The AMD X570 Motherboard Overview: Over 35+ Motherboards Analyzed
by Gavin Bonshor on July 9, 2019 8:00 AM ESTASRock X570 Steel Legend
Another mid-range board from ASRock is the X570 Steel Legend which blends a good range of features in with solid aesthetics with addressable RGB within its the power delivery and chipset heatsinks. The board sits on a black and urban camouflage themed PCB, with steel silver heatsinks, with elements of black to add contrast. This model is also very similar to the ASRock X570 Extreme4 in terms of components used, feature set, and overall design with the main difference coming via the color scheme.
In addition to the straight-lined heatsinks which makes the board look attractive, is a solid feature set including two full-length PCIe 4.0 slots which run at x16, and x16/x4 due to chipset constraints. This means up to two way AMD CrossFire multi-graphics card setups can be used. In the top right corner is four memory slots with support for up to DDR4-4666 which is very impressive, and these slots support up to a maximum of 64 GB. The storage capabilities of the ASRock X570 Steel Legend include two PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots each with its own individual heatsink, and blends into the actively cooled X570 chipset heatsink quite nicely. Also featured is eight SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays, and ASRock's U.2 kit which is available separately is also supported.
The rear panel on the ASRock X570 Steel Legend is more comprehensive for a mid-range model than the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4, with a single USB 3.1 G2 Type-C, one USB 3.1 G2 Type-A, and six USB 3.1 G1 Type-A ports. A single Ethernet port is powered by an Intel I211-AT Gigabit NIC, and while there is no wireless interface included, an M.2 Key E 2230 slot with inserts included on the IO shield allow for users to install their own. There are five 3.5 mm color coded audio jacks with a single S/PDIF optical output which are driven by a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec, a DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI video output for Ryzen 2nd and 3rd gen APUs, and finishing off the rear panel is a PS/2 combo port.
The ASRock X570 Steel Legend offers users a similar feature set to its X570 Phantom Gaming 4, but with better onboard audio (Realtek ALC1220 vs ALC1200) and utilizes addressable RGB effectively within the heatsinks. This model also uses a straight forward 10-phase power delivery and includes an 8-pin and 4-pin set of 12 V ATX CPU power inputs to provide power to the processor. Price wise, the ASRock X570 Steel Legend has an MSRP of $200, while users in the USA can also get a version with Wi-Fi 6 at a cost of $210.
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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