Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat feature filled board with decent overclocking options.
Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2021
After using the board for the past 8 months, I feel confident in saying that it is one of the best AM4 boards when it comes to featurset and value. While it is fairly expensive (nearly $300 at the time or purchase), the money is going to more of the utilitarian parts that impact performance and usability. Since all of the PCIe slots have PCIe switches on them, the board is very flexibility in how the various ports can be used without running into issues such as some ports being unusable when others are populated.
As the board is laid out and connected, the first PCIe X16 slot is connected directly to the CPU, and has a switcher to send 8 lanes to the second PCIe X16 slot (this slot is wired only for X8) if a device is installed in that slot.
The first m.2 slot is wired directly to the CPU as well (has 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes that is not shared with anything else).
The remaining slots make use of the PCIe 4.0 lanes from the chipset, and best of all, all of them can be used at the same time, including the 2nd m.2 slot. The only catch here is if the 2nd PCIe X1 slot is populated, then the 3rd full length slot that is wired for X4, will run at X2 speeds instead.
The board comes with a built in Intel AX200 WiFi adapter. The WiFi adapter and the Bluetooth feature can be enabled or disabled individually, thus if you do not need WiFi, you can disable it at the bios level, while keeping the Bluetooth part of the AX200 enabled.
For Ethernet, the motherboard uses the Realtek RTL 8125 which performs as expedited for a 2.5GbE connection. When connected to a multi-gig switch. A throughput test using TCP between 2 2.5GbE clients, gets a sustained speed of 2380.952Mbps after the TCP overhead, thus it is effectively providing the full throughput of the standard.
The Intel AX200 performs as expected, and identically to that of laptops equipped with it. When connected to an 802.11ax AP in a urban environment with some congestion on the 5GHz band; at 160MHz channel width, the AX200 provides a real world throughput hovering around 1.8 to 2Gbps.
The VRMs remain relatively cool during heavy operation when used with a Ryzen 7 5800x. At full load, the CPU pulls 147 watts which is being powered via a 16 phase 12+4 config that uses 60 amp power stages for each phase (International Rectifier IR3555). Every 2 phases share a signal from the controller, thus in practice, it behaves more like a 6+2 phase, but with twice the current handling capability.
Aside from the standard 24 pin ATX power connector, the EPS 12V connector near the CPU area uses an 8+4 pin connector. a single 8 pin EPS 12V cable will run the board just fine, but if you use multiple PCIe slots at once, especially with SLI, then the 4 pin is also needed.
Aside from the above mentioned aspects, everything else performs similarly to any other X570 board, since everything else performance related is tightly controlled by AMD.
The board also has a number of RGB LEDs along with 4 RGB headers for addressable RGB strips, but thankfully, all of the RGB can be turned off.
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Pros:
Great VRM design with good transient response.
Good set of bios options.
First PCIe X16 slot is spaced low enough to allow ample room for an NH-D15 cooler.
Good use of PCIe switchers, allows for all PCIe slots (including the m.2 ones) to be used at the same time, along with every SATA port with nothing being disabled.
Intel AX200 WiFi module can be disabled in bios while keeping its Bluetooth 5.2 module enabled.
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Cons:
It has many RGB LEDs that are enabled by default, thus adding an extra setup step to disable them.
The 2 coax cables for the WiFi/ Bluetooth antenna are longer than I would like. Ideally it is best to keep any cable carrying RF to be as short as possible for where you would like to place the antenna, as RF is gradually attenuated as it travels to more and more length of cable. While the range is still great for WiFi and Bluetooth, in terms of Bluetooth, the range is a little shorter than on my laptop which uses the same WiFi adapter.
The 2 screws holding on the cover for the chipset heatsink needs to be removed before you can remove the 2 m.2 slot heatsinks.
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As a final overall rating, I am still giving it 5 stars as the cons that personally effected me are not major, and the RGB one can be easily solved (for those of us who do not like having RGB lighting on our builds. Beyond that, since my use cases are more utilitarian, it meets those needs without issue.