Blogs The problem with X570 motherboards

My insistence on ITX is steering me well clear of Ryzen 3000. I can see only one 570 ITX board listed with major retailers and it is over £225. Plus, it isn't actually in stock.

People are saying just a 400 series board instead - why? They're overpriced too! Paying through the nose is one thing, but paying through the nose for previous gen kit? Get a grip.

I'm seriously considering dropping a 9700k in my current board, because it'll be a lot cheaper than going AMD right now.

Thankfully, I'm not in any rush, so maybe 500 series ITX boards will start trickling through at decent prices in the coming couple of months.

 

It was the same for me when I built my current ITX PC a few months after the original Ryzens came out - there were precisely zero ITZ Ryzen boards available!

 

My issue with X570 boards isn't the super expensive high-end ones (I wouldn't ever be shopping at that segment anyways), it's the "budget" ones that are still more expensive than high end X470 (or competing Z390) boards, yet skimp on basically everything that makes a functional difference, just to include PCI-E 4.0, that does bugger all.

If this is where AMD want to put X570, then it desperately needs an X550 to slot in above the eventual B550 boards, because there is a huge gap in their product stack atm... The fact that X590 is rumoured is pretty scary, are they going to start at £400??

 

AMD used to be known for best bang for buck or are they now bang, bye wallet.

 

Add me to this as well. I have no need/desire for anything bigger than ITX (although I do dream of water cooling something small. When will Fractal update the Nano S!).

Also that small fan is a little more than a bit of putting.

 

I'm probably a bit strange as i think X570 offers quiet good value once you excluded the boards at the top and bottom of manufactures ranges, the sweet spot seems to be around the £200-300 range, less than that you start losing features and any more you start paying for stuff that's more targeted at extreme overclocking.

I've got my eye on the Gigabyte Pro and even though it's £60 more than the board I'd choose if i went X470, the Taichi, IMO it's worth the extra money.

 

I think this pricing issue is just the inevitable consequence of AMD's rising popularity. Motherboard manufacturers trying to raise their profit margins and using the USP of PCI-E 4, regardless of whether or not it is actually useful, whilst the going is good.

 

No? Don't tell Intel but paying more for a motherboard that i know is going to take at least another generation of processor and anything from 2 to 16 or maybe more cores without having to replace it is fairly valuable to me, with Intel boards you end up having to replace boards all the time.

If we're comparing X570 with older AM4 boards even then they seem better value to me, most X470 board are pretty bad when it comes to quality, sure they do the job but i wouldn't feel comfortable running an overclock 16 core on one 24/7.

I guess it's horses for courses, like i said I'm probably a bit strange though as the general consensus seems to be that X570 isn't worth it.

 

ASUS in particular really seem to have phoned it in wrt the x570 boards... aside from tacking on PCI-E 4.0 there appears to be been no effort put into the boards.

even the chipset fans, imo, give them impression of lack of thought and effort. that or they all forgot heatpipes exist.

 

I'm no so sold on the guarantee of forward compatibility of boards. We've already seen both features being 'locked' (out of practicality) to later boards - i.e. PCIe4 - and CPUs being locked out of older boards: Zen 2 chips do not work on A320, Zen 1 do not work on X570. With PCIe 5 expected to be a relatively rapid follow-on to PCIe4 and DDR5 on the horizon, those would also be expected to introduce compatibility breaks (and USB4 AKA totally-not-Thunderbolt which is a right pain in the arse to implement full-feature ports with proper Alternate Mode without it being chipset integrated).

 

Don't get it, yeah PCIe4 is nice, but who really needs it, my 3700X on a ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate (needed/wanted the 10Gbit LAN) runs just fine, and don't think any Gen4 SSD's gone be significant faster then the 970 Evo Plus 2TB that i have now, other then when moving big data blocks like movies, in real word normal usage.
And as real SLI/CF support is dropped by both nVidia as AMD, PCIe3 x16 will be fast enough for the 3080Ti and 6800TX and even 4080Ti and the 7800TX

And getting a overclock board also seems pointless to me, as the 3000 series comes close to the max frequency, the only thing you really wane do some overclocking on is the internal bus and memory, as more then even 5% overclock seems to be real hard.

Also there is a high chance that the 4000 series will be the last CPU to support AM4, as AMD only guarantee support till 2020, so why invest in a expensive motherboard that will work maybe for just one more gen CPU's.
If your looking for a nice motherboard to fill your needs, have a look at this video GamersNexus, i always look at his reviews before i buy a board.

 

I got an X570 board (MSI gaming Pro Carbon) because I felt it offered good enough value to go for it instead of an X470 board. Plus, I don't imagine I'll replace my 3700X for the next three years, thus already having the option to go PCI-E 4.0 for a potential GPU upgrade in the future made sense to me.

 

I've not buying into these x570 nonsense. It's too expensive. I'm waiting for the MSI B450 Tomahawk Max to be available in my country to upgrade from my good old i5 2500k @4.7GHz to the 3600.

 

Better order a cheap Zen+ CPU to upgrade the BIOS, then. From all I've heard many if not most B450 boards won't recognize Zen 2 CPUs and won't come with the required BIOS. If you're lucky (and you might well be with that board) it'll have BIOS flashback.