Gigabyte’s B660 Gaming X DDR4 motherboard leaks – A Glimpse at lower-end Alder Lake motherboards

B660 should deliver Alder Lake Support with more reasonable pricing

If Alder Lake has a problem, it’s high platform costs. Z690 motherboards are expensive, and DDR5 memory is practically unobtanium. While DDR4-based Alder Lake motherboards are available, there are few low-cost options available, giving Alder Lake an affordability problem despite its solid CPU pricing.

In 2022, Intel plans to launch H670, B660 and H610 motherboards to cater to the lower end of the PC market, delivering motherboards at lower prices for those who want Alder Lake’s performance and fewer platform features. We expect to see these motherboards at CES 2022.

Thanks to Videocardz, we have got an early look at Gigabyte’s B660 Gaming X DDR4, a low-cost Alder Lake motherboard that appears to lack support for PCIe 5.0. All the Gigabyte Z690 motherboards that we have seen advertise PCIe 5.0 on its box art, but as you can see below, the B660 Gaming X DDR4 doesn’t. This leads us to believe that this motherboard’s primary PCIe x16 slot is a PCIe 4.0 slot.

 

Recent leaks from Intel have suggested that Intel’s B660 chipset will support memory overclocking but lack support for CPU overclocking. Additionally, B660 will support fewer DMI 4.0 lanes, fewer SATA connections and support fewer USB ports.

Gigabyte’s B660 Gaming X appears to support 2.5Gb Ethernet, but lack support for onboard Wi-Fi and Thunderbolt 4. It also features a full set of six audio jacks and a total of eight USB ports of various speeds. However, it is worth noting that none of these USB ports are USB Type-C.

(Intel Chipset Data Leak)

Intel’s B660 chipset will be of great interest to budget gamers, especially if Intel’s i5 non-K processors are as powerful as recent leaks have claimed. Intel’s Alder Lake non-K i5 processors reportedly feature six P-Cores and can offer all-core boost clock speeds of over 4GHz. When paired with fast memory, these CPUs will offer great gaming performance for their expected price points, doing more than enough to out-compete the Ryzen 3000 series CPUs that AMD has available in the sub-£200 price bracket. 

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