Picking an X570

[Azrak]

I have a feeling that many people are going to lose interest in switching from a previous generation AMD system or purchasing a new AMD system once they see the prices of X570 motherboards.

 

[David_Schroth]

I have a feeling that many people are going to lose interest in switching from a previous generation AMD system or purchasing a new AMD system once they see the prices of X570 motherboards.

Depends on how they look at it. The X570 is being positioned as a high end halo product, specifically due to PCI-E 4.0 being on board. I'm sure we'll test this theory, but it's unlikely that the average consumer will see a huge (or even small) real world benefit to the additional bandwidth. AMD has already stated that performance will be the same between the X570 and X470, so if you're looking at bang for the buck you'll go X470 anyway....

 

[Zarathustra]

Even now there isn't enough information.

I'll be hoping to find a workstation board with the absolute minimal on board components, no LED's (RGB or otherwise) great power delivery and overclocking features, and as many PCIe lanes routed to slots as possible.

Most of these won't happen due to how the market has shifted in the last 10 years, but I can dream.

I really liked the looks of the Asus Pro WS X570 Ace, but the fact that you can't get 16x to a GPU kills it for me.

Time will tell. You bet I'll be downloading all the pdf manuals from Asus, MSI and Gigabyte (and maybe even Asrock's) webpages as soon as they launch and plotting and scheming when it comes to PCIe/m.2 layouts, how they share lanes, and which can be used without dropping the GPU slot from 16x.

 

[Dan_D]

Even now there isn't enough information.

I'll be hoping to find a workstation board with the absolute minimal on board components, no LED's (RGB or otherwise) great power delivery and overclocking features, and as many PCIe lanes routed to slots as possible.

Most of these won't happen due to how the market has shifted in the last 10 years, but I can dream.

I really liked the looks of the Asus Pro WS X570 Ace, but the fact that you can't get 16x to a GPU kills it for me.

Time will tell. You bet I'll be downloading all the pdf manuals from Asus, MSI and Gigabyte (and maybe even Asrock's) webpages as soon as they launch and plotting and scheming when it comes to PCIe/m.2 layouts, how they share lanes, and which can be used without dropping the GPU slot from 16x.

I was going to say: "Good luck with that." Most of the higher end motherboards with the good power delivery come with all kinds of stuff integrated into them. That typically means RGB's, however, there are some boards targeted towards content creators which have minimal lighting. Overclocking features are usually minimal on workstation offerings, although Tyan is doing it. PCIe routed to slots is how they are built. However, using secondary M.2 slots, SATA ports etc. can take away from those slots. So its somewhat up to you.

 

[Zarathustra]

I was going to say: "Good luck with that." Most of the higher end motherboards with the good power delivery come with all kinds of stuff integrated into them. That typically means RGB's, however, there are some boards targeted towards content creators which have minimal lighting. Overclocking features are usually minimal on workstation offerings, although Tyan is doing it. PCIe routed to slots is how they are built. However, using secondary M.2 slots, SATA ports etc. can take away from those slots. So its somewhat up to you.

I just want an x570 version of my trusty old Asus P9x79 WS

 

[Dan_D]

Well, GIGABYTE's X570 Aorus Xtreme's looking like a beast with true 14+2 phase power VRM's and a 1,000 watt voltage controller.

 

[Zarathustra]

Well, GIGABYTE's X570 Aorus Xtreme's looking like a beast with true 14+2 phase power VRM's and a 1,000 watt voltage controller.

I have to admit, I am completely ignorant when it comes to how the power phases work. Is this something you can tell by looking at the design, or do you need to rely on specs or testing?

I went looking for VRM data on some of the other boards that have been announced, but none of them seem to specify it.

 

[Dan_D]

Unfortunately, you don't get any real specifications from the manufacturers. Even when you do, what they claim is mostly marketing fluff or its purposely misleading. You actually have to look at the hardware for yourself and learn enough about it for the configuration to make some sort of sense. I know an electrical engineer, so I can send him a picture and he can tell me whats on it. For all that I know about PC hardware, I'm not an electrical engineer. I only have a basic grasp of the subject matter.

VRM design can vary wildly by model and by implementation. Its actually pretty difficult to look at power phases from different manufacturers and compare them. They may take different approaches which are equally valid with their own strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes power phases are so over built that you could achieve all the same results with a "lesser" design. This makes the overbuilt VRM something unnecessary that you are paying extra for. Still, its not even that simple. Its hard to know where the line is and which VRM is best without being an electrical engineer. Even then, ask any of them and they'll tell you that they can only tell so much without the actual board diagrams.

The hard part for people who don't get into this stuff as heavily is knowing what to buy and knowing what the end result of a given purchase will be. On the surface, more seems better but you can have 16 phases built with bottom of the barrel components that get spanked by a good four or six phase design. I've seen motherboards with four phases and motherboards with as many as 32 phases and everything in between. Typically what you get are motherboards with lets say an 8+2 phase power configuration. You sometimes get more and sometimes get less, but we'll stick with that. On AMD systems this means that there are 8 CPU power phases and 2 phases dedicated to SoC voltage. This is known as an 8+2 phase arrangement. Memory and even the chipsets have their own phases but those are much simpler and not nearly as complicated. The same principles of phase doubling, etc. all apply. You just don't need to pay as much attention on those things.

When you look at an 8+2 phase power solution, there are lots of variables at play there. In the old days you could count the inductors (big grey square looking things) and determine how many phases you had. Sadly, you can't do that anymore as it isn't that simple. Most of the time, your 8+2 phase solutions are actually a 4 or 5 phase native solution that uses a phase doubler, or phase quadrupler to split out the phases. This is actually fine and its what's been done for several years. You can get a good deal of power this way. However, there are some pit falls of doing it this way which I won't get into. Basically, though, we've started seeing phase implementations without doublers. ASUS used two inductors per phase making it hard to tell how many phases there actually were. So again, its really hard to tell unless you have some idea of what you are looking at.

The VRM's used can actually be from a variety of companies and unless you want to look up all the specs, you pretty much have to take your reviewer's word for it. But most of the time you end up with 40A or 50A phases. The ones on the X570 Aorus Xtreme are actually 70A. Basically its probably powerful enough to run dual 16 core Ryzen 3950X's if it needed to and if that were somehow possible.

Essentially, more phases is generally better. Its probably better to have a straight phase implementation rather than a doubled or quadrupled one. Then again, not all phases are created equal. Just because an implementation is cheaper doesn't make it bad, its probably less capable but many of these boards are built with power designs which are absolutely insanely overbuilt.

So you might wonder why that is? Its simple. Its done to one up the other guys and for LN2 and extreme forms of overclocking where you are pushing CPU's to insane speeds. Boards like GIGABYTE's X570 Aorus Xtreme are built for setting overclocking records. Plain and simple. It's also built to give people the impression that a given board is better than another, whether true or not. GIGABYTE's X58-UD9 was a $700 monster that was decent, but far from the best board I ever reviewed in that era. At that price it should have been. Under water cooling, it also didn't do anything I couldn't do on a motherboard that was two or three hundred dollars cheaper. That monster had a 24-phase power solution but I'd have taken ASUS' Rampage III Black Edition or EVGA's X58 Classified over it any day of the week and they were all at least $200 cheaper.

 

[mda]

Any boards on your test bench for tomorrow, @Dan_D ?

Seems the X570 Master is now on my radar.

 

[Dan_D]

I've still got to formally review the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE and we already have an ASUS ROG X570 Crosshair. Brent has that one as he had intended to use it for PCIe Gen 4 testing. We will evaluate more boards as they come in. I've also got ASUS' ROG Maximus XI APEX on the bench. That was used in our test lineup for the Ryzen 9 3900X review.

 

[Mjz_5]

When there is a artistic shroud covering the "heat sink" (I'm using quotes here because these things are not really heat sinks in the traditional sense) and it blocks air flow, it is a problem. When the "heat sink" is this semi-mono-block looking thing with 2mm "fins" and no functional way to get air past it, it is a problem.

Seriously, take a look at the picture of the C8H Hero Wifi in this link:

http://[URL]https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/ROG-CROSSHAIR-VIII-HERO-WI-FI/

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You really think that the shroud covering the VRM and I/O block is helping cool the VRM in any meaningful way? That's what I am referring to when I say "art project". I should have used the term "form over function", which seems to be used more often in the design of "heat sinks" on MBs these days. It's not just Asus, I just picked that one out of many similar designs. Heat sinks are supposed to transfer heat to the air and this is most efficiently accomplished through surface area. Flat surfaces are not good surface area. That top VRM heat sink block is a joke. It is artistically-driven.

Yes, I get that in most cases (including the C8H above) the VRM is so over-designed that those blocks of metal are enough to keep temperatures well under check even when OCing. So the engineers said "yeah, go ahead and design a VRM heatsink any way you want, because it will keep the VRM cool no matter what shape it is anyway." But my point is that a heat pipe or two could be put between the X570 chipset ASIC on the bottom and the left side VRM heatsink which could continue on to the top VRM heatsink, similar to the Asus P5E design from 2007:

http://[URL]https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/P5E/

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Look, actual fins!

My questions to Asus would be: Did you even TRY a passive design? Was it simply not possible to keep cool passively? Was passive cooling possible but just too expensive and beyond what an enthusiast would pay for? Was a passive design possible, but too ugly for the marketers?

Maybe 11 to 15W is still too much for a heat pipe to pull off the chipset so the fan is truly a necessity (I doubt it though), but somehow Gigabyte managed to create a passively cooled version, so I would expect Asus to at least try at some point. I was actually surprised that Asus has NO passive versions at all.

If Asus declared some of the fan specs and operation design I might feel better about it. For example if the fan was ball bearing supported and only ran when necessary at variable speeds instead of all of the time and it was PWM controlled, then I could be persuaded to at least give it a try.

I'd try the Gigabyte but I'm spoiled by the Asus UEFI interface.

I realize I'm preaching to the choir here. I'm sure all of the MB vendors will let you purchase a replacement chipset fan when the time comes. Right? Right....

I had that P5E motherboard. I wanted my case to be quiet so I had zero case fans. Thing worked rock solid for years without proper cooling.

 

[Dan_D]

Now that the review is out and done, I can formerly recommend the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE. However, the price is tough to swallow for most people. I've bought some expensive motherboards in my time but that's ridiculous.

On another note, MSI just released BIOS v1.4, which uses AGESA Combo Pi 1.0.0.3ABB. They also reuploaded all their interim BIOS revisions that were either internal, or removed from the site for reasons unknown to me.