Meet the Add-in Card With a B650 Chipsets and All the I/O You Could Want
If you want more ports for your desktop system and don’t want to deal with multiple add-in cards, the new Lekuo Southbridge Max add-in card is exactly what you need. In a feat of mad genius, it fits an AMD B650 chipset to the little add-in board, unlocking heaps of I/O capabilities with all the connectors you could imagine.
With a PCIe 4×4 connector, the low-profile card gives you four 4x M.2 NVMe slots at up to PCIe 4 speeds, four SATA III 6Gbps connectors on the inside, and two USB-A and USB-C slots on the outside. Ideal for smaller mATX systems with just a single expansion slot, or larger systems in dire need of even more storage space.
You will need a PCIe 4 x4 slot to take full advantage of its features and connectors—you’ll need the bandwidth, given the speeds of some of those ports. One of the USB-C ports is 20Gbps, while the other is 10Gbps, and both USB-A slots can operate at up to 10Gbps.
Credit: Lekuo
The SATA speeds are limited to the maximum 550MBps, but the NVMe drives can hit PCIe 4 speeds—though I’d recommend not on more than one drive at a time. Probably best not to do too much writing from one drive to another.
It should work on both AM4 and AM5 systems, as well as Intel platforms. This could be particularly useful for adding higher-speed USB support to older chipsets and expanding storage and connectivity options.
The card does need external power, so if you’re interested in giving it a go in your system, make sure you have a 6-pin PCIe power cable handy.
The card isn’t the cheapest, either, with TechPowerUp suggesting it’s around $270 by itself, although shipping too might be a little expensive, since this is not a native Western component.
