MSI X570 Tomahawk review: possibly the best $200 X570

Congrats!!! How are the temps? If anything I'm more interested in undervolting which should be supported in the future releases of BIOS... Now if only my B&H 5900x ever came.... I'm scared to ask them for an update.
It was supposed to be on Dec 21 (as per previuos email), and they told me it could Jan-March few weeks ago via chat. I wish they were sending customer update emails every few weeks.

Thanks.

Temps are a bit cooler than the 3900XT, about 32C at idle and 70C with a moderate load (IBT).

Good luck with getting your 5900X. I was watching Falcodrin on Youtube and he announced a drop on Newegg before it showed up on the bot scanner.
Newegg was combos only but I think that helped getting one, the scalpers don't seem to be looking at combos.

I've heard of a few people getting CPUs from B&H but not many. Looks like mainly Newegg, Amazon, and Best Buy. Also a few from Antonline.

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Thanks.

Temps are a bit cooler than the 3900XT, about 32C at idle and 70C with a moderate load (IBT).

Good luck with getting your 5900X. I was watching Falcodrin on Youtube and he announced a drop on Newegg before it showed up on the bot scanner.
Newegg was combos only but I think that helped getting one, the scalpers don't seem to be looking at combos.

I've heard of a few people getting CPUs from B&H but not many. Looks like mainly Newegg, Amazon, and Best Buy. Also a few from Antonline.

.
Too be honest waiting is not a bad thing. The bios is only getting more stable and mature. :) As long as I can get it in 2020 I will be very happy :p
 
anyone using the Noctua NH-D15 CPU cooler with the MSI X570 Tomahawk?...any clearance issues as far as the main x16 GPU slot or NVMe slot?...looks like it might cover up the NVMe slot which would make it difficult if I ever needed to upgrade/replace the NVMe SSD inside
 
anyone using the Noctua NH-D15 CPU cooler with the MSI X570 Tomahawk?...any clearance issues as far as the main x16 GPU slot or NVMe slot?...looks like it might cover up the NVMe slot which would make it difficult if I ever needed to upgrade/replace the NVMe SSD inside

I actually added an NVME drive as part of the same upgrade project with the 5900X.

I installed the NVME drive first and got it imaged and running without removing the NH-D15. I had to remove the GPU but that was it.
It will help to have a long phillips head screwdriver for the small screws on the M.2 slot. Otherwise it is kind of awkward to get past
the NH-D15 to the screws. Awkward but not impossible.

I use these screwdrivers a lot, very helpful on this kind of thing:

https://www.harborfreight.com/6-piece-screwdriver-set-92193.html

BTW, if you are moving to an NVME drive from a hard drive or 2.5" SSD (as I was), install the blank NVME drive first and then boot up
Windows again to let it detect the NVME and add a driver for it. After that, then take your image of Windows to put on the NVME drive.
Then Windows should boot up fine from the NVME since the driver is there in Windows. You'll get a BSOD if you don't do it that way.
Of course you could do a fresh Windows install too, that would also work.

After my system was running on the NVME, I wiped the old 2.5" SSD and use it for backups from the main NVME drive.

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I actually added an NVME drive as part of the same upgrade project with the 5900X.

I installed the NVME drive first and got it imaged and running without removing the NH-D15. I had to remove the GPU but that was it.
It will help to have a long phillips head screwdriver for the small screws on the M.2 slot. Otherwise it is kind of awkward to get past
the NH-D15 to the screws. Awkward but not impossible.

I use these screwdrivers a lot, very helpful on this kind of thing:

https://www.harborfreight.com/6-piece-screwdriver-set-92193.html

yup those small screws are what I'm worried about...seems like it'll be a PITA to reach them while the NH-D15 is installed
 
I still haven't built my new 5800X system yet even though I have all the parts (except for the 3080)...this week hopefully
 
Yep, I'm still on the hunt for a 3080 as well.
Trying to hold out for a 3080 FE from Best Buy.
 
I just finished doing the Flash BIOS (connecting just the ATX_PWR and CPU_PWR) with the X570 Tomahawk...first time I've ever done a BIOS update without a CPU installed...longest 7 minutes of my life...luckily everything was pretty easy and worked fine

* I think it worked fine...won't know for sure until I install the CPU and build out the entire system
 
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is there any performance difference between the 2 NVMe slots on this board?...the top one uses the CPU PCIe lanes so theoretically I'm assuming that's the best place to install it?...the bottom NVMe uses the X570 chipset...
 
is there any performance difference between the 2 NVMe slots on this board?...the top one uses the CPU PCIe lanes so theoretically I'm assuming that's the best place to install it?...the bottom NVMe uses the X570 chipset...

I say use the top one so that the chipset lanes are free to do other things, but if you're only plugging in one graphics card and one NVME SSD, I guess it probably won't make that huge of a difference.
 
I say use the top one so that the chipset lanes are free to do other things, but if you're only plugging in one graphics card and one NVME SSD, I guess it probably won't make that huge of a difference.
I installed in the top one, because I figured 2nd one will be easier to access later on :p
 
is there any performance difference between the 2 NVMe slots on this board?...the top one uses the CPU PCIe lanes so theoretically I'm assuming that's the best place to install it?...the bottom NVMe uses the X570 chipset...

I went with the top one next to the CPU.

My VMs load smokin' fast from the NVME compared to the Samsung SATA SSD I was using.
I like it!

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Managed to snag one of these things for an actually normal price.

I just finished doing the Flash BIOS (connecting just the ATX_PWR and CPU_PWR) with the X570 Tomahawk...first time I've ever done a BIOS update without a CPU installed...longest 7 minutes of my life...luckily everything was pretty easy and worked fine

* I think it worked fine...won't know for sure until I install the CPU and build out the entire system

Guess I'll be doing this soon.
 
is there any performance difference between the 2 NVMe slots on this board?...the top one uses the CPU PCIe lanes so theoretically I'm assuming that's the best place to install it?...the bottom NVMe uses the X570 chipset...
did your mobo powered off and on after it? If it did, it was a success and if it didn't it means it didn't flash properly.
 
did your mobo powered off and on after it? If it did, it was a success and if it didn't it means it didn't flash properly.

yes it did...it was super quick though...the chipset fan shut off for around 2 seconds and turned back on again and stayed on even after the flash ended...just to be safe I left it on for an additional 10 minutes to make sure everything was OK...the hardest part was actually plugging in the 24-pin ATX into the motherboard...it was so tough pushing it in and even harder pulling it out
 
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yes it did...it was super quick though...the chipset fan shut off for around 2 seconds and turned back on again and stayed on even after the flash ended...just to be safe I left it on for an additional 10 minutes to make sure everything was OK...the hardest part was actually plugging in the 24-pin ATX into the motherboard...it was so tough pushing it in and even harder pulling it out
You should be fine :). For me I had to use my 20yrs usb 2.0 stick in order to flash it. All my other 3 usb 3.x sticks did not work. I had the same trouble when attaching 24pin cable. Hopefully nothing is damaged lol . Good luck.
 
You should be fine :). For me I had to use my 20yrs usb 2.0 stick in order to flash it. All my other 3 usb 3.x sticks did not work. I had the same trouble when attaching 24pin cable. Hopefully nothing is damaged lol . Good luck.

same here...I used a USB 2.0 stick...the best way to flash it with FAT32 is to use a USB stick under 32GB
 
same here...I used a USB 2.0 stick...the best way to flash it with FAT32 is to use a USB stick under 32GB
Yes, a lot of peeps are very angry at MSI for this "compatibility" issue.

and thanks for reminding me, I have to find and order some 4-8gb usb2.0 sticks. I had the same issue with my Honda (mp3s) and home printer (scan pictures). A lot of devices depend on old/legbacy usb 2.0 spec. If my precious only usb 2.0 stick dies, I will be in trouble.... LOL...
 
Yes, a lot of peeps are very angry at MSI for this "compatibility" issue.

and thanks for reminding me, I have to find and order some 4-8gb usb2.0 sticks. I had the same issue with my Honda (mp3s) and home printer (scan pictures). A lot of devices depend on old/legbacy usb 2.0 spec. If my precious only usb 2.0 stick dies, I will be in trouble.... LOL...

A while back I bought up a bunch of new USB 2.0 8GB thumb drives on Ebay for this reason and working on older customer equipment.
I've found that the Lexar brand is very reliable, no trouble with them. I have had trouble with Verbatim and Sandisk.

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I started my build yesterday...it's been 10 years since I last built a system from the ground up...the biggest headache was my case (Meshify S2)...great case but I needed to remove some screws to open up the PSU shroud area so I could fit my 3rd Noctua 140mm front intake fan...ridiculously hard...the screws were so tight and it was brutal trying to remove them...the screws themselves were starting to shred and I was worried I was going to damage it...luckily after some time both screws came off- had to use pliers along with the screwdriver
 
Yes, a lot of peeps are very angry at MSI for this "compatibility" issue.

and thanks for reminding me, I have to find and order some 4-8gb usb2.0 sticks. I had the same issue with my Honda (mp3s) and home printer (scan pictures). A lot of devices depend on old/legbacy usb 2.0 spec. If my precious only usb 2.0 stick dies, I will be in trouble.... LOL...
As long as it is FAT formatted I've not had any problems with the X570 godlike I had, I used a 16gb usb 3 and 32gb 3.1 disk to upgrade bios on mine. Every board I have requires fat formatted disk to do bios update, not sure if that was your issue?
 
Anyone else update to the latest 1.51 with Agesa 1.1.0.0 and setting a manual vCore? Since upgrading if I set a manual vcore to say Override of 1.3v, it boots to 1.3v but under all core load like Cinebench the voltage drops to 1.1ish and clocks plummet to 3.5Ghz or so. If I set an Offset of -.2 which should equal ~1.3v, again it boots to around 1.3v but under all core load it then goes to 1.4ish volts instead. It's got a mind of its own and won't behave no matter the setting so far. I've given up and left it to Auto for now which seems fine but not really what I want out of this board.
 
Anyone else update to the latest 1.51 with Agesa 1.1.0.0 and setting a manual vCore? Since upgrading if I set a manual vcore to say Override of 1.3v, it boots to 1.3v but under all core load like Cinebench the voltage drops to 1.1ish and clocks plummet to 3.5Ghz or so. If I set an Offset of -.2 which should equal ~1.3v, again it boots to around 1.3v but under all core load it then goes to 1.4ish volts instead. It's got a mind of its own and won't behave no matter the setting so far. I've given up and left it to Auto for now which seems fine but not really what I want out of this board.
I've been screwing with my x570 Tomahawk the past 3-4 days with a 5800X. Currently vCore offset is broken and will lock you to stock clocks/no boost with PBO enabled. Override does work but I'm finding my chip runs much hotter, even with 1.33-1.35v to the point I hit throttle and clocks drop to the 3GHz range. Messing with it a bit allows me to use curve optimizer to achieve good clocks but it's not entirely stable and the results aren't repeatable (yet)

As it sits PBO acts fine one time and gets pissy another, and my vCore is not high enough to use curve optimizer to fine tune things without offset and just instantly reboots. I'm settling with PBO/electrical limits maxed/+200MHz, everything else on Auto until MSI can figure their shit out with this board.
 
I've seen a lot of complaints about the BIOS on these things being hokey as fuck for Zen 3.

Honestly making me tempted to send it back and get something else instead. Rather not deal with the frustration come build time. In all my builds, I've never dealt with jankiness the likes of which I'm seeing described.
 
I've seen a lot of complaints about the BIOS on these things being hokey as fuck for Zen 3.

Honestly making me tempted to send it back and get something else instead. Rather not deal with the frustration come build time. In all my builds, I've never dealt with jankiness the likes of which I'm seeing described.

I'm at stage right before you are lol. It's been really eating at me the past 3-4 days while the excitement of Ryzen 5000 gets drained from me - not being able to push clocks because of a beta bios "bug" that who knows when will be addressed. Someone on here kept saying beginning of December but it's...half way through the money and radio silence. I've got the chip to where I'm happy with it and I hit 3800 CL14 without much effort so I'm biding my time till I can snatch a 5900X. Past 10 years or so I've only bought Gigabyte but they seem to have their issues too
 
I've seen a lot of complaints about the BIOS on these things being hokey as fuck for Zen 3.

Honestly making me tempted to send it back and get something else instead. Rather not deal with the frustration come build time. In all my builds, I've never dealt with jankiness the likes of which I'm seeing described.

What are you looking at as a replacement?
 
No idea.

It looks like a lot of the manufacturers are having issues in some capacity. AGESA itself partially to blame, perhaps?

I dunno, seems pretty hit or miss. Not entirely looking forward to the prospect of getting this thing together and it doesn't feel like POSTing, or dying because RAM doesn't want to run at its advertised speeds, or it not boosting correctly.

Shrug
 
If you have this board, try the 1.40 BIOS guys.

It's running fine for me with a 5900X.

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If you have this board, try the 1.40 BIOS guys.

It's running fine for me with a 5900X.

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Do you have any WHEA errors in the event log? I read 1.40 is exceedingly picky with RAM at XMP speeds until you use the 151 beta.

Which in turn seems to have its own share of jank, like PBO / boosting breaking.
 
Do you have any WHEA errors in the event log? I read 1.40 is exceedingly picky with RAM at XMP speeds until you use the 151 beta.

Which in turn seems to have its own share of jank, like PBO / boosting breaking.

It looks like I have only two WHEA errors, but those were from the all core overclock I had on the 3900XT.
No errors on the 5900X that is currently set for all auto except XMP enabled for 3600 memory.

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As long as it is FAT formatted I've not had any problems with the X570 godlike I had, I used a 16gb usb 3 and 32gb 3.1 disk to upgrade bios on mine. Every board I have requires fat formatted disk to do bios update, not sure if that was your issue?

This is my experience as well on my x570 Tomahawk. I used a 32GB 3.1 drive (Samsung FIT), and just put the BIOS file on an 8GB FAT32 partition I made in Gparted.
 
I might give 1.4 a try today then. I don't use the XMP profile just avoiding that headache entirely. 3600 CL14 is stable for me currently
 
Just picked up a 5900X from Micro Center, which is way more than I usually spend on a CPU (2500k, 3570k, R51600, R5 3600X is my history) and I tend to stick to $100ish budget boards. That's just how I roll. While there, I said eff it and picked up an ASUS X570 TUF WiFi for $189. I know that's a great board for the money. Before starting my build, I figured I should research motherboards a little bit more, since I haven't done so in many months, which brought me to this board. All the online reviews say it's fantastic. Do you guys think I should return the TUF and spend the additional $30 for this? I plan on keeping this for at least 3 years. I'll be pairing it with 32GB DDR4 and will be using a new EVGA CL360 cooler. I'd like a modest overclock on it.

Thanks!
 
Just picked up a 5900X from Micro Center, which is way more than I usually spend on a CPU (2500k, 3570k, R51600, R5 3600X is my history) and I tend to stick to $100ish budget boards. That's just how I roll. While there, I said eff it and picked up an ASUS X570 TUF WiFi for $189. I know that's a great board for the money. Before starting my build, I figured I should research motherboards a little bit more, since I haven't done so in many months, which brought me to this board. All the online reviews say it's fantastic. Do you guys think I should return the TUF and spend the additional $30 for this? I plan on keeping this for at least 3 years. I'll be pairing it with 32GB DDR4 and will be using a new EVGA CL360 cooler. I'd like a modest overclock on it.

Thanks!
Tuf should be fine too.
 
Are you planning on trying to do heavy overclocks? If none of the other extra features on the board matter to you. (Also there are a lot of TUF boards, is it B550, X570 and is it TUF or TUF Pro?) then you'll probably be fine with the TUF.

Personally, for my use, I actually like the X570 TUF PRO WIFI more than the X570 tomahawk, but i'd take the Tomahawk over the regular X570 TUF or any of the B550 TUFs.
 
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Both are X570's. I also saw the new TUF Pro, but didn't while I was at the store. What do you like more about the TUF Pro than the X570 Tomahawk? The better Intel LAN? I might go for a heavy overclock, as I have a new 360mm AIO in a largish Fractal Meshify S2, so I should have plenty of airflow. This will be paired with my EVGA 3090.
 
Both are X570's. I also saw the new TUF Pro, but didn't while I was at the store. What do you like more about the TUF Pro than the X570 Tomahawk? The better Intel LAN? I might go for a heavy overclock, as I have a new 360mm AIO in a largish Fractal Meshify S2, so I should have plenty of airflow. This will be paired with my EVGA 3090.
Intel LAN and more SATA ports (I run a media server off of my machine, so both are extremely important to me - but they likely aren't for most users.)
Also a slight preference to ASUS UEFI over MSI.
 
new FW is released today, so I am wondering if anyone has tried ?
I haven't tried it yet since my build is still in pieces. It (v153) seems to have similar mixed reviews to v151, but a bit more positive so far.

edit; Most claim they can get higher speeds then v151, but c-states need to be disabled for stability
 
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