The AMD X570 Motherboard Overview: Over 35+ Motherboards Analyzed
by Gavin Bonshor on July 9, 2019 8:00 AM ESTASRock X570 Extreme4
The ASRock X570 Extreme4 is another model which strafes itself away from the more gaming-oriented models from its product stack. Very similar in design and feature set to to the ASRock X570 Steel Legend, the X570 Extreme4 uses a black PCB with darker gunmetal grey colored heatsinks. It also has addressable RGB integrated into the rear panel cover and chipset heatsink, with support for ASRock's Polychrome Sync software.
Looking at the expansion slots available on the ASRock X570 Extreme4, there are two full-length PCIe 4.0 slots with support for x16, and x16/x4 which means up to two way AMD CrossFire is supported; the top full-length slot includes a coating of ASRock's Steel armor for better durability. In addition to this are three PCIe 4.0 x1 slots, and located underneath each of the full-length PCIe 4.0 slots are two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, each with an individual heatsink which links into the actively cooled X570 chipset heatsink; also featured is eight SATA ports with RAID 0, 1 and 10 arrays all supported. Underneath the rear panel cover and the heatsinks is a 10-phase power delivery with an 8-pin and 4-pin 12 V ATX CPU power input to power the processor. At the top right-hand corner is four memory slots with support for up to DDR4-4666 and users can install up to a maximum of 64 GB of RAM.
On the rear panel is one USB 3.1 G2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 G2 Type-C and six USB 3.1 G1 Type-A ports, as well as an HDMI video output. While the ASRock X570 Extreme4 doesn't come with Wi-Fi enabled, there is an M.2 Key E 2230 slot for users to install their own wireless interface, and there are mounting holes located on the rear IO shield for this. Also located on the rear panel is a PS/2 combo port, a single Ethernet port controlled by an Intel I211-AT Gigabit NIC, and there are also five 3.5 mm color coded audio jacks and a S/DPIF optical output which are powered by a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec.
With a very similar feature set and overall aesthetic to the ASRock X570 Steel Legend model, the X570 Extreme4 features a more modest design with less of a focus on gaming, and more on performance whilst keeping a good quality core feature set. The ASRock X570 Extreme4 has an MSRP of $240, but users in the US can purchase a Wi-Fi 6 enabled version for the slightly higher cost of $250.
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sorten - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
Good advice, and you get lower system power consumption as a bonus. The main reason to go with the more expensive x570 boards is PCIE 4.0, and you're not going to get that if you switch to Intel.Ratman6161 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
Asrock has the x570 pro 4 listed on their web site with an MSRP of $154.00 I've used their Pro X boards in a number of builds and always had good results with them. They don't seem to be available at retail yet (at least anywhere I've seen) . On the other hand, I'm not one of those to go out and buy any product on the first day. Street prices on both motherboards and CPU's are likely to drop quickly and...even if I go out and buy a new CPU, I don't have anything else that could take advantage of the x570 chipset for the time being, so my x470 is probably good to go for quite some time to come anyway.Gastec - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
Ryzen 3000 series CPU prices are going to be over MSRP for at least 3 months.Targon - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
I don't know where you live, but here in the USA, the CPUs are all at the official prices, unless you go to a third party seller who is trying to scam money out of people. Note that many online stores show products from third parties in addition to what they sell themselves, so when you see CPU prices above MSRP, those are the third party scammers.Newegg is getting daily deliveries by the look of it, and I expect the other large online sources are as well. The sales volumes are high on these chips, and some people just take advantage of it and charge more money.
Gastec - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
On Amazon.es and PCComponentes.com the EXACT SAME price, set up by bots:AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, 548,90€
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X: 361,80 €
eva02langley - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
The only reason to buy x570 is for PCIe 4.0. If you don't need it, get a B450 board at 75$ Will work for every Ryzen 3000 CPUs.I am even thinking about using my X370 MSI Gaming Pro Carbon for my 3950x.
abufrejoval - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
Unless you happen to have an older Ryzen or Carrizo lying around, there could be a problem to get older boards with an up-to-date BIOS.Had similar issues a year ago when RAM was so expensive, I had to recycle DDR3 for Kaby Lake CPUs using Z170 motherboards that only has Skylake support. Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell CPUs I had galore, but Skylake only as notebooks. I wound up buying a Sky Lake i3, which I then returned for a full refund after I had updated the motherboards.
Didn't feel good about it, wasn't given a choice either.
These days some dealers offer a BIOS upgrade service, but at €40 it pretty much eats the 3. + 4. generation benefit.
I want 10Gbase-T or rather NBase-T. Currently that means mostly Aquantia 107, of which I have 4 already. Those are €88 a piece, but when I look at these x570 prices, they charge a 300% premium for what's essentially a low-cost chip.
And then I hear rumors, that there is actually 10Gbit Ethernet or in fact 100Gbit Ethernet already on-die, both in the CPU chiplet and the x570 chipset variant: For IF Ethernet is simply another protocol to run on the fabric and all you need is PHY.
It is rather unfortunate that sane CPU prices, sane SSDs and sane RAM only mean that motherboard vendors are hoping to cash in big-time.
I can see how they would be hungry. But I don't have 'waste money' around to feed them.
The_Assimilator - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
Asus boards have a "BIOS flashback" feature whereby if you plug in a flash drive with a new BIOS to a specific USB port and press a button on the IO panel, the board will auto-flash itself with that BIOS - no CPU is needed, just power to the board.Targon - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
Almost all MSI motherboards have BIOS flashback, and the Asus ROG Crosshair series also has BIOS flashback where you don't need a CPU or RAM in order to flash the BIOS. Most Asus motherboards do NOT have BIOS flashback capability.DanNeely - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
when they get PCI4 support Intel's boards will be equally more expensive than the previous generation. Maintaining that high frequency a signal across more than a cm or 2 requires building boards to a much higher and more expensive standard or active signal booster chips along the path.PCIe 5 will be far worse on that front. Estimates I saw earlier this year were that PCIe4 would add as much as $100 to the price of a board; with the cheapest x570 boards being almost $100 more than the cheapest x470's on Newegg and the average (excluding the crazy halo ones) looking like it's at least $50 higher that doesn't seem too far off. That article (ee times asia???) was predicting that PCIe5 could end up adding as much as $400 above the cost of a 3.0 capable board; which if true probably means it will end up server only or with only a narrow strip between the CPU and chipset build up to that standard. (Assuming the latter possible anyway: If the cost challenge is more preventing external interference than in needing higher quality materials a local board segment fudge might not be feasible.)