Which X570 to buy ~$200?

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AshG

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I'm getting ready to pull the trigger on a new system this spring. My old z68 based rig has been pretty darn faithful to me, but with USB ports dying off at random and things starting to chug a bit (I do some light FPS and MMO gaming, light video and audio production, some R, some SPSS, some music composition) My wife has given me the go-ahead to start looking around for when the tax return arrives.

What I've currently got picked out is here: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/wqz33t

I'm ditching AIO and going back to air. I'm going high on RAM so I don't have to buy more later. My video card (GTX970) and PSU (Seasonic 750 Titanium something-or-other) and case (Corsair ATX cube) are being reused for the build.

I've got an ASUS TUF in the link, but I'm willing to consider other x570 options. The more I read, the more torn I am because every motherboard has a love it crowd and a worst thing ever crowd. Thank you for your suggestions.
 
Tl;DR: lots of ranting; I went with the X570 TUF since I felt it was the best balance of features and price (out of the 4.5 manufacturers of X570 boards).



Annoyingly, back in the Z68 generation (my MaxIV-G as well) $200 was top of the line. Now it's barely midrange, without feature parity, either. I went for an ASUS X570 TUF simply because it was good enough, had decent VRMs (got burned badly on a mITX HTPC build - never knew that bad VRMs were a thing until Kaby Lake), and had an optical audio S/PDIF.

I wanted to go mITX, but none of the options there had dual M.2, decent outputs (optical audio...), and none had better than GbE (and no way to realistically upgrade them to have 10GbE).

ASUS X570 TUF was also available at Best Buy (local store), which was the deciding factor for me.

Otherwise, the Gigabyte Aorus Elite seems pretty decent (lots of USB ports!), but I haven't been hearing great things about Gigabyte reliability (not boards dying, just minor inconveniences - a friend and I had somewhat similar experiences with their Intel boards, too).

ASUS is dinged on UEFI/BIOS feature depth, but even this entry level ($200 entry level... :( ) ASUS board is far better than my old ROG Maximus IV GENE Z68 board (that this build replaced). ASUS software is... meh. Not great if you are trying to do RGBLEDs (and I never thought I would until I did, so I didn't factor that into the board choice - now I would). ASUS also strangely stratifies their boards with pockets of missing features in their lineup, so I feel you either spend as little as possible on an ASUS board ($200...) or as much as possible to get all of the features (if you care for the features).

ASRock is also dinged by reviewers on UEFI/BIOS, though that may be an AM4 ASRock deal, since their Intel UEFI is really quite good. ASRock at the "Steel Legend" and up is good enough. Their lessor boards have somewhat weaker VRMs, (though should still be fine for anything short of overclocking a 3950X). I feel their higher end boards aren't great value, but they do have nice features (2.5GbE, 10GbE, integrated TB3, etc). Most (all?) of their boards are also compatible with their TB3 expansion card, which may be a deciding factor. ASRock has a tendency to place the GPU slot in the first slot location, so that may impede your heatsink choice a bit. Check with Noctua, their compatibility list is quite accurate, thorough, detailed, and up to date.

Gigabyte, again, I quite like their Aorus Elite. Endless USB ports on the backside, decent M.2 slot placement (neither slot is directly under the GPU - so an axial fan GPU won't just be dumping heat onto the SSD).

MSI, I haven't heard much good out of their lineup, and their I/O selection isn't great. VRMs are probably the weakest of the bunch (still not bad for stock Zen2, though, and definitely more than enough for the 3600x you are targeting).

Biostar exists, and that basically is all of the X570 manufacturers.

Again, I went for the ASUS X570 TUF since I could just buy it locally, but its main contenders (for me) were the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite and the ASROCK X570 Steel Legend. In your situation, with the heatsink choice, I'd probably just consider the ASUS and Gigabyte (more heatsink clearance, though I didn't check with Noctua's site on that). At that point, the ASUS has Realtek GbE (not a problem for me, but I know some people really love Intel GbE adapters... maybe buy one later or buy a SFP+ Mellanox or Broadcom card?) and the Gigabyte has Intel GbE and an USB-C header, but no USB-C port (ASUS is the exact opposite: USB-C port, but no header). The way the TUF lays out its PCIe slots mean a 3 slot GPU will leave you with two open PCIe slots. The Aorus Elite will have all 3 other slots still open with a 3 slot card in the main slot. Some people don't like the chipset fan placement of the TUF, I've never found it to be a problem (though I don't have PCIe 4.0 devices - so the fan is quieter than my GPU fan at this point). The Aorus Elite places the fan in a spot that doesn't get smothered by a GPU (especially a boxy blower card).

Gigabyte has an integrated I/O shield, while the ASUS uses a traditional plate. More of an "oh, cool" thing, I suppose. The Gigabyte also places the CMOS battery out of the way, whereas the ASUS' placement would be smothered by a 3 slot GPU. I don't know if that really make much of a difference, though. Gigabyte places their M.2 slot heatshield on the main slot, whereas ASUS puts theirs on the secondary slot, though the main slot on either one doesn't get much heat. Gigabyte's second M.2 is under the main slot; ASUS puts theirs below the second PCIe slot, a better location, IMO.

I got mine with integrated WiFi, since that is all Best Buy carried (they also carried a MSI board, which was not good value). You don't have to, it's a 9260 Intel card (really good last gen card). The Gigabyte has BIOS flashback, but that's a completely moot point, since it's an X570 board and you have a Ryzen 3000 CPU in mind.

I'm really just typing out of boredom, now, so I'll stop. Either way, I like the ASUS, but the Gigabyte has some strong arguments in its favor. None that really mattered to me. The ASUS is also made in Vietnam, which is new and somewhat novel, so that did pique my curiosity.
 
I recently updated as well and went with the X570 Aorus Elite. Haven't had any issues that weren't my own doing (tuning Ram timings, etc) with the latest BIOS (F12j). From what I have seen, outside of the normal pockets of defective devices, as long as you do Ram from the QVL (either Gigabyte or the Ram mfgr) and never, ever install any of the Gigabyte software it's pretty good choice.

I got a 2600x cheap over boxing day, so I went with that with the intent of jumping to a high-core 4000 series part when they announce Zen 4 on AM5 and prices drop.

A couple options on the other parts if you're interested:

I went with the Ripjaws V over the Neo. No RGB but comparable timings. I got the 16gb set, it's Hynix DJR, currently running it at 3200mhz CAS14 due to me being on Zen+. Needed 1.4v at the timings I wanted, but it's been stable since I upped it.
The WD SN750 is solid for the same types of steady-state workloads the Evo excels at. NewMaxx has a bunch of data available on his reddit regarding all the NVMe drives.
Check your clearances around the Ram cooler heights and the PCIe slots with the NH-D15, they also have a NH-D15S which has slight compatibility tweaks (offset base, moves the cooler away from the PCIe and towards the top of the board slightly, and higher notch for the memory). Only real performance difference is it's a single fan, but seems to be within 1-2 degrees celsius in cooler tests.
 
Great write up Jeremy. If they were the same price and available would you have gone Asus, Gigabyte or Asrock? Thanks!
 
^ If you're buying soon, may be a good idea to wait for the X570 Tomahawk. Ticks almost all the boxes except for the debug post code (deal breaker to some, non issue to others), and having a Realtek 2.5GBPS LAN instead of an Intel gigabit one. In some cases maybe the Realtek would be better.

Also a top tier VRM that will hold up nicely with a 3rd Gen 16 Core.
 
mda especially when the Realtek 2.5GbE has been a proven performer for at least a year or so now, and Intel's 2.5GbE has a potentially severe performance bug that is going to require new silicon to fix. Considering how long Intel sat on that 2.5GbE NIC, their proven track record of delivering good NICs, and how feature-sparse it is (vs other Intel NICs), this sort of issue is surprising.
 
jeremyshaw said:
mda especially when the Realtek 2.5GbE has been a proven performer for at least a year or so now, and Intel's 2.5GbE has a potentially severe performance bug that is going to require new silicon to fix. Considering how long Intel sat on that 2.5GbE NIC, their proven track record of delivering good NICs, and how feature-sparse it is (vs other Intel NICs), this sort of issue is surprising.
Click to expand...

I actually had no idea about Intel's problems with the 2.5gbps NIC. Used to think Intel networking was bulletproof heh.

I'm thinking about getting the Tomahawk since 2.5GB would be a 'nice to have' in the future. The board really ticks quite a few boxes.
 
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Wow, had no idea about the Intel NIC's. Thanks so much. In all honesty, over the years have had Realtek and Intel Gbit NIC's and never any issues that I could tell.
 
If you can wait just a little longer the MSI X570 Tomahawk is REALLY amazing at it's ~$200 intended retail price.


 
I'm torn between the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite vs MSI X570 Tomahawk...I know the Tomahawk has the better VRM's but since I'm not going to be doing any crazy overclocking is the Aorus Elite the better buy?
 
There have been random issues with Gigabyte's X570 line, I've seen it on the Master (there's a topic on this forum) with a small population having issues on the Elite, Pros, and Ultras. Haven't heard anything on the Xtremes and the ITX. To be fair to the other GB X570 boards, I haven't heard of recent issues with the other non Master boards either. Most were immediately after the X570 launch, which was to be expected on any new platform launch anyway.

I'll guess the reason why you won't hear much feedback on the X570 Tomahawk is because it's late to the party, anyone who wanted an X570 board would have it already, or have bought the B550, and the Tomahawk X570's sales figure is probably too small for enough vocal complainers to pop up.

Bottom line is, the Elite offers good value. The Tomahawk does too if you have use for its featureset above what the Elite offers (2.5GB and Wifi6 in particular)
 
mda said:
I'll guess the reason why you won't hear much feedback on the X570 Tomahawk is because it's late to the party, anyone who wanted an X570 board would have it already, or have bought the B550, and the Tomahawk X570's sales figure is probably too small for enough vocal complainers to pop up.
Click to expand...

even thought it arrived later, the X570 Tomahawk is getting excellent reviews...it also goes out of stock almost immediately so it seems it's very popular as well
 
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