The AMD X570 Motherboard Overview: Over 35+ Motherboards Analyzed
by Gavin Bonshor on July 9, 2019 8:00 AM ESTMSI X570-A Pro
Moving along to the last of MSI's seven deep X570 product stack is the entry-level MSI X570-A Pro. For users not looking to spend the $200 + for gaming branded boards and looking for more office-based and professional use, the MSI X570-A Pro includes a decent core feature set which includes the same 8+2 power delivery as the MPG X570 Gaming Plus ($169), but with basic design. Also included is a Gigabit NIC, DDR4-4400 support, and one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot.
On the MSI X570-A Pro is two full-length PCIe 4.0 which operate at x16, and x8/x4, and three PCIe 4.0 x1 slots. Also featured is one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, but this slot doesn't come included with a heatsink; a total of six SATA ports make up the rest of the board's storage options. This model is very resemblant of the X570 Gaming Plus, but with a more professional look with its all-black theme, but without RGB or red accented heatsinks. On the X570 chipset heatsink is a cooling fan, and the X570-A Pro also has four memory slots with support for DDR4-4400 and up to a maximum of 128 GB. It also shares the same 8+2 power delivery as the X570 Gaming Edge WIFI and X570 Gaming Plus models, and also includes an 8-pin and 4-pin pair of 12 V ATX CPU power inputs.
MSI's X570-A Pro includes one USB 3.1 G2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 G2 Type-C, two USB 3.1 G1 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports on its rear panel. A clear CMOS switch is present, along with an HDMI video output, and a PS/2 combo port. The single Ethernet port is controlled by a Realtek RTL8111H Gigabit NIC, while the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output are powered by a premium Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec.
The MSI X570-A Pro as it stands is the cheapest model from its X570 product stack with an MSRP of $159. It's solid and uniformed all-black look is very simplistic, and users not looking for NVIDIA SLI support and more than two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots will find this as an attractive model. This no-frills and inexpensive (compared to some others) makes this one of the cheaper entry points onto the X570 chipset for users looking to benefit from X570's features such as PCIe 4.0.
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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.)