifi)

The X570 chipset provides the extra PCI-E lanes, just not version 4.0 as your need a 5600X or better for that and not the 'G' versions. 

You could wait for the AM5 motherboards, but those might not have the 6 SATA ports you need. PCI-E x2, I think you wanted to say x4. Normal consumer board do only use the 1, 4, 8 and x16 PCI-E expansion busses.

There are motherboards with the X570 chipset out there that have the USB connector on them, most likely one. Why not use an USB adaptor on the ports the motherboard has?

[bizzybody]

I'm thinking the Asrock X570 Extreme 4 might fit the bill. https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X570 Extreme4/index.asp

Take a close look at the PCIe x1 slots. They appear to be open ended. But the specifications don't mention that nor has any review I've seen on the board. The manual has nothing about that. If they are open ended than that would make this a board I'd want to get since it can take x2 or x4 cards in those slots.

[puntoMX]

The ASRock is a solid board for 200USD. The X570 Extreme 4 uses almost all the features of the X570 chipset. Some PCI-E 4x cards do not like to be put into a 1x sloth but most contacts are for board power anyways (I think you know this, just put it there for others to read). Still, I would use USB A to C cables, or just use an adaptor; why waste the extra PCI-E lanes?