5800X/5900X motherboard pairing

ChrisUlrich

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Building a gaming PC and I am gonna go with the 5800X or 5900X. GPU was supposed to be the RTX 3080... but you all see how that is going. Not good at all.

I WAS going to pick up a MSI X570 Unify
https://www.newegg.com/msi-meg-x570...0 unify-_-13-144-273-_-Product&quicklink=true

I just want to know if this is a poor choice for the money. I'm a little out of touch these days and would like to know it's $300 well spent.
 
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Unify is good. Tomahawk is good. Any of the MSI boards midrange+ are good, to be honest. I almost bought the Prestige Creation back before I built TR instead, and quite a few others on here really like their boards.
 
Building a gaming PC and I am gonna go with the 5800X or 5900X. GPU was supposed to be the RTX 3080... but you all see how that is going. Not good at all.

I WAS going to pick up a MSI X570 Unify
https://www.newegg.com/msi-meg-x570-unify/p/N82E16813144273?Description=msi x570 unify&cm_re=msi_x570 unify-_-13-144-273-_-Product&quicklink=true

I just want to know if this is a poor choice for the money. I'm a little out of touch these days and would like to know it's $300 well spent.
Looks like a great board for the $. Dan did a good review at https://www.thefpsreview.com/2020/02/26/msi-meg-x570-unify-motherboard-review/
 
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Ive been very happy with my MSI creation board, it has been completely problem free the year I have had it. Both unify and tomahawk are great boards also.
 
Zero problems with my MEG ACE here. Very similar to the Unify if I recall correctly.
 
Unify is good. Tomahawk is good. Any of the MSI boards midrange+ are good, to be honest. I almost bought the Prestige Creation back before I built TR instead, and quite a few others on here really like their boards.
What would you consider high end? I am looking for super stable setup. Money matters, but I am not looking to half ass anything.

I really appreciate all the responses. I know the boards are booming after the AMD announcement, but it's still nice of you guys.
 
What would you consider high end? I am looking for super stable setup. Money matters, but I am not looking to half ass anything.

I really appreciate all the responses. I know the boards are booming after the AMD announcement, but it's still nice of you guys.
Prestige creation or the Godlike are the high end boards. Gaming carbon is the bottom of midrange.
 
Crosshair is a good board as well. MSI is known for being a touch bit better on high ram amounts (64G and the like), but they're both good. Asus tends to prioritize SATA ports over NVMe, which is why it wasn't as high on my list (and which is why I finally went Threadripper, I'm planning on 6-7 NVMe drives).
Yea? Boards from July of 2019? Still the kings?

Not much has changed ~shrug~. Everyone introduced their product lines and then have just done firmware updates.

In general, from my perspective, MSI and ASUS are making the best boards for AMD right now, with ASRock being a 3rd option (generally cheaper, lighter on features). I don't do Gigabyte for AMD, and the x570 Master has had... problems. The change recently was B550 coming out (fewer PCIe connections for drives and the like), and a couple of midrange boards (x570 tomahawk, for instance).
 
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Crosshair is a good board as well. MSI is known for being a touch bit better on high ram amounts (64G and the like), but they're both good. Asus tends to prioritize SATA ports over NVMe, which is why it wasn't as high on my list (and which is why I finally went Threadripper, I'm planning on 6-7 NVMe drives).


Not much has changed ~shrug~. Everyone introduced their product lines and then have just done firmware updates.

In general, from my perspective, MSI and ASUS are making the best boards for AMD right now, with ASRock being a 3rd option (generally cheaper, lighter on features). I don't do Gigabyte for AMD, and the x570 Master has had... problems. The change recently was B550 coming out (fewer PCIe connections for drives and the like), and a couple of midrange boards (x570 tomahawk, for instance).
Thank you so much for your reply! Super helpful!

What would be your motherboard of choice then? I want the build to last me 3-4 years. That's why I am kind of going extreme (well, in my eyes).

Overclocking is important but not that important. Gonna keep it light and simple, stable.

Case is a Silverstone FT-02. Should do well keeping the CPU and GPU cool. I think the heatsink is going to be the Noctua. Ram is the G.Skill TridentZ Royal and going with a platinum/titanum 850W PSU. Most likely a 850w Seagate. Harddrive is a PCI 4.0 Sebrant or if the Samsung 4.0 will be out, the this.
 
MSI Meg Ace was the top of my list behind the X570 Prestige Creation. If you don’t need some of the work friendly features of the creation (extra NVMe, 10G networking), it’s a top notch board with a great PCB and cookers for all three NVMe drives. Next step down was the Unify or Crosshair. I almost bought the Ace 4-5 times before finally deciding to go with the big guns.


Thank you so much for your reply! Super helpful!

What would be your motherboard of choice then? I want the build to last me 3-4 years. That's why I am kind of going extreme (well, in my eyes).

Overclocking is important but not that important. Gonna keep it light and simple, stable.

Case is a Silverstone FT-02. Should do well keeping the CPU and GPU cool. I think the heatsink is going to be the Noctua. Ram is the G.Skill TridentZ Royal and going with a platinum/titanum 850W PSU. Most likely a 850w Seagate. Harddrive is a PCI 4.0 Sebrant or if the Samsung 4.0 will be out, the this.
 
I recently got a MSI X570 MEG unify and I could not happier. No RGB, 3 m.2 slots, plenty of IO ports, and top notch VRM cooling.

Price is up there for sure, but this motherboard is quality all around.
 
I know the gigabyte x570 master is getting a lot of flack here and really don't know how wide spread the issue is but it has been a solid MB for me. I had cold boot issues at first but they were fixed with the 1st bios update I did. Running a 3950x with 32gb of 3600 memory.
 

Personally, I'd wait for the ROG X570 Crosshair VIII Dark Hero instead of getting the "normal" Hero. The board was just announced yesterday so it will likely be launched on the same day as the AMD 5000 series CPUs.

Speaking as someone who currently uses an MSI X570 Prestige Creation, I would avoid it. I'm not really happy with it. It's been troublesome since I've owned it...USB Ports drop randomly, the RGB Control stopped working so I can't set the color/pattern, or even just turn it off, the LAN ports drop randomly as well...It's been stable as far as overclocking is concerned but I'd rather have all the USB ports functional at one time. (I don't care about the NIC ports since I use Aquantia 10GB cards in my boxes)
 
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I know the gigabyte x570 master is getting a lot of flack here and really don't know how wide spread the issue is but it has been a solid MB for me. I had cold boot issues at first but they were fixed with the 1st bios update I did. Running a 3950x with 32gb of 3600 memory.

I've just had WAY too much bad history with Gigabyte+AMD to ever recommend them in that combination. 990FX board that hit "worst of all time" lists, NF3 board that had the memory slots out of spec (distance to socket) enough that it constantly crashed and corrupted the OS (went through three of them before the board was discontinued), now the X570 master... Just gives me the willies. I'll gladly use them for Intel though (Got a Z490 master in my new gaming box, and my last was a Z170 Gaming Master 5).
 
Personally, I'd wait for the ROG X570 Crosshair VIII Dark Hero instead of getting the "normal" Hero. The board was just announced yesterday so it will likely be launched on the same day as the AMD 5000 series CPUs.

Speaking as someone who currently uses an MSI X570 Prestige Creation, I would avoid it. I'm not really happy with it. It's been troublesome since I've owned it...USB Ports drop randomly, the RGB Control stopped working so I can't set the color/pattern, or even just turn it off, the LAN ports drop randomly as well...It's been stable as far as overclocking is concerned but I'd rather have all the USB ports functional at one time. (I don't care about the NIC ports since I use Aquantia 10GB cards in my boxes)

I would have RMAed that board... I assume you've updated BIOS/etc? I've never heard of folks having issues with the USB ports, but I haven't honestly looked in a few months (and I started shopping in April, bought in september).
 
I would have RMAed that board... I assume you've updated BIOS/etc? I've never heard of folks having issues with the USB ports, but I haven't honestly looked in a few months (and I started shopping in April, bought in september).

Tried. Could not RMA the board. Due to USPS fuck up with shipping, the CPU arrived 35 days after arrival of the other parts, putting them outside the return period. MSI told me to pound sand when I contacted them.

BIOS is latest and fine, the board is just wonky in regards to USB, NIC and RGB control...

It'll make a decent backup seat when I get done building the new one...
 
Building a gaming PC and I am gonna go with the 5800X or 5900X. GPU was supposed to be the RTX 3080... but you all see how that is going. Not good at all.

I WAS going to pick up a MSI X570 Unify
https://www.newegg.com/msi-meg-x570-unify/p/N82E16813144273?Description=msi x570 unify&cm_re=msi_x570 unify-_-13-144-273-_-Product&quicklink=true

I just want to know if this is a poor choice for the money. I'm a little out of touch these days and would like to know it's $300 well spent.
The MSI X570 Unify is a fantastic motherboard.
Unify is good. Tomahawk is good. Any of the MSI boards midrange+ are good, to be honest. I almost bought the Prestige Creation back before I built TR instead, and quite a few others on here really like their boards.
The Unify and Tomahawk are the ONLY motherboards from MSI that are around $300 or less and are worth buying. Other boards like their X570-A Pro are known for having subpar VRM implementations. They are cheap. I wouldn't recommend pairing them with a 12c/24t CPU, especially if you plan on overclocking it.
What would you consider high end? I am looking for super stable setup. Money matters, but I am not looking to half ass anything.

I really appreciate all the responses. I know the boards are booming after the AMD announcement, but it's still nice of you guys.
High end would be motherboards like the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE and the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula. For ASRock its the X570 Creator , for GIGABYTE it's the X570 Aorus Xtreme. Watch your cornhole though, these are very expensive motherboards. When it was released, the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE was $650 and the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula wasn't far behind.

ASRock X570 Creator - ($489.99)
GIGABYTE X570 Aorus Xtreme v1.1 ($699.99)
MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE - ($641.06)
ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula - ($584.20)

Before you ask, what makes these more expensive comes down to two things. Improved quality of components and more/higher end integrated features. When I speak of higher end components, it will be things like thicker PCB's. more powerful power stages, increased phased counts, capacitors rated for higher temps and longer life spans. Their integrated features will also usually be nicer. The audio solution is nicer. You get nicer networking, etc. The higher end boards also tend to come with things like voltage monitoring points, LN2 modes, and voltage controllers with much more granular control over settings in BIOS. They'll have more capable and flexible external clock generators. The UEFI on the higher end motherboards also tend to have more options for tuning than the lower end boards do.

Using the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE as an example: There is a diagnostic LCD on the GODLIKE and it also comes with a 10GbE network card, 1GbE (integrated), 2.5GbE (integrated), and an integrated wireless solution. It has 3x onboard M.2 slots and an M.2 expander card that allows you to install 4x M.2 drives and plug them into a PCIe x8 or x16 slot. You get more onboard temperature sensors, more sensor headers, sometimes flow monitoring for water cooling, more fan headers etc. These are sometimes thought of as fluff features, but the diagnostic LCD, the extra fan headers, temperature sensors, and many NICs are all features I actually use.

But, where the rubber meets the road, your system will perform just the same in terms of benchmarks because everything that makes a system perform is really on the CPU. However, boards like the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE and the ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula can sometimes overclock a CPU further. My test 3900X can clock to 4.3GHz on those boards, but lesser boards like the ASUS TUF GAMING X570 Plus WiFi it can only do 4.2GHz and barely that. When you buy a more expensive board, you can sometimes get luckier with memory clocking. Daisy chain motherboards are notorious for not handling 4x DIMMs very well but my GODLIKE board can run 64GB of RAM using 4 modules at DDR4 3600MHz speeds. Many people struggle to even reach DDR4 3200MHz speeds on a lot of boards. AMD only officially supports speeds of DDR4 2666MHz or DDR4 2933MHz using 4x DIMMs depending on whether they are dual or single ranked modules.
I've just had WAY too much bad history with Gigabyte+AMD to ever recommend them in that combination. 990FX board that hit "worst of all time" lists, NF3 board that had the memory slots out of spec (distance to socket) enough that it constantly crashed and corrupted the OS (went through three of them before the board was discontinued), now the X570 master... Just gives me the willies. I'll gladly use them for Intel though (Got a Z490 master in my new gaming box, and my last was a Z170 Gaming Master 5).
In fairness, that was a very long time ago. One of the best motherboards I've ever worked with was the GIGABYTE X399 Designaire EX. Its gaming counterpart, the Aorus Xtreme or whatever it was turned out to be just as good. The only difference being some RGB lighting, board color and their network controllers. The Designare EX had Intel NICs and the Aorus Xtreme had Killer NICs.
 
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Tried. Could not RMA the board. Due to USPS fuck up with shipping, the CPU arrived 35 days after arrival of the other parts, putting them outside the return period. MSI told me to pound sand when I contacted them.

BIOS is latest and fine, the board is just wonky in regards to USB, NIC and RGB control...

It'll make a decent backup seat when I get done building the new one...

That sucks, mine has been problem free since I bought it. I use 8 USB devices and have had zero problems with it and have used both the intel 1 gig and the aquantia 10 gig without issues. Only RGB issue I have had is with my MSI 1080 Ti not saving the RGB profile I give it, board and memory are fine. There have been several RGB firmware upgrades for the board though, so you may want to check that out.
 
The MSI X570 Unify is a fantastic motherboard.

The Unify and Tomahawk are the ONLY motherboards from MSI that are around $300 or less and are worth buying. Other boards like their X570-A Pro are known for having subpar VRM implementations. They are cheap. I wouldn't recommend pairing them with a 12c/24t CPU, especially if you plan on overclocking it.

High end would be motherboards like the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE and the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula. For ASRock its the X570 Creator , for GIGABYTE it's the X570 Aorus Xtreme. Watch your cornhole though, these are very expensive motherboards. When it was released, the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE was $650 and the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula wasn't far behind.

ASRock X570 Creator - ($489.99)
GIGABYTE X570 Aorus Xtreme v1.1 ($699.99)
MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE - ($641.06)
ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula - ($584.20)

Before you ask, what makes these more expensive comes down to two things. Improved quality of components and more/higher end integrated features. When I speak of higher end components, it will be things like thicker PCB's. more powerful power stages, increased phased counts, capacitors rated for higher temps and longer life spans. Their integrated features will also usually be nicer. The audio solution is nicer. You get nicer networking, etc. The higher end boards also tend to come with things like voltage monitoring points, LN2 modes, and voltage controllers with much more granular control over settings in BIOS. They'll have more capable and flexible external clock generators. The UEFI on the higher end motherboards also tend to have more options for tuning than the lower end boards do.

Using the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE as an example: There is a diagnostic LCD on the GODLIKE and it also comes with a 10GbE network card, 1GbE (integrated), 2.5GbE (integrated), and an integrated wireless solution. It has 3x onboard M.2 slots and an M.2 expander card that allows you to install 4x M.2 drives and plug them into a PCIe x8 or x16 slot. You get more onboard temperature sensors, more sensor headers, sometimes flow monitoring for water cooling, more fan headers etc. These are sometimes thought of as fluff features, but the diagnostic LCD, the extra fan headers, temperature sensors, and many NICs are all features I actually use.

But, where the rubber meets the road, your system will perform just the same in terms of benchmarks because everything that makes a system perform is really on the CPU. However, boards like the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE and the ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula can sometimes overclock a CPU further. My test 3900X can clock to 4.3GHz on those boards, but lesser boards like the ASUS TUF GAMING X570 Plus WiFi it can only do 4.2GHz and barely that. When you buy a more expensive board, you can sometimes get luckier with memory clocking. Daisy chain motherboards are notorious for not handling 4x DIMMs very well but my GODLIKE board can run 64GB of RAM using 4 modules at DDR4 3600MHz speeds. Many people struggle to even reach DDR4 3200MHz speeds on a lot of boards. AMD only officially supports speeds of DDR4 2666MHz or DDR4 2933MHz using 4x DIMMs depending on whether they are dual or single ranked modules.

In fairness, that was a very long time ago. One of the best motherboards I've ever worked with was the GIGABYTE X399 Designaire EX. Its gaming counterpart, the Aorus Xtreme or whatever it was turned out to be just as good. The only difference being some RGB lighting, board color and their network controllers. The Designare EX had Intel NICs and the Aorus Xtreme had Killer NICs.
Wow. That's a lot of leg work you did for me. I really appreciate all the information. Taking the time to explain things to me is really generous of you.

It sounds like I don't need the extra features of the more expensive motherboards. All the "fluff features" are things I won't use too often as I plan on building this and letting it ride. But it also sounds like those extra features come along with parts that would really push the stability and longevity I am hoping for.

If I were to "upgrade" from the Unify I had planned to purchase, what would be your recommendation for a "worthwhile" upgrade? IT sounds like the Godlike and Crosshair VIII Formula. But just making sure.
 
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Wow. That's a lot of leg work you did for me. I really appreciate all the information. Taking the time to explain things to me is really generous of you.

It sounds like I don't need the extra features of the more expensive motherboards. All the "fluff features" are things I won't use too often as I plan on building this and letting it ride. But it also sounds like those extra features come along with parts that would really push the stability and longevity I am hoping for.

If I were to "upgrade" from the Unify I had planned to purchase, what would be your recommendation for a "worthwhile" upgrade? IT sounds like the Godlike and Crosshair VIII Formula. But just making sure.

The MSI X570 Unify is fine. It's a good board with a good VRM implementation. If you aren't looking to pay for fluff features, it's what your looking for. There is no need to go to a higher end board if you aren't going to use those extra features. You do get nicer audio, nicer NICs in some cases and all of that. But the vast majority of people won't notice the difference. Even if you did, you might not feel that the price increase was worth it. You are talking about paying twice as much for features you won't use.

All you really need is a good VRM implementation and decent integrated features. You can get the stability your looking for out of the better midrange offerings. The improved quality on the ultra-high end motherboards really only shines in extreme overclocking situations or in fringe cases like mine where I wanted to make four 16GB DIMMs work at speeds over DDR4 3200MHz. I also needed the extra network connectivity, but most people will need one wired NIC and maybe the WiFi if your into that.
 
The MSI X570 Unify is a fantastic motherboard.

The Unify and Tomahawk are the ONLY motherboards from MSI that are around $300 or less and are worth buying. Other boards like their X570-A Pro are known for having subpar VRM implementations. They are cheap. I wouldn't recommend pairing them with a 12c/24t CPU, especially if you plan on overclocking it.

True, the Tomahawk is the bottom of the line from where I'm concerned (anything cheaper avoid, but the Tomahawk is good). That's what I meant by midrange+. :)
High end would be motherboards like the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE and the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula. For ASRock its the X570 Creator , for GIGABYTE it's the X570 Aorus Xtreme. Watch your cornhole though, these are very expensive motherboards. When it was released, the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE was $650 and the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula wasn't far behind.

ASRock X570 Creator - ($489.99)
GIGABYTE X570 Aorus Xtreme v1.1 ($699.99)
MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE - ($641.06)
ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula - ($584.20)

Before you ask, what makes these more expensive comes down to two things. Improved quality of components and more/higher end integrated features. When I speak of higher end components, it will be things like thicker PCB's. more powerful power stages, increased phased counts, capacitors rated for higher temps and longer life spans. Their integrated features will also usually be nicer. The audio solution is nicer. You get nicer networking, etc. The higher end boards also tend to come with things like voltage monitoring points, LN2 modes, and voltage controllers with much more granular control over settings in BIOS. They'll have more capable and flexible external clock generators. The UEFI on the higher end motherboards also tend to have more options for tuning than the lower end boards do.

Using the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE as an example: There is a diagnostic LCD on the GODLIKE and it also comes with a 10GbE network card, 1GbE (integrated), 2.5GbE (integrated), and an integrated wireless solution. It has 3x onboard M.2 slots and an M.2 expander card that allows you to install 4x M.2 drives and plug them into a PCIe x8 or x16 slot. You get more onboard temperature sensors, more sensor headers, sometimes flow monitoring for water cooling, more fan headers etc. These are sometimes thought of as fluff features, but the diagnostic LCD, the extra fan headers, temperature sensors, and many NICs are all features I actually use.

But, where the rubber meets the road, your system will perform just the same in terms of benchmarks because everything that makes a system perform is really on the CPU. However, boards like the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE and the ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula can sometimes overclock a CPU further. My test 3900X can clock to 4.3GHz on those boards, but lesser boards like the ASUS TUF GAMING X570 Plus WiFi it can only do 4.2GHz and barely that. When you buy a more expensive board, you can sometimes get luckier with memory clocking. Daisy chain motherboards are notorious for not handling 4x DIMMs very well but my GODLIKE board can run 64GB of RAM using 4 modules at DDR4 3600MHz speeds. Many people struggle to even reach DDR4 3200MHz speeds on a lot of boards. AMD only officially supports speeds of DDR4 2666MHz or DDR4 2933MHz using 4x DIMMs depending on whether they are dual or single ranked modules.
Bingo. And for me, since boards go from system to system as it becomes a server, etc - they last longer, in my experience, which means I get to use them longer, and the cost is spread out. For something that gets rotated out more frequently, I might not spend as much, but it's mighty handy knowing a box will last 10+ years and can be all sorts of things in its lifespan.

In fairness, that was a very long time ago. One of the best motherboards I've ever worked with was the GIGABYTE X399 Designaire EX. Its gaming counterpart, the Aorus Xtreme or whatever it was turned out to be just as good. The only difference being some RGB lighting, board color and their network controllers. The Designare EX had Intel NICs and the Aorus Xtreme had Killer NICs.
Truth, but fool me thrice, dammnation to you and yours and all that. It just makes me twitchy. But it's personal there too - and with MSI/ASUS/ASRock... eh, why bother? Get one of the others instead. I love my Z490 board from them, and the Z170 was great too - but I'm not touching AMD from them any time soon.

And the Aorus master is new...
 
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The MSI X570 Unify is fine. It's a good board with a good VRM implementation. If you aren't looking to pay for fluff features, it's what your looking for. There is no need to go to a higher end board if you aren't going to use those extra features. You do get nicer audio, nicer NICs in some cases and all of that. But the vast majority of people won't notice the difference. Even if you did, you might not feel that the price increase was worth it. You are talking about paying twice as much for features you won't use.

All you really need is a good VRM implementation and decent integrated features. You can get the stability your looking for out of the better midrange offerings. The improved quality on the ultra-high end motherboards really only shines in extreme overclocking situations or in fringe cases like mine where I wanted to make four 16GB DIMMs work at speeds over DDR4 3200MHz. I also needed the extra network connectivity, but most people will need one wired NIC and maybe the WiFi if your into that.

This. I'm building one last system here soon, and the Unify is on my list for a high-possibility purchase, if I don't go with one of the nicer B550 boards (just don't need the extra NVMe on this box). Would not hesitate to buy it.
 
Building a gaming PC and I am gonna go with the 5800X or 5900X. GPU was supposed to be the RTX 3080... but you all see how that is going. Not good at all.

I WAS going to pick up a MSI X570 Unify
https://www.newegg.com/msi-meg-x570-unify/p/N82E16813144273?Description=msi x570 unify&cm_re=msi_x570 unify-_-13-144-273-_-Product&quicklink=true

I just want to know if this is a poor choice for the money. I'm a little out of touch these days and would like to know it's $300 well spent.

Why the heck would you go high end on the board NOW??

AM4 is on its last legs. This is the last run before DD5, USB4, etc etc. Imo this is throwing away money cuz after this gen (2021) the industry will be shifting to DD5. Hmm, I suppose if you don't plan on moving to the next platform then this is a non-issue. If it were me I'd get a midrange board, a Strix-E/CH8 Hero which is 95% of a Crosshair and call it a day.
 
I've just had WAY too much bad history with Gigabyte+AMD to ever recommend them in that combination. 990FX board that hit "worst of all time" lists, NF3 board that had the memory slots out of spec (distance to socket) enough that it constantly crashed and corrupted the OS (went through three of them before the board was discontinued), now the X570 master... Just gives me the willies. I'll gladly use them for Intel though (Got a Z490 master in my new gaming box, and my last was a Z170 Gaming Master 5).
Happily using a Gigabyte X570 Master with a 3700x, Gigabyte X570 Gaming X with a 1600AF and a Gigabyte X470 Master with a 3100.
Previous board was a Gigabyte x48t-dq6 and had no issues with it either.

Running Raid 0 with a pair of 1TB Sabrent nVME drives on the Master, 32GB of Corsair RGB Pro @ 1800mhz and an overclocked Strix 2070 Super. Pretty much using the full capabilities of the x570 chipset. No issues here.

As always, your mileage may vary, but I ran the same configuration on the X570 Gaming before I decided I wanted the Master as well.
 
Happily using a Gigabyte X570 Master with a 3700x, Gigabyte X570 Gaming X with a 1600AF and a Gigabyte X470 Master with a 3100.
Previous board was a Gigabyte x48t-dq6 and had no issues with it either.

Running Raid 0 with a pair of 1TB Sabrent nVME drives on the Master, 32GB of Corsair RGB Pro @ 1800mhz and an overclocked Strix 2070 Super. Pretty much using the full capabilities of the x570 chipset. No issues here.

As always, your mileage may vary, but I ran the same configuration on the X570 Gaming before I decided I wanted the Master as well.

I have a 3970x on an Aorus Xtreme. While the board is exquisite, it's still a huge pain in the ass to use because Gigafail is lazy as hell. I would not buy Gigafail for myself but this is a production rig so at that time I needed that vrm setup. My gripes are not many but they're really freaking annoying issues. First the damn bios does not save the fan settings. And every time it locks up like for ex. when you're fine tuning the oc or tweaking the ram timing, imagine that you now have to redo the fucking fan/pump settings every godamn time. I still get worked up thinking about the gobs of time lost doing this. There's only 3 damn chips in this lineup and they cannot fit the fucking fan settings into the bios? What?? And then the TB3 card doesn't work in most situations on their boards in general. They didn't write it into bios on the Xtreme even though they put the damn ports on the board. Everyone has been waiting for the support to be enabled and they do nothing. The RGB Fusion software which is a pile of bile, didn't work for like 8 months. It took them that long to update it to work on trx40, smh. So yea, I would concur with lopoetve as well.
 
I have a 3970x on an Aorus Xtreme. While the board is exquisite, it's still a huge pain in the ass to use because Gigafail is lazy as hell. I would not buy Gigafail for myself but this is a production rig so at that time I needed that vrm setup. My gripes are not many but they're really freaking annoying issues. First the damn bios does not save the fan settings. And every time it locks up like for ex. when you're fine tuning the oc or tweaking the ram timing, imagine that you now have to redo the fucking fan/pump settings every godamn time. I still get worked up thinking about the gobs of time lost doing this. There's only 3 damn chips in this lineup and they cannot fit the fucking fan settings into the bios? What?? And then the TB3 card doesn't work in most situations on their boards in general. They didn't write it into bios on the Xtreme even though they put the damn ports on the board. Everyone has been waiting for the support to be enabled and they do nothing. The RGB Fusion software which is a pile of bile, didn't work for like 8 months. It took them that long to update it to work on trx40, smh. So yea, I would concur with lopoetve as well.

One of the best motherboards I've ever worked with was a GIGABYTE motherboard. The X399 Designare EX was simply amazing.
 
Personally, I'd wait for the ROG X570 Crosshair VIII Dark Hero instead of getting the "normal" Hero. The board was just announced yesterday so it will likely be launched on the same day as the AMD 5000 series CPUs.

Speaking as someone who currently uses an MSI X570 Prestige Creation, I would avoid it. I'm not really happy with it. It's been troublesome since I've owned it...USB Ports drop randomly, the RGB Control stopped working so I can't set the color/pattern, or even just turn it off, the LAN ports drop randomly as well...It's been stable as far as overclocking is concerned but I'd rather have all the USB ports functional at one time. (I don't care about the NIC ports since I use Aquantia 10GB cards in my boxes)

Whats the main difference between the standard and "dark" hero? I've added the standard Hero and the new Dark hero to the "compare" on the offical asus website but it doesn't show any specs for the dark.
 
Whats the main difference between the standard and "dark" hero? I've added the standard Hero and the new Dark hero to the "compare" on the offical asus website but it doesn't show any specs for the dark.

We don't really know yet. There aren't any real specifications on the Dark Hero. Until I see otherwise, I'll assume ASUS will pull more VRM shenanigans and say it has 16 power stages or some such nonsense. But, the PCB won't have doublers and it will really be an 8-phase or 6 vCore +2 SoC or something like that.
 
The MSI X570 Unify is fine. It's a good board with a good VRM implementation. If you aren't looking to pay for fluff features, it's what your looking for. There is no need to go to a higher end board if you aren't going to use those extra features. You do get nicer audio, nicer NICs in some cases and all of that. But the vast majority of people won't notice the difference. Even if you did, you might not feel that the price increase was worth it. You are talking about paying twice as much for features you won't use.

All you really need is a good VRM implementation and decent integrated features. You can get the stability your looking for out of the better midrange offerings. The improved quality on the ultra-high end motherboards really only shines in extreme overclocking situations or in fringe cases like mine where I wanted to make four 16GB DIMMs work at speeds over DDR4 3200MHz. I also needed the extra network connectivity, but most people will need one wired NIC and maybe the WiFi if your into that.
I'm an audiophile so I plan on buying a sound card anyway. Knowing that, the MSI Unify sounds like a good choice for me!

I really appreciate all the input from everyone. I'm super excited to be building all this! You're all making these choices very reassuring.
 
Why the heck would you go high end on the board NOW??

AM4 is on its last legs. This is the last run before DD5, USB4, etc etc. Imo this is throwing away money cuz after this gen (2021) the industry will be shifting to DD5. Hmm, I suppose if you don't plan on moving to the next platform then this is a non-issue. If it were me I'd get a midrange board, a Strix-E/CH8 Hero which is 95% of a Crosshair and call it a day.
I'm always into upgrading and moving forward... but I also don't mind selling the stuff I have. If it turns out that nothing really utilizes the new gear, I'd stick with the Unify. But if the new features are really worth the swap, I'd sell and replace. I don't have a problem with that.
 
I'm always into upgrading and moving forward... but I also don't mind selling the stuff I have. If it turns out that nothing really utilizes the new gear, I'd stick with the Unify. But if the new features are really worth the swap, I'd sell and replace. I don't have a problem with that.

Wait, what new features??
 
Why the heck would you go high end on the board NOW??

AM4 is on its last legs. This is the last run before DD5, USB4, etc etc. Imo this is throwing away money cuz after this gen (2021) the industry will be shifting to DD5. Hmm, I suppose if you don't plan on moving to the next platform then this is a non-issue. If it were me I'd get a midrange board, a Strix-E/CH8 Hero which is 95% of a Crosshair and call it a day.

One thing to think of is how expensive DDR5 is going to be when it first comes out, plus not being a beta tester for a new arch and new chipsets.
 
FWIW, I’ve been using the X570 Unify from April and it has been a fantastic board. It also feels very high quality in the hand with the metal I/O shroud.
 
If coming from intel to the 5900x which amd motherboard will be cpu-drop-in-ready without a bios update?
 
Why the heck would you go high end on the board NOW??

AM4 is on its last legs. This is the last run before DD5, USB4, etc etc. Imo this is throwing away money cuz after this gen (2021) the industry will be shifting to DD5. Hmm, I suppose if you don't plan on moving to the next platform then this is a non-issue. If it were me I'd get a midrange board, a Strix-E/CH8 Hero which is 95% of a Crosshair and call it a day.

I agree and got the MSI B550m Mortar but even the Bazooka reviewed real nice for the money .. MSI stepped there game up big time even at the low end , also B550 / x570 will be hot sellers . Also , I bought with Zen 3 in mind as the board handles the 3950x that may soon be around $300

 
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Will the rog crosshair viii hero support or be compatible with the r9 5950x?? I can't find the answer
 
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