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  • Tunnah - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    I really love how advanced motherboards are nowadays. I can pick up the most "basic" model and it'll cover everything I need, and even include stuff I won't. Gone are the days frantically trying to find a motherboard that ticks all the boxes for even the most basic of needs.

    Plus having such a competent board as my soon-to-be secondary system means I can leave all my drives in that and put it in a nice quiet place. I'm fairly certain the 8 HDDs in this one are what caused my tinnitus :/
  • Jansen - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    The ASUS Pro WS X570-Ace has officially validated ECC support. This is a really big deal, as Ryzen has usually only had unofficial ECC support. It opens up a whole other revenue steam for AMD that Intel has deliberately cut off in order to drive Xeon sales.

    Micron is ramping up its 16GB 3200MHz DDR4 ECC modules MTA18ADF2G72AZ-3G2 specifically for this market.
  • JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    I'd much sooner get a Ryzen platform for their value and unbuffered ECC support for an upgrade for my NAS box running FreeNAS, but it's well documented that FreeBSD still has teething issues with Ryzen chips, scheduling, and overall reliability... FreeBSD is what powers FreeNAS OS.

    So I'm kind of stuck with Intel workstations/server CPUs and ECC ram for a FreeBSD machine (assuming I don't want to do the legwork of trying to get it stable first, and even so, I may not always have the same stability that mature FreeBSD+Intel support...)

    I'll very likely be moving to Ryzen for my main PC, though.
  • quorm - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    I agree with the general sentiment. Core i3 is another option if you don't need a lot of cpu power.
  • teldar - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    I used a ryzen 1600 for my bad. Rock solid after updating board bios.
  • danjw - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    I built a file server on Ubuntu Server. You might try that.
  • BillC - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link

    You might want to check out Open Media Vault which uses Debian Linux for the OS, it can be installed as a NAS only installation or on top of the full Debian OS.
  • spikebike - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Wow, pricey board. Sad that AMD handles ECC in such a half assed way. Intel's price premium for low end servers is approximately $0. Xeon E3's were priced very similarly or even cheaper to the similar desktop parts. In particular the cheapest hyperthreading E3 was often cheaper than the cheapest i3/i5/i7 with 4 cores/8 threads. Similar with the HEDT, the intel premium for a better socket/additional memory busses is much less than the low end Eypc/Threadripper.

    So you either have the luck of the draw trying to buy a reliable AMD with ECC (not just physically compatible, but actually corrects memory errors), or you pay a substantial price premium.
  • Aikouka - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    ASRock Rack has a Ryzen motherboard that officially supports ECC and also has IPMI support (X470D4U). They're also developing a Threadripper variant of their Epyc server board that has IPMI support, but it uses the X370 chipset.
  • cascadehealthcare - Tuesday, August 13, 2019 - link

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  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Agreed. The major differences between pricing in motherboards nowadays is how well they support overclocking, how many / what type of Ethernet ports, and how much RGB garbage they throw on there. :-)
  • brunis.dk - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Retarded Garbage Blinking!
  • 29a - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    RGB changes the price by pennies at the most.
  • jrs77 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    If it wasn't for the optical digital output I'd agree, but these seem to be rather rare and not common at all. A couple years back that wasn't the case, so I see an actual backwards trend here that comes with a lack of necessary ports. Atleast an optical digital output is necessary for me.
  • lmcd - Friday, July 26, 2019 - link

    I mean sure, but a decent number of them were completely useless from a terrible onboard chipset. Pretty sure one of my two desktops had one that maxed out at 2.0 channel over optical digital output.
  • Silma - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    This would have been true, but for the dearth of ThunderBolt 3 ports, needed for audio interfaces for example.
    lso the price of most of the boards is outrageous compared to their real added value, imho.
  • umano - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link

    I agree with Silma, for example the great asrock x299 itx at launch had a price tag of 399, with 4 memory channel and sodimm slot and 3 nvme. Something's wrong, or the amd statement is false (most modern i/o), or the mb manufacturers did not get the best from x570
  • regsEx - Friday, July 19, 2019 - link

    I like it either. But back in days, top Intel's Asrock P67 Fatali1y Professional was priced at $120. For that price you were getting 16+2 phase power, cooling with a pipe 3 brand new Etron USB 3.0 controllers (USB 3.2 Gen 1), additional PCIe controller, best at the time Realtek ALC892 sound, 2 Realtek RTL8111 LAN controllers, additional Marvell SATA controller, Dr. Debug display, power and reset buttons, 3.5" front USB 3 panel, additional rear USB 3 bracket and SLI bridge in the box. That was first generation of motherboards of XMP profiles and new graphical AMI UEFI (return of graphical AMI BIOS after 15 years) etc etc. Just $120. Now to get similar set you have to pay at least $360. And for $120 you can only get some poor office board. And ASRock was cheapest of high end boards back then. Now it's most expensive.
  • regsEx - Friday, July 19, 2019 - link

    "best at the time Realtek ALC892 sound"
    I mean best of Realtek. Obviously there were Creative X-Fi.
  • Marlin1975 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    How soon before you can test the x570 boards? Really curious how pcie 3 m.2 cards perform in them with 2000 and 3000 series cpus. Does the new chipset help performance for 2000 cpus or even 3000 cpus compared to x470 and b450 boards?

    And any word on future mATX boards? Only 1 so far seems weird and also a monoply for asrock.
  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    I think the only advantage of using a 2000 series CPU with an X570 board will be PCIe 3.0/4.0 support. The X370/X470 only supported PCIe 2.0. In theory, the connection from the 2000 processor to the X570 chipset should run at PCIe 3.0 speeds.
  • FreckledTrout - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    The x370 chipset and x470 both supported PCIe 3.0 with either a 1xxx or 2xxx Ryzen CPU. If you are not running a 3xxx CPU in the x570 board there isn't any major feature that should cause one to want to upgrade.
  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    @FreckledTrout - Yes and no. The interconnect between the CPU and the chipset is PCIe 3.0 on X370 / X470, but all the PCIe lanes that come off the chipset are 2.0. Running a 2000 series CPU in an X570 board would give you a PCIe 3.0 link between the CPU and the chipset, with either PCIe 3.0 or 4.0 lanes coming off the chipset (depends on if AMD drops everything to PCIe 3.0 with a 2000 series processor).
  • extide - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    It looks like they still allow the chipset lanes to be 4.0. So you'd have 3.0 link to cpu, but 4.0 from chipset to devices.
  • Targon - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    Since you have at least one or two PCI Express slots that are connected to the CPU, not chipset, that almost becomes a non-issue. On my Asus ROG Crosshair VI Hero(X370), you have PCI Express 3.0 x16 for the first slot, or x8/x8. The third PCI Express x16 slot is a 2.0 I believe, which is still enough to get the job done for many devices. Even with the X570 board with a first or second generation Ryzen processor, the most you end up with is an extra 3.0 supporting slot. Note that many boards may have x16 slots, but they are x8 electrically, so you won't see the full bandwidth anyway in those slots.
  • sorten - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Thanks Gavin! This is a great resource and is exactly what I needed to help build my new system.
  • willis936 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    The return of the 40mm fan! Those are the most obnoxious components ever. No one has missed them in the past ten years.
  • Kastriot - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Buy Asrock aqua and problem solved.
  • FreckledTrout - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    I'm waiting for the next iteration of board for this reason. I'm speculating the next round the chipset will be on 7nm.
  • abufrejoval - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    The genious about that chiplet design is that the chipset doesn't actually benefit nearly as much from the shrink, as pure logic or SLC caches: The monolithic guys pay the 7nm overhead (e.g. EUV) for I/O while the geometry of the transistors in the I/O area is mostly determined by the need to power long motherbord or even slot traces.

    So while waiting is never a bad idea when your need clearly isn't overwhelming you, waiting for that shrink could turn out rather long. These days I/O heave chips might never be done in smaller geometries, because of that and because packaging has matured.
  • Mr Perfect - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Yeah, I'm having flashbacks over here. Weedy little fans screaming along at 6000RPM, then choking up on a dust bunny or wearing out the bearing.

    Do we know what process they used for the X570? Is it the same 55nm they used for the X470? Here's hoping they shrink it a little for X670.
  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    14nm
  • erotomania - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    55nm
  • DanNeely - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    no. X470 and below were 55nm (designed by ASMedia on an ancient process to keep everything cheap as dirt), X570 was done in house on 14nm. Ryzen 3's IO die is also 14nm (the much larger Epyc one was done at 12nm).
  • erotomania - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Weedy, man! Those weedy fans
  • sing_electric - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Given how little chipsets benefit from process shrinks, some part of me honestly wonders if there's any sense in going even further back to the future and dividing the chipset into a north/southbridge (or some other similar config) so that the heat can at least be spread out, getting rid of the need for a failure-prone mechanical part on your motherboard.
  • YoloPascual - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    z77 extreme 4 to x570 extreme 4 👊👊
  • The_Assimilator - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    I also owned a Z77 Extreme 4 at one time, and the X570 version is probably the closest to perfect that I've seen offered so far. If only it had a couple of extra USB ports on the back panel, it'd be a shoe-in.
  • rUmX - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Hoping for price cuts on Intel cpus because no matter how good Ryzen is, these boards are way too expensive.
  • Karmena - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Then get X470 or B450 boards. Or even X370 or B350 boards, you are in no way forced to use these latest mobos.
  • sorten - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Good advice, and you get lower system power consumption as a bonus. The main reason to go with the more expensive x570 boards is PCIE 4.0, and you're not going to get that if you switch to Intel.
  • Ratman6161 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Asrock has the x570 pro 4 listed on their web site with an MSRP of $154.00 I've used their Pro X boards in a number of builds and always had good results with them. They don't seem to be available at retail yet (at least anywhere I've seen) . On the other hand, I'm not one of those to go out and buy any product on the first day. Street prices on both motherboards and CPU's are likely to drop quickly and...even if I go out and buy a new CPU, I don't have anything else that could take advantage of the x570 chipset for the time being, so my x470 is probably good to go for quite some time to come anyway.
  • Gastec - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Ryzen 3000 series CPU prices are going to be over MSRP for at least 3 months.
  • Targon - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    I don't know where you live, but here in the USA, the CPUs are all at the official prices, unless you go to a third party seller who is trying to scam money out of people. Note that many online stores show products from third parties in addition to what they sell themselves, so when you see CPU prices above MSRP, those are the third party scammers.

    Newegg is getting daily deliveries by the look of it, and I expect the other large online sources are as well. The sales volumes are high on these chips, and some people just take advantage of it and charge more money.
  • Gastec - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link

    On Amazon.es and PCComponentes.com the EXACT SAME price, set up by bots:
    AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, 548,90€
    AMD Ryzen 7 3700X: 361,80 €
  • eva02langley - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    The only reason to buy x570 is for PCIe 4.0. If you don't need it, get a B450 board at 75$ Will work for every Ryzen 3000 CPUs.

    I am even thinking about using my X370 MSI Gaming Pro Carbon for my 3950x.
  • abufrejoval - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Unless you happen to have an older Ryzen or Carrizo lying around, there could be a problem to get older boards with an up-to-date BIOS.

    Had similar issues a year ago when RAM was so expensive, I had to recycle DDR3 for Kaby Lake CPUs using Z170 motherboards that only has Skylake support. Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell CPUs I had galore, but Skylake only as notebooks. I wound up buying a Sky Lake i3, which I then returned for a full refund after I had updated the motherboards.

    Didn't feel good about it, wasn't given a choice either.

    These days some dealers offer a BIOS upgrade service, but at €40 it pretty much eats the 3. + 4. generation benefit.

    I want 10Gbase-T or rather NBase-T. Currently that means mostly Aquantia 107, of which I have 4 already. Those are €88 a piece, but when I look at these x570 prices, they charge a 300% premium for what's essentially a low-cost chip.

    And then I hear rumors, that there is actually 10Gbit Ethernet or in fact 100Gbit Ethernet already on-die, both in the CPU chiplet and the x570 chipset variant: For IF Ethernet is simply another protocol to run on the fabric and all you need is PHY.

    It is rather unfortunate that sane CPU prices, sane SSDs and sane RAM only mean that motherboard vendors are hoping to cash in big-time.

    I can see how they would be hungry. But I don't have 'waste money' around to feed them.
  • The_Assimilator - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Asus boards have a "BIOS flashback" feature whereby if you plug in a flash drive with a new BIOS to a specific USB port and press a button on the IO panel, the board will auto-flash itself with that BIOS - no CPU is needed, just power to the board.
  • Targon - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    Almost all MSI motherboards have BIOS flashback, and the Asus ROG Crosshair series also has BIOS flashback where you don't need a CPU or RAM in order to flash the BIOS. Most Asus motherboards do NOT have BIOS flashback capability.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    when they get PCI4 support Intel's boards will be equally more expensive than the previous generation. Maintaining that high frequency a signal across more than a cm or 2 requires building boards to a much higher and more expensive standard or active signal booster chips along the path.

    PCIe 5 will be far worse on that front. Estimates I saw earlier this year were that PCIe4 would add as much as $100 to the price of a board; with the cheapest x570 boards being almost $100 more than the cheapest x470's on Newegg and the average (excluding the crazy halo ones) looking like it's at least $50 higher that doesn't seem too far off. That article (ee times asia???) was predicting that PCIe5 could end up adding as much as $400 above the cost of a 3.0 capable board; which if true probably means it will end up server only or with only a narrow strip between the CPU and chipset build up to that standard. (Assuming the latter possible anyway: If the cost challenge is more preventing external interference than in needing higher quality materials a local board segment fudge might not be feasible.)
  • abufrejoval - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    PCI4 and 5, or for that matter IF will trigger rethinking motherboard layouts and form factors.

    "The [Enthusiast] motherboard" dates back to 1981 or the dawn of the IBM Personal Computer, and physics are catching up everywhere, even on the motherboard.

    Distance has a huge impact on speed, latency and power, so 'flat' and 'square' are both the first obstacles and the first who need to compromise. In the future every milimeter of distance between the die carrier and your point of interest will need to be paid for, in energy/time or extra switching silicon.

    Linear extrapolations of the past have little use, when the barriers are exponential.
  • TheUnhandledException - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Even if you keep the board a square moving the CPU and chipset to the center of the board and having PCIe slots on either side would cut the trace to the furthest slots in half.
  • The_Assimilator - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Hopefully at the same time we can ditch 12V as the rail to rule them all, so that we can bring the amperages in current systems back down to sane levels.
  • ChubChub - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link

    Would be cool to see the CPU on one side of the board, and the cards on the other; would shrink those distances, but would require a new form factor, which would kindof suck (but I can picture what the dual-sided boards would look like, and I think it's a pretty neat idea having two independent sides for cooling (also, in a tower setup, a CPU sitting vertically on the board, which would be nice).
  • Targon - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    This is why if Gen-Z gets adopted, we could have PCI Express hanging off the Gen-Z bus as a way to deal with these issues.
  • sing_electric - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    I was thinking that the mobo costs made price comparisons more difficult. Then I remembered that AMD is still throwing in a pretty good stock cooler, while Intel makes you BYO. For MOST users, that means that your total build cost will be lower with AMD.

    If you're doing something exotic - say, with liquid cooling or heavy overclocking that requires a certain thermal solution - then sure, you lose those savings, but if you're spending $300 to keep your machine cool, is the price difference of the motherboard really going to sway you one way or another?
  • Oliseo - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    You're actually comparing the bundled CPU cooler to a $300 custom loop Intel Cooler?

    You're expecting people to take you seriously as well?
  • Targon - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    Consider that for those who buy the i9-9900k, you can't get away with a 95W cooler, even if the rated TDP is 95W. So, you do need to buy at least a $30 cooler for air cooling on the 9900k, while AMD does provide a cooler to handle the typical performance of its processors. Even then, $330 for the Ryzen 7 3700X or 3800X for 8 cores/16 threads, vs. the $489 for the 9900k+$30 or $40 will still be more expensive for an 8 core/16 thread chip.

    What many don't realize is that if you go with AMD and get a B450 or X470 chipset motherboard(that has an updated BIOS or with BIOS flashback), you get the motherboard price you want, and the cost of ownership will still be lower. Since Intel doesn't offer PCI Express 4.0, going with PCI Express 3.0 on the AMD side won't be a big deal from the comparison point of view. Overclocking potential has not been compared between the enthusiast class X470 and X570 based motherboards from what I have seen as well, but it could make a difference for many people.
  • Flunk - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    I like how almost all of these boards have 2 or more M.2 slots. I had to be very careful when I bought my Z170 board to find one with 3 M.2 slots.

    But now there are boards with 3 slots so maybe I'll have to snag that Aorus Ultra.
  • drexnx - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    it's amazing how fast number of M.2 slots has become the primary thing I look for in a mobo anymore too
  • abufrejoval - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    It's amazing how quickly you run out of PCIe lanes, when you don't have switches to multiplex and translate between PCIe revisions and lanes (e.g. PCIe v4 x2 <-> PCIe v2 x8).

    I find myself using USB 3.x NBase-T NICs and NVMe adapters, simply because they *do* switch.
  • Bensam123 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Maybe a bit more depth on the power delivery page. I have absolutely no idea how to go about parsing what's there. More chokes is better? What denotes a power phase?
  • A5 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    +1. Some analysis of that information would be helpful.
  • MrSpadge - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    +1
  • bunkle - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    The controller column includes the total number of phases supported split between CPU cores and SoC e.g. (6+1) = 6 CPU phase and 1 SoC phase. More is *usually* better but has diminishing returns regarding tighter and tighter voltage regulation. Some controllers are better than others (can operate at high frequency e.g. 500KHz v 1000KHz, include other features to improve performance) mitigating the need for more phases.

    Each phase is a buck converter comprised of a low/high side MOSFET (can be integrated in a single package) and choke. Some controllers can support doubling up the PWM signal to driver more MOSFETs. Doublers can also be added as discrete components if not built into the controller.

    Current rating of the MOSFET (e.g. Sic639=40A IR3555=60A) indicates the total power deliverable. MOSFETs are not 100% efficient and vary in efficiency. The more current they provide the hotter they get and the less efficient they become, with better MOSFETs producing less heat for a given current. Thus using doubles can improve temperatures and efficiency without the benefits of the tighter voltage tolerance that *real* phases provide.

    Hope that’s helpful!
  • bunkle - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    A lot more detailed explanation: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/voltage_regulator_mod...
  • bug77 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    The description for AsRock X570(M) Pro4 says "5 jack + 1 SPDIF". Unfortunately, those boards lack SPDIF and only come with 3 jacks ;)
  • Smell This - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    I'm thinking the *ASRock Thunderbolt AIC* ...
    https://thunderbolttechnology.net/product/asrock-t...
    would cover all your TBT peripheral needs, including optical.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Do X570 boards still need an extra chip per USB port to support USB-C reversibility?

    The additional expense and needed PCB space were cited as among the reasons why earlier generation boards (IIRC both Intel and AMD) almost never had more than 1 C port; but it was never clear to me if that was an inherent implementation penalty for the C port or an artifact of Intel's tech stack being stalled out and AMD outsourcing to ASMedia which built the chipsets on an ancient (55nm) platform.
  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Gavin - X370 and X470 only supported PCIe 2.0. The connection between the CPU and chipset was 3.0, but all the ports on the chipset were 2.0.
  • Spoelie - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Is there any information on the performance of the Ryzen 3000 series on X/B400 series chipsets? Assuming that the power delivery is up to snuff and the bios is updated, will performance be similar and the only thing lacking vs X570 the connectivity upgrades? Or are there again some features that are exclusive to the newer chipsets like PBO2 or ...
  • haukionkannel - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    There Are some test and the the speed is the same. You only miss that pci 4.0... and that is not so big deal in anyway. One video in YouTube shows Ryzen 3900 running in 350 based motherboard quite nicely. He did not try to overclock the cpu though...
  • dm29-84 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Puzzles me the little attention paid to sound department. Specifically Gigabyte's notable inclusion of ESS Sabre DAC. If I'm right, USB DACs based on this controller justifies 200-400$ price tag with excellent scores. Great Anand site should include some procedure in that regard.
  • Death666Angel - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Great DAC inside an electrical noisy environment is still questionable. People who care about great PC sound have external means. People who don't don't care about it apart from having a jack for their headphones.
  • Qasar - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    why not just get a better quality discrete sound card and disable the onboard sound altogether ? i havent used onboard sound since the K7 days and Nvidia's SoundStorm :-)
  • RSAUser - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    I don't think 99% of us have the equipment and heating capability to truly need an external sound card.
  • RSAUser - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Hearing *
  • Qasar - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    wasnt referring to external, was referring to an internal discrete sound card, like the soundblaster, asus or the like.. there is another sound card maker i am thinking of, but i can't remember the name of it right now....
  • ishkatar - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Which of these boards support SLI? I have 2 x GTX 1070 that I want to keep.
  • Jansen - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    SLI is pretty much dead, but Asus PRIME X570 SERIES, MSI MEG X570 Godlike, and MEG X570 ACE do.
  • PeachNCream - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Pretty much this. Modern games on DX12 won't see any benefit unless the game developer bakes in support (which they appear uninterested in doing for cost reasons) and older games run very well on a single modern GPU. AMD and NV are hardly acknowledging SLI these days either and nowhere but at the top end so there is even less compulsion for developers to bother with supporting it. All in all, you're better off not worrying about SLI unless the industry changes direction significantly in the next few years.
  • ajlueke - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    The real question however, is does all this power delivery actually have any practical benefits? If I drop a 3000 series CPU in an X570 board vs X470, can I achieve any additional performance? And what is the power consumption differences in the respective chipsets? That is the type of info I would like to see.
  • PeachNCream - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    It's a marketng differentiator only as motherboard manufacturers all use the same core components and are quick to emulate one another with similar features. Through branding and obscure features that do not significantly impact computer operation, they search for something they can offer that may encourage you to make a purchase in a very, very crowded field of offerings.
  • lopri - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Solid power delivery for high-performance CPUs is perhaps the farthest thing from obscure marketing features. OEMs do play with marketing BS for differentiation, but the underlying power delivery system is extremely important and can impact everyday operation for these multi-core CPUs.
  • PeachNCream - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    At long as it meets AMD specifications, no it won't. If it doesn't meet specifications, then it's a bad design. There's no reason to tout being mediocre or a hair or two above mediocre unless you're running out of unique bullet points for the backside of the box that nobody bothers to read anyway.
  • Death666Angel - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Stock performance will be the same across the board unless the manufacturer royally screwed up and the power delivery has to throttle due to temperatures (which there are some cases of with super cheap motherboards and 8 cores). Doing OC (and PBO is already OC) is where things start to change. More / better phases means less heat output and better voltages (ripple). This can potentially give you better clocks. But most of this is only useful when you start OCing on water or sub zero systems. Air cooled overclocking will hardly benefit at all. And regarding power consumption you can go into a lot of detail. Sometimes more power phases simply destroys efficiency, when they are all fired up all the time. Sometimes more power phases are smartly managed and load balanced to be kept at their optimal efficiency. It really depends on the implementation.
  • Peter2k - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    If you leave everything at stock, then there is no real reason to upgrade
    Most people would think keeping the socket backwards compatible as an upside

    In a desktop the only real reason why we think about power draw going up from 5w to 11w is because manufactures like to keep the cooling block small, and those need a fan
    Chipset fans bring back memories out of terrible noisy days
    Also I remember chipset coolers to be a bit bigger in the past, I'm sure if you're just trying to provide food cooling, without trying to hit that gamer look, then you can cool that chipset without active fan

    If you want to try your hand at OC'ing you should probably want the better power delivery

    And there is no telling if the older boards will also run fine with higher memory speeds
    Guessing they would, at least until the magical 3600, that's not that outlandish high
    And how much that affects performance this time around still has to be tested

    Short story
    You have a Ryzen already, just make it a drop in replacement
    No need to throw out the board
  • Peter2k - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Any one that would argue about the electricity costs going up (I've encountered those) should also not that all that shiny bling probably draws more watts then the 6w or so difference between last gen and this gen
  • pavag - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    I expected benchmarks.
  • sorten - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    You expected benchmarks on 35+ boards that were released two days ago, and many of which aren't even available at retail?
  • Supercell99 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    I also expected benchmarks and a naked woman serving me a beer.
  • haukionkannel - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    You did not get that? That is really strange... I was sure that that was the basic service in here!
    ;)
  • Gastec - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    I had a dream last night about a woman, she was serving me...benchmarks :)
  • Duncan Macdonald - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Why is the DDR4 memory speed being shown as a feature of the chipset? The memory is directly driven by the CPU not the chipset and as such the memory speed is independent of the chipset.
  • Dug - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    The motherboard still has work to do and is what supports the faster speed memory. Just because the cpu allows it, doesn't mean it will work without the correct chipset.
  • thomasg - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    The chipset has nothing to do with it, it has no relation to RAM clock and is exclusively driven by the PCIe clock, which is unrelated.

    The mainboard itself has the traces and therefore the manufacturer is expected to provide appropriate timing sequences to load into the CPU, which again, is not done on the chipset.

    There's no reason a mainboard manufacturer couldn't support faster RAM on any older, compatible board (provided they do a firmware update and the board is designed well enough), a chipset upgrade is not required.
  • Death666Angel - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    "the board is designed well enough" There is the catch. It might be that Ryzen being the first of its kind meant that many 3xx boards were designed poorly.

    First test I've seen is TPUs R9 3900x on a ASUS Prime B350 Plus which they claim ran at 3200CL14, but only after setting it to 2666MHz first and letting it train the memory. But it's an encouraging result.
  • Dug - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    I'm interested in seeing what coolers will fit on the mITX boards. Specifically ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3.

    It looks like some of these boards might be limited due to high heatsinks and fans on the motherboards.
  • Mikewind Dale - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Could we please have a comparison table? 35 pages is too many read. It would be useful to have a comparison table so that I can narrow down the several motherboards I am interested in, and then compare their prices.
  • halcyon - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    A summary table of features would indeed be very helpful. Way too many boards and pages...
  • Death666Angel - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    There is a "print this article" function. And the easiest way to browse for specifically what you need are price comparison websites. In Europe, that would be "geizhals.eu" (English skinflint.co.uk) . I'm sure other regions have one as well. I don't think having a table with over 35 motherboards would give you the insight you are looking for. Browser for the 2 or 3 motherboards that suite your need and then compare those.
  • konakcc - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    What I find disturbing is that they still put the x4 slots directly next ot the x16 slots. Most modern graphics cards are double wide meaning you can't use those slots so why include them? Think about how the slots will be used and lay them out appropriately.
  • Dark42 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Thanks for the overview, there seem to be a number of typos / errors though:
    Asrock Pro4: has only 3 3.5 mm audio jacks(picture), where the text says 5.
    Asrock Steel Legend: only 1 USB 3.1 G2 Type-A (picture), text says 2.
    Asrock Creator: picture looks like 2 USB 3.1 G2 Type-A + 4 G1, text says 6 G1.

    APS: May I suggest a table (or several ones) with the connectivity information? Its not nice having to click through ~40 pages, parse the text and remember to find out how many M.2 slots, Sata ports, etc. the motherboards have.
  • Death666Angel - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    There is a "print this article" function. And the easiest way to browse for specifically what you need are price comparison websites. In Europe, that would be "geizhals.eu" (English skinflint.co.uk) . I'm sure other regions have one as well.
  • supremeMilo - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Where are you seeing that the ASUS ROG Strix X570-I Gaming has a S/PDIF output? I might get this board over the AsRock if this is true.
  • eva02langley - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Hey Gavin, could you make a special table for Displayport 2.0, HDMI 2.0 and SPDIF?

    Also, which of these board offer the best audio technology.

    Thanks
  • gavbon - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    I will try and find some time to quickly knock one up. Just going through the comments now (just finished the Ryzen 3000 CPU re-testing)
  • Kurosaki - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Sad that only the 700usd version from gigabyte was passively cooled. Let's just wait and see if any cheaper models with heatpipes comes by...
  • PeachNCream - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Wait a generation if you aren't starved badly for performance with your current hardware. Given the outcry over chipset fans, this is probably a significant point of improvement on the next-gen chipset agenda.
  • zzing123 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Given that Ryzen is a brilliant replacement for edge server computing, I'd like to see workstation boards have an option card using the PCIe x1 slot to accommodate an IPMI solution for proper headless server duty. Donany vendors have plans for this?
  • Zibi - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Check over ASRock Rack X470D4U. Serverthehome have short review of it and it sibling.
  • Eastrider - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    A quick mention, the Gigabyte Aorus Elite doesn't have an ALC1220, but ALC1200. Lovely write up otherwise!
  • gavbon - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Thanks for that, updated!
  • BloodyBunnySlippers - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link

    I've had trouble finding the difference. I see references to the 1200 from 2008. Is it that old a chip?
  • Zibi - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Thank you very much for the article. The feature comparison on the last page was especially valuable. I'm concerned with the longevity of the active cooling solution all these boards seems to require. Would it be possible for you to to write a sentence or 2 about the possibilities of the DIY replacing in case of the fault ?
    It would be bit of shame to have to throw away such expensive MoBo due to the faulty cheapo fan.
    OTOH looking on those prices I start to lean about picking X470 Taichi Ultimate. I'm looking for the better network connection to my NAS and it looks like 270$ X470 Taichi Ultimate featuring 10 Gbe is the cheapest and the quietest option.
  • gavbon - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    If in doubt, get a 10G NIC add-on card
  • Zibi - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    True this is an option as well.
    It's bit more expensive though, as there is limited amount of options in my country :-/
  • patrikor - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Question about the MSI x570 Godlike's m.2 slots:

    The manual says M2_3 is the slot provisioned by the CPU's pcie lanes. However, this is the farthest slot from the CPU. Moreover, on all the other MSI boards I've looked at, M2_1 (the closest to the CPU) is the one provisioned by CPU lanes.

    Do I trust the manual here or trust my gut?
  • The_Assimilator - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Nothing about the fact that almost none of these boards, except the highest-end and most expensive ones, have no more than 8 USB ports on the back panel?
  • TheUnhandledException - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    How many usb ports do you need on the back panel? Are you just spec shopping for the sake of spec shopping?
  • The_Assimilator - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Nope, I really do need that many USB ports! In the past I've used various add-in cards and hubs to achieve this, but my experiences with these devices, and their drivers, and compatibility has been spotty at best, and they also take up space or PCIe slots - hence why I'd much prefer if it was all just integrated on the board.

    Just to be clear, I don't need 10 USB 3 ports - 8 USB 3 and a pair of 2.0 would be perfect. Considering almost all of these boards have a pair of USB 2.0 headers for 4 ports in total, but cases today don't offer more than a single USB 2.0 front-panel connector - plus that these boards' IO panels have plenty of extra room - I don't see why manufacturers can't drop one of those headers and just give us an extra two rear 2.0 ports as standard.
  • Qasar - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    why not pick up a usb header to slot plate adapter, im sure you have unused card openings on the back of your case under the video card
  • DanNeely - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    More ports on the back mean fewer available headers for internal connections. x570 has 12 total USB 3.x ports; so most boards maxing out at 8 on the back and 2 headers (2 ports/header) internal seems about right. Going higher means adding either USB3 controller chips (eats PCIe lanes but gives independent ports for greater total system throughput) or on board USB3 hubs; both of which drive up costs. With making the boards PCIe4 capable already driving up costs a lot the board makers are looking to economize elsewhere.
  • shabby - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    I noticed the cheap asrock boards have 8 usb3 ports in the back.
  • plonk420 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    THANK YOU SO MUCH for the VRM information! i don't even OC but i like to keep an eye on what VRMs boards are using... hopefully will help with longevity if i'm going to thrash either Vcore or SoC (keeping components like caps cooler)
  • thomasg - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    In my opinion, all those boards are just silly.
    All they bring over the 2 years old X370 platform is PCIe 4.0 support, a bit more USB 3 Gen2 as well as often a second m.2 slot.

    On the other hand, the southbridge fan is a ridiculous idea, especially consindering all the silly enormous heatsinks they mount to everything BUT the chipset.

    And for that, they go for a premium of about 60% over X370 when it was fresh.
    I paid 170 dollars for my PRIME X370-Pro day 1 (over 2 years ago), now the successor is 270 dollars.

    The WS is the only board looking buyable, but then again, it also is actively cooled and doesn't even bring NBase-T.
    I could forgive that, wouldn't they charge well above 300 dollars for it (while the other boards are close to MSRP in germany, the WS is already far below its MSPR).

    Nope, thanks, I'm skipping X570.
  • Death666Angel - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    "I paid 170 dollars for my PRIME X370-Pro day 1 (over 2 years ago), now the successor is 270 dollars."
    Take that up with ASUS. I can get the X570 Phantom 4 from AsRock with (4x2) power stages (which means easier 3950X oc vs your x370 Pro) for 170€.
    And for me, I'm starting to think that having 3 whole x4 slots (2 M.2, one x16) of 4.0 speeds is a nice addition versus the one 3.0 x4 M.2 and one 3.0 x2 or 2.0 x4 slot with another 2.0 x4 slot all the 4xx and 3xx mainboards offer. If I'm spending ~500€ anyway (32GB and 8 core), I might as well just spend another 170 on the mainboard vs 100 on a B450 (I need mATX, so only the MSI Mortar and AsRock Pro4 suite my needs).

    And if you need Thunderbolt or over GbE speeds, these boards are the only way to go, frankly, since the 2.0 chipset lanes of the older chipsets are just terrible for this.

    This doesn't satisfy your niche? Great, move along. That's the incredible thing about AMD supporting AM4 for this long. But no need to shit over a product that is pretty great overall, just because you don't need it's features.
  • thomasg - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    Indeed, it doesn't satisfy my niche, I'm just complaining about the new downsides of the new X570 platform, and specifically the available implementations.

    I'm not telling anyone not to get one, anyone who wants to take advantage of the extras is of course free to adopt the new boards.

    I think I should be able to freely "shit over a product" as I wish without you having to take personal offense.
  • fearby - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Being in a hot climate I'd love to know what one has the best chipset cooling.
  • gavbon - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    We are doing X570 chipset thermal analysis in our motherboard testing ;)
  • mikato - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    That’s great to hear. I wonder why they don’t put a decent heatsink on there like they did a long time ago (Penguin 4 days maybe). Is it still too much heat for a big heatsink with no fan?
  • Makaveli - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Thank you for this round up and more importantly the summary page at the end.

    I think I going with the ASUS Prime X570-Pro for my build, its the most affordable in CAD.
    Never was interested in Wifi on a Desktop PC yuck and the rest if just way too over priced.

    I do like the simple look of the ASUS Pro WS X570-Ace but for $500 CAD not interested at that price you might aswell go Threadripper.
  • Andy Chow - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    I still don't understand why all these boards have HDMI and/or DP on them. Virtually every Intel consumer CPU has an iGPU in it, so it makes sense there. For AMD, I want MOAR CORES, not an iGPU. So that's 1-2 ports that will never get used, which could have been a couple of usb-3 ports.
  • Qasar - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    i bet they are for future zen 2 based APUs....
  • Qasar - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    or current ones for that matter
  • Death666Angel - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Because AMD also has iGPU enabled CPUs (which they call APUs). And economies of scale being what they are, this makes more sense than having separate SKUs. Also, do you actually use up all 8 to 12 USB ports on the back?
  • The_Assimilator - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    It's so that the manufacturers can get more negative reviews on online shopping sites. "I BOUGHT THIS BOARD BECAUSE IT HAS DISPLAY OUTPUTS BUT THEY DON'T WORK SO I'M GIVING IT 1 STAR EVEN THOUGH I DIDN'T BOTHER TO DO THE 5 MINUTES OF RESEARCH IT WOULD'VE TAKEN TO EDUCATE MYSELF AS TO WHAT I NEED FOR THE DISPLAY OUTPUTS TO WORK".

    I agree with you that more USB ports instead would be a lot more useful.
  • mikato - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    Upvote
  • boozed - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    The last page is a godsend, more of this kind of thing please!
  • NOTELLN - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    This data is wrong. These are not the proper core counts. For example, the International Rectifier IR35201 PWM controller can only do 8+0, 7+1, or 6+2, making the MSI pro and gaming plus 4+2 phase boards. You boys need to go back to the drawing board.
  • Death666Angel - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    And with doublers that means the load gets distributed among more DrMOS and increases the power delivery capabilities of the board. Depending on the doublers it can be very intelligent or just a brute force approach. Still better to have a (4x2) Vcore than a (4) Vcore, everything else being the same.
  • gavbon - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    It's all tongue in cheek for me. I've been pulling all-nighters for the last 2 weeks getting everything together. I've updated now, but MSI did say in an email 4+1 because I asked them to clarify. You are right though!
  • Showtime - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    ITX pricing? I was planning to go AMD this round, but Idk about $220+ mobo for a $200 CPU. Might have to go back to intel depending on sales.
  • RSAUser - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Then get a B450 board.
  • mikato - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    Will it work if I build a new comp with a Ryzen 3000? I do not have any spare CPUs. I think I’ll have to ask some mobo companies. Some may allow you to update BIOS without requiring a (older) compatible CPU by using a flash drive.
  • Alex Topfer - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Can you add a table of which ones don't/do have RGB lighting?
  • boozed - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Hahaha
  • PeachNCream - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Bwahahahaha!
  • The_Assimilator - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Asus "WS" boards are the sole ones lacking it nowadays. :( I hate paying the "RGB tax" too but thankfully all boards allow it to be hard-disabled in the BIOS (this generation at least...).
  • mikato - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    Did you see ASRock?
  • wut - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    Noooooooo I paid $20 extra for the Phantom Gaming 4 motherboard!
  • MDD1963 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    *Must* have a 10 GBe capable board to connect to my 750 Mbps service...!!! :)
  • DanNeely - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    The greater than 1gb ethernet is so you can have full bandwidth for eg 100gb steam installs in a few years when your ISP offers a >1gb service.
  • Gastec - Tuesday, July 16, 2019 - link

    LMAO!
  • Qasar - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link

    all these people complaining about the chipset fan, but has any one actually heard them yet ??
  • shabby - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    Back in the day we had chipset fans... they all sound alike.
  • Qasar - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link

    and back in the day.. my case fans were still more noticeable then the one on the south bridge
  • mikato - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    I would love to know what they sound like. They were horrible in the past and I went out of my way to find mobos with passive cooling. They actually had decent heatsinks on them.
  • Steelbom - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Is the Phantom Gaming 4 sufficient for the 3900X?
  • shabby - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    If a b350 can run a 3900x at 4ghz then I'm sure any cheap x570 board is sufficient. The 3900x uses around 170watts when running with PBO. The thing is these new chips don't overclock well at all so I doubt you'll need pricey mobos with 16 phases to run them, they only clock to 4.3ghz at best on water.
  • piroroadkill - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    The way i see it, there are only two boards that interest me here: ASRock's mATX board (mATX should be the standard, default motherboard size, in my opinion), and Gigabyte's Aourus Extreme. The latter because it actually cools the chipset passively, which, after seeing De8auer's video - is more than possible. The buzzy little fans are a terrible idea.
  • Arbie - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    So many people have pointed out for weeks now that these fans will probably rarely even spin up, much less be buzzy, much less wear out soon. But complaining about them seems to be an obsession. Before ruling out whole lines of mobos you might want to at least wait for a test.
  • haukionkannel - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    The problem is that some boards keep those fans running even when They idle... we need information how these boards manage that fan!
  • mikato - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    So why don’t they just put a bigger heatsink on them then? They have plenty of space. Motherboards have had far better heatsinks on those in the past.
  • JNHagis - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    I tough the following mb's has 4+2 phase desing.

    ASUS X570 Strix-F Gaming
    ASUS Prime X570-Pro
    ASUS TUF X570-Plus

    source: Actually Hardcore Overclocking - https://youtu.be/CtvAd7y9B9o?t=359
  • gavbon - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    You are correct, we just used the information provided by ASUS. I trust Libors analyis
  • Jackbender - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    The workstation-grade ASUS Pro WS X570-Ace not having 10GbE is a mystery to me.
    It would have been a clear buy choice for me otherwise.
  • mjz_5 - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    I also wonder why they don’t have windows 2016 drivers
  • lenghui - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Thanks for putting this together, Gavin. A complete x570 motherboard information is hard to find and I am glad that AT has gathered them all in one article. This is going on my bookmarks for sure. I would love to see reviews of some of the ITX boards and the only mATX board.
  • gavbon - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Never a problem :D
  • hubick - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Is dual M.2 off the CPU possible? In RAID 0?

    Every board seems to say one M.2 from CPU and others from chipset :-(
  • DanNeely - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    IIRC the x16 PCIe from the CPU can only be split down to x8/8 so you'd need to add an extra (expensive) chip to farther split it to x8/4/4.

    Otherwise you only have 1 x4 from the CPU itself. The x16/4/4 that AMD claims is somewhat deceptive since one of the x4's is used for the chipset and thus not available for general use.
  • hubick - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Doesn't this disagree with you? https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14605/X570.png
  • Qasar - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    how does it disagree ??
  • mike_cz - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Does any of these motherboards support IPMI or something equivalent?
  • ajp_anton - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact:

    "Also featured in addition to the dual PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots are eight SATA ports which is quite an impressive feat given the board's smaller form factor."

    No, it has 4 SATA ports.
  • kiranskinclinic - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Excellent content and thank you so much for share your knowledge
    For know more related details click on below activate link.
    https://kiranskinclinic.com/
  • NOTELLN - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    All the VRM core counts are wrong. Its as if some numbskull just counted caps and knows nothing about motherboards or cores.
  • gavbon - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    This is the information we have received from the vendors themselves. Until we take a look at each board and do the analysis, it would be hard. Unless you know someone who has images/inspected each of the 35+ boards in person to do this?
  • Scootiep7 - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Really thinking that a simple comparrison chart that listed all the MOBO's you tested on one axis and the features people might look for on the other axis with prices at the far end would have helped you reduce the wasted space on your conclusion page as well as present the findings in a more concise manner. Just food for thought.
  • isthisavailable - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    The industry needs to make up its mind when it comes to USB C. Laptops are launching with only USB C and meanwhile $700 motherboards only have 1 USB C port and 8+ "outdated" USB A's
  • The_Assimilator - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    It's almost like there's a huge amount of peripherals with USB-A connectors that people who use PCs expect to continue to work when they upgrade! Isn't backwards compatibility a funny feature?

    Meanwhile, the only peripherals that laptops generally use are docks, hubs, and storage devices - all of which have USB-C versions out the wazoo.
  • naris - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Why are memory speeds and channels show & discussed when talking about chipsets when the memory controllers are in the CPUs? Memory controllers have not been in chipsets for many years now!
  • halfflat - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    ECC support can be hard to verify for mere mortals; collating (or even better, verifiying) ECC capability on these motherboards would be an extremely useful addition to the article.
  • ishkatar - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Does any of the boards support Raid 5? I only see 0, 1 and 10.
  • Zibi - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    You don't want to use RAID 5 without proper RAID Controller with cache.
    That means dedicated card.
    Actually from performance / security perspective RAID 10 is pretty OK.
  • The_Assimilator - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    AMD dropped RAID-5 support upon introduction of the AM4 socket (remember, chipset functionality like RAID is now a CPU function). I don't have an issue with that, since -5 is a very uncommon use-case in consumer workloads and if you want to do -5 right, you really want a hardware RAID card with a BBU.

    But -5 is pretty much dead anyway due to ever-increasing drive sizes - the rebuild time on anything over 1TB is horrendous, what you really want in such a scenario is RAID-6, and no consumer motherboard every has or will support that.

    And please don't tell me you're using RAID-5 for data integrity, because invisible corruption is a thing that I have experienced personally. If you want *actual* data integrity, use Windows Storage Spaces or RAID-10, and as a last resort RAID-6.
  • Arbie - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    There must be something you left out of this roundup. Whatever it was, please go back and put it in, and next time get it right. Thanks.
  • Korguz - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    huh ????
  • Gastec - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    That $700 must be an error right, perhaps of judgement?
  • TheUnhandledException - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Why on the last page would you label a section "3 or MORE M.2 Slots". I looked up all the boards in the section to find the one with four slots. All of the boards listed have exactly three m.2 slots. It isn't 3 or more m.2 slots. It is three m.2 slots.
  • Sychonut - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    Great job Gavin!! This is impressive.
  • umano - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    Can't wait for the new threadripper platform
  • binkleym - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    Given that several motherboards are having to remove features (RAID, graphical BIOS, user profiles) from the BIOS in order to fit the AGESA for Zen 2, it would be nice if motherboard reviews would start mentioning the size of the BIOS, so we can easily discern which motherboards are designed to be future-proof, and which ones are nickel'd and dime'd into early obsolescence.
  • ballsystemlord - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    Spelling and grammar corrections (I did not read the descriptions of all the MBs):

    "...with that link consuming 4 dedicated anes from each chip."
    Missing "l":
    "...with that link consuming 4 dedicated lanes from each chip."

    "Notably motherboard vendors have said that the upcoming 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X was the baseline for which the new VRM designs were validated against."
    Missing comma:
    "Notably, motherboard vendors have said that the upcoming 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X was the baseline for which the new VRM designs were validated against."
  • ballsystemlord - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    @Gavin Could you guys start adding a column of boards that have 6 or more PCI(e) slots, it seems that they've been getting fewer and fewer since M.2 came out?
    Thanks!
  • ballsystemlord - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    I mean total slots. Not any particular size.
  • stux - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link

    In your “if you want thunderbolt 3” section, you really should mention the ASRock Creator. Otherwise the choices are water cooling specialist limited edition or ITX.
  • peevee - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link

    Why "DDR4 support" and "memory channels" are listed in the chipset table? These are CPU features, not chipset features.
  • BerserkZodd - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link

    I ordered an X570 Steel Legend and a MP600 Gen4 PCIe M2 drive. My motherboard is still being shipped but it looks like the heatsink that goes over top of the M2 slots is one big piece, meaning my very expensive m2 drive wouldnt fit under that. Can anyone confirm if that is in fact one giant heat sink or does the M2 part come off separate.
  • Gastec - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link

    Have I been living under a rock in the last 5 years, when did the prices of motherboards doubled?
  • Kougar - Monday, July 15, 2019 - link

    Sincerely appreciate the multi-G table on the last page. Was thinking multi-gig would be more commonplace with this generation but guess I was wrong.

    So much useless stuff on these boards, would trade almost all of it and the Wifi in favor of just a 5G NIC. Not sure mobo manufacturers have realized just how many consumers/businesses have moved all those SATA drives out of the computer and into a NAS.
  • kri55 - Wednesday, July 17, 2019 - link

    Can you please post a picture from the back of this motherboard? I am thinking of buying this one and I want to watercool the chipset, so I need to know how the chipset radiator is fixed. If you could measure the distance between the mounting points it would be awesome.
  • HideOut - Wednesday, July 17, 2019 - link

    Your prices apparently mean nothing. When you click no them they show much different results when you get to either neweggs or amazons sites.
  • jamawass - Wednesday, July 17, 2019 - link

    Does the ASUS Prime X570-Pro have USB 3.1 type A or Type C headers to connect to a case's USB ports?
  • icf80 - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - link

    X570 AORUS ELITE WIFI, on the gigabyte site is says it has Wifi 5 and BT 4.2, but in the review it says it has Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax wireless interface and BT 5.0. Check https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X570-AORUS-EL...
  • mike_bike_kite - Wednesday, July 24, 2019 - link

    Can anybody summarise why you'd want an X570 board over one of the older boards ie X470? I know there's better overclocking support but, from all the reports I've read, these new Ryzens are near their max anyway. I know there's PCie4 support but does anyone own such a device? I know it has EEC memory support but why on earth do I need that? Why didn't this review tell us why we should want one of these new boards over the existing boards?

    I'm considering going all AMD with the 3700X 5700 though my current system (i5-3570K/1060 6GB/8GB RAM) is fairly snappy for what I do (mainly for 2D game development) but I'm just in the mood for a new PC. Smaller, quieter and more powerful would be nice and help justify the cost.
  • Bateluer - Wednesday, July 24, 2019 - link

    The ASRock site lists the Steel Legend as having the ALC1220 chip, not the ALC1200 as noted in the AT table. https://www.asrock.com/MB/AMD/X570%20Steel%20Legen...
  • enkov - Sunday, August 2, 2020 - link

    To confirm from my X570 Steel legend - ALC1220 here. HWINFO64 says Audio Codec Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_1220&SUBSYS_18492223&REV_1001
  • croc - Thursday, July 25, 2019 - link

    I find it appalling that no x570 MB has more than 4 DIMM slots, and only dual channel at that. No support for more than 64 GB ram, even on the 'workstation' MB's. For around 700 US I expect better. It should also be considered 'standard equipment' by this time for the M.2's to offer raid support. Really, as a retired professional, I feel raped by these prices and lack of professional features.
  • icf80 - Thursday, July 25, 2019 - link

    All x570 boards supports: 4 x DDR4 DIMM sockets supporting up to 128 GB (32 GB single DIMM capacity) of system memory
  • croc - Friday, July 26, 2019 - link

    Now find me one of these ddr4 1x32 dimms @ 3400 speed to support the speed of the CPU. What they support and what I can buy are often two different things All x299 boards support DDR4 up to 4200, at whatever size you can afford, with quad channel support. And there are 8 dimm slots...

    Inexpensive is often not cheap. Expensive is often cheaper than the non-existant.
  • CoachAub - Thursday, July 25, 2019 - link

    I have an Aorus AX370 Gaming 5 mobo. With the latest BIOS update for Ryzen 3000 series (f40), I now have the option to select PCI-e 4.0. It has had 3.0 as an option as long as I can remember. It seems some mobo mfg are supporting it, even though AMD won't officially.
  • max347 - Friday, August 2, 2019 - link

    Release date on the Crosshair Impact?
  • madseven7 - Saturday, August 3, 2019 - link

    In your chart of motherboards listing biosflashback you missed the ASUS ROG Strix X570-E Gaming
  • soltys - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    According to Asrock website, ASRock X570 Steel Legend has ALC1220
  • dforrestvc - Sunday, August 11, 2019 - link

    Will there being only three audio jacks prevent me from properly connecting a 5.1 speaker system?
  • svan1971 - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link

    Why are the boot times with pcie 4.0 m.2 so dam slow ? My 5 year old Asrock boots 3 times faster?
  • Tinkertron - Sunday, August 18, 2019 - link

    I still haven't seen this board hit the market yet. ASRock has release 2 version and Gigabyte has 1 on the mini-ITX release already. I also notice that the ROG Strix doesn't show a fan cooled over the chipset. All the makers are adding fans over the chipset. How is ASUS getting away without doing this? Could this be the reason why ASUS hasn't release theirs yet?
  • Crashing Bore - Sunday, December 8, 2019 - link

    The Gigabyte AORUS Ultra with 3rg gen ryzen delivers pcie4 x16 + PCIE4 x8 + PCIE4 x4 for its three PCIE 16 slots - not 16/8+8/8+8+4 as described - it is 16+8+4 full time, regardless of the slots populated. This is so also for other boards in their stack, and offers point of differentiation allowing later population of, say, thunderbolt3 in the second slot without slow down the main graphics card pipeline.
  • locomo - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link

    Asus only has HDMI 1.4, really ? How many pennies did they save ?

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