The AMD X570 Motherboard Overview: Over 35+ Motherboards Analyzed
by Gavin Bonshor on July 9, 2019 8:00 AM ESTMSI MEG X570 Godlike
Swinging around onto MSI's X570 product stack and we open up with its most premium and ultimately the flagship, the MSI MEG X570 Godlike. The MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE is its flagship X570 motherboard designed for both enthusiasts and gamers with a range of high-end controllers, accessories, and also features a 20-phase power delivery; 14-phase for the CPU VCore and 4-phase for the VGT/SoC.
The X570 chipset on MSI motherboards including this model is actively cooled by a single fan featuring double ball bearing technology which MSI is calling Zero Frozr. Aesthetically the MEG X570 Godlike is impressive and even features an OLED screen which is implemented between the four DDR4 memory slots and the 24-pin ATX 12 V motherboard power input. The four memory slots have support for DDR4-4800 and up to 128 GB of total system memory. Touching on the accessories bundle included with the X570 Godlike is an Aquantia AQC107 10 GbE add-in card and M.2 Xpander-Z Gen4 M.2 PCIe add-on card which allows users to add an additional two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives on top of the three PCIe 4.0 x4 slots that are present on the board. Each onboard M.2 slot includes its own individual Lightning Gen4 M.2 heatsink.
The MSI MEG X570 Godlike comes with an M.2 Xpander-Z Gen4 and Aquantia 10 G NIC add-on card
The MSI MEG X570 Godlike's PCB is four full-length PCIe 4.0 slots which operate at x16, x8/x0/x8, and x8/x4/x4, with the last full-length slot locked down to PCIe 4.0 x4. This means both two-way NVIDIA SLI and up to four-way AMD CrossFire multi-graphics card setups. A lot of focus has also been put enthusiasts with its 16-phase power delivery for the VCore; this power delivery uses Infineon TDA21472 MOSFETs with IR3599 doublers and runs from an IR35201 Digital PWM controller. Providing power to the CPU is two 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power inputs setting the Godlike up as MSI's most enthusiast-level desktop board for any AMD platform in recent times.
Looking at the rear panel of the X570 Godlike, there are three USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 G2 Type-C, and two USB 3.1 G1 Type-A ports. Commonly featured on premium models, the MSI MEG X570 Godlike also has a pre-installed rear panel IO shield. Also present is a Flash BIOS button with a highlighted Type-A port dedicated to firmware flashing, as well as a Clear CMOS button, and a PS/2 combo port. The onboard audio is powered by two Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codecs with five 3.5 mm jacks and S/PDIF optical output, MSI has included an ESS E9018 DAC for good measure, which also adds a dedicated 6.3 mm jack for studio headphones which is included in the accessories bundle. The rear panel has two Ethernet ports with a Killer pairing consisting of an E3000 2.5 G, and E2600 Gigabit NIC.
The MSI MEG X570 Godlike E-ATX motherboard has an MSRP of $699 which for everything that is included is quite impressive. With an impressive accessories bundle which includes an Aquantia AQC107 10 G NIC add-on card, an Xpander-Z Gen4 M.2 card which adds a scope for an additional two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives to be installed bringing to total to five is also a nice touch. It's not a cheap investment, but it's an impressive option for gamers, enthusiasts, and hardware aficionados looking to create a high-end system using Ryzen 3000.
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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.)