M.2 PCIe Performance
We test M.2 PCIe performance using a WD_Black SN850 PCIe Gen 4 SSD.
Gigabyte delivered a little over 7GBps peak speed for our WD_Black SN850 NVMe SSD, while the ASUS board’s scores were almost identical. Neither board provided any restrictions.
M.2 PCIe SSD Cooling Performance
The WD_Black SN850 1TB NVMe SSD is installed in the top slot of each motherboard. We test the cooling performance by measuring the temperature recordings during nine back-to-back runs of the CrystalDiskMark sequential read/write test.
Gigabyte did look to have an upper hand in the department of SSD cooling though. And this comes as little surprise given the oversized bulk of its Thermal Guard III heatsink which does an absolutely superb thermal management job.
A Note on WiFi 6E
Unfortunately, we do not have access to a WiFi 6E router that we could also use to test full-speed performance – i.e. one with a sufficient 5GbE or 10GbE backbone.
Creating a WiFi hotspot from the motherboards to test with a WiFi 6E-capable Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra was not possible, seemingly due to the Microsoft virtual adapter limitations
ASUS did send over their 10Gbps-capable RT-AX89X router, but this is RJ-45 and SFP+ with WiFi 6 – not 6E – so it looks more like an excellent solution for wired connectivity to a file server, especially with the 10GbE-equipped ProArt X570-Creator WiFi motherboard