The AMD X570 Motherboard Overview: Over 35+ Motherboards Analyzed
by Gavin Bonshor on July 9, 2019 8:00 AM ESTASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3
Well-known in recent times for its impressive mini-ITX motherboard, the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3 includes a very solid feature set. The ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3 joins a small handful of small form factor X570 models at launch but looks to stand-out from the crowd with a major feature; a Thunderbolt 3 Type-C connector on the rear panel.
Following in line with the rest of its premium X570 product stack, ASRock has equipped the board with a hefty looking 10-phase power delivery, and official support for DDR4-4533 memory across two available slots with a total capacity of up to 64 GB. A single full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot is located at the bottom of the board, with a single PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, and just four SATA ports. The networking is handled by an Intel Gigabit LAN port, while the Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax wireless interface is controlled by the Killer AX1650 interface with support for BT 5 devices.
On the rear panel alongside the single Thunderbolt 3 Type-C connector which is the highlight of the board, the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3 also includes two USB 3.1 G2 Type-A and two USB 3.1 G1 Type-A ports. This is contradictive on the official specifications that were given to us at Computex which stated this model has two USB 3.1 G2 Type-A ports on the rear, as well as two USB 2.0 ports which also seem to be missing from the rear panel. On the display model at Computex, there is a clear CMOS button, a DisplayPort input and HDMI video output, with a PS/2 combo port, and five 3.5 mm color coded audio jacks with a S/PDIF optical output due to the use of a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec.
The ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3 mini-ITX motherboard looks to stand out from other brands mini-ITX offerings with the Thunderbolt 3 which has been a mainstay of its desktop-focused small form factor models of recent times. A solid looking 10-phase power delivery similar to that of the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac model we reviewed makes this even more appealing to users looking to push out the overclocks on the new Ryzen 3000 series processors. The X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3 has an MSRP of $300, which is by no means cheap in comparison to its other mini-ITX models of late.
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abufrejoval - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
PCI4 and 5, or for that matter IF will trigger rethinking motherboard layouts and form factors."The [Enthusiast] motherboard" dates back to 1981 or the dawn of the IBM Personal Computer, and physics are catching up everywhere, even on the motherboard.
Distance has a huge impact on speed, latency and power, so 'flat' and 'square' are both the first obstacles and the first who need to compromise. In the future every milimeter of distance between the die carrier and your point of interest will need to be paid for, in energy/time or extra switching silicon.
Linear extrapolations of the past have little use, when the barriers are exponential.
TheUnhandledException - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
Even if you keep the board a square moving the CPU and chipset to the center of the board and having PCIe slots on either side would cut the trace to the furthest slots in half.The_Assimilator - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
Hopefully at the same time we can ditch 12V as the rail to rule them all, so that we can bring the amperages in current systems back down to sane levels.ChubChub - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link
Would be cool to see the CPU on one side of the board, and the cards on the other; would shrink those distances, but would require a new form factor, which would kindof suck (but I can picture what the dual-sided boards would look like, and I think it's a pretty neat idea having two independent sides for cooling (also, in a tower setup, a CPU sitting vertically on the board, which would be nice).Targon - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
This is why if Gen-Z gets adopted, we could have PCI Express hanging off the Gen-Z bus as a way to deal with these issues.sing_electric - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
I was thinking that the mobo costs made price comparisons more difficult. Then I remembered that AMD is still throwing in a pretty good stock cooler, while Intel makes you BYO. For MOST users, that means that your total build cost will be lower with AMD.If you're doing something exotic - say, with liquid cooling or heavy overclocking that requires a certain thermal solution - then sure, you lose those savings, but if you're spending $300 to keep your machine cool, is the price difference of the motherboard really going to sway you one way or another?
Oliseo - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
You're actually comparing the bundled CPU cooler to a $300 custom loop Intel Cooler?You're expecting people to take you seriously as well?
Targon - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
Consider that for those who buy the i9-9900k, you can't get away with a 95W cooler, even if the rated TDP is 95W. So, you do need to buy at least a $30 cooler for air cooling on the 9900k, while AMD does provide a cooler to handle the typical performance of its processors. Even then, $330 for the Ryzen 7 3700X or 3800X for 8 cores/16 threads, vs. the $489 for the 9900k+$30 or $40 will still be more expensive for an 8 core/16 thread chip.What many don't realize is that if you go with AMD and get a B450 or X470 chipset motherboard(that has an updated BIOS or with BIOS flashback), you get the motherboard price you want, and the cost of ownership will still be lower. Since Intel doesn't offer PCI Express 4.0, going with PCI Express 3.0 on the AMD side won't be a big deal from the comparison point of view. Overclocking potential has not been compared between the enthusiast class X470 and X570 based motherboards from what I have seen as well, but it could make a difference for many people.
Flunk - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
I like how almost all of these boards have 2 or more M.2 slots. I had to be very careful when I bought my Z170 board to find one with 3 M.2 slots.But now there are boards with 3 slots so maybe I'll have to snag that Aorus Ultra.
drexnx - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
it's amazing how fast number of M.2 slots has become the primary thing I look for in a mobo anymore too