The ASUS Pro WS X570-Ace Review: x8x8x8 with No RGB
by Gavin Bonshor on August 12, 2019 9:00 AM ESTBoard Features
The ASUS Pro WS X570-Ace sits in the mid-range of the X570 product stack with a price of $380 and combines professional features such a Realtek RTL8117 Gigabit NIC that offers hardware-level access control for server functions with the ASUS Control Center Express application; this is assisted by an additional Ethernet port controlled by an Intel I211-AT Gigabit NIC. A Realtek ALC1200S HD audio codec handles the onboard audio and includes an EMI shield and is set on a separate area of the PCB. The solid-looking 12+2 phase power delivery includes an elegant and large aluminium heatsink and draws its power from a single 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power input. Providing power to the rest of the board is a single 24-pin 12 V ATX motherboard power input. One of the standout features comes in the way of the full-length PCIe 4.0 slots which run at x16, x8/x8, and x8/x8/x8.
ASUS Pro WS X570 Ace ATX Motherboard | |||
Warranty Period | 3 Years | ||
Product Page | Link | ||
Price | $380 | ||
Size | ATX | ||
CPU Interface | AM4 | ||
Chipset | AMD X570 | ||
Memory Slots (DDR4) | Four DDR4 Supporting 128 GB Dual Channel Up to DDR4-4400 ECC Memory Support |
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Video Outputs | 1 x HDMI 1.4b 1 x DisplayPort 1.2 |
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Network Connectivity | Realtek RTL8117 Gigabit Intel I211-AT Gigabit |
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Onboard Audio | Realtek S1200A | ||
PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU) | 2 x PCIe 4.0 x16 (x16 or x8/x8) | ||
PCIe Slots for Other (from PCH) | 1 x PCIe 4.0 x8 1 x PCIe 4.0 x1 |
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Onboard SATA | Four, RAID 0/1/10 | ||
Onboard M.2 | 1 x PCIe 4.0 x4/SATA 1 x PCIe 4.0 x2 1 x U.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 |
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USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) | 4 x Type-A Rear Panel 1 x Type-C Rear Panel 1 x Type-C Header |
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USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) | 2 x Type-A Rear Panel 2 x Header (two ports) |
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USB 2.0 | 2 x Type-A Rear Panel 2 x Header (four ports) |
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Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin ATX 1 x 8pin CPU |
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Fan Headers | 2 x CPU (4-pin) 1 x AIO Pump (4-pin) 3 x System (4-pin) |
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IO Panel | 4 x USB 3.1 G2 Type-A 1 x USB 3.1 G2 Type-C 2 x USB 3.1 G1 Type-A 2 x Network RJ45 (Realtek/Intel) 5 x 3.5mm Audio Jacks (Realtek) 1 x S/PDIF Output (Realtek) |
On the rear panel is a fairly impressive selection of inputs including four USB 3.1 G2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 G2 Type-C, and two USB 3.1 G1 Type-A ports. A further two USB 3.1 G1 Type-A and four USB 2.0 ports can be accessed through the use of internal USB headers. For users looking to use compatible Ryzen APUs, there is also an HDMI 1.4b and DisplayPort video output. Cooling support is standard for an ATX model as the ASUS Pro WS X570-Ace has six 4-pin headers split into two for CPU fans, one for an AIO pump, and four for system fans. There are two PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots, with the top slot operating at PCIe 4.0 x4, and the second slot at just PCIe 4.0 x2. The solitary U.2 slot supports PCIe 3.0 x4, and the four SATA ports feature support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays.
Test Bed
As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
While we have been able to measure audio performance from previous Z370 motherboards, the task has been made even harder with the roll-out of the Z390 chipset and none of the boards tested so far has played ball. It seems all USB support for Windows 7 is now extinct so until we can find a reliable way of measuring audio performance on Windows 10 or until a workaround can be found, audio testing will have to be done at a later date.
Test Setup | |||
Processor | AMD Ryzen 3700X, 65W, $329 8 Cores, 16 Threads, 3.6 GHz (4.4 GHz Turbo) |
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Motherboard | ASUS Pro WS X570-Ace (BIOS 0702) | ||
Cooling | ID Cooling Auraflow 240mm AIO | ||
Power Supply | Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1200W Gold PSU | ||
Memory | 2x8GB G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200 16-16-16-36 2T | ||
Video Card | ASUS GTX 980 STRIX (1178/1279 Boost) | ||
Hard Drive | Crucial MX300 1TB | ||
Case | Open Benchtable BC1.1 (Silver) | ||
Operating System | Windows 10 1903 inc. Spectre/Meltdown Patches |
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.
New Test Suite: Spectre and Meltdown Hardened
Since the start of our Z390 reviews, we are using an updated OS, updated drivers, and updated software. This is in line with our CPU testing updates, which includes Spectre and Meltdown patches. We are also running the testbed with the new Windows 10 1903 update for AMD's Ryzen 3000 series CPUs, and X570 motherboard reviews. The Windows 1903 update improves multi-core and multi-thread performance on AMD's Ryzen processors with topology awareness meaning previous issues in regards to latency have been known to affect performance. As users are recommended to keep their Windows 10 operating system updates, our performance data is reflected with the 1903 update.
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AntonErtl - Tuesday, August 13, 2019 - link
Thank you for the review.I find the >10% performance differences between the boards on some benchmarks surprising. Do you have any idea what is causing that? Are these benchmarks RAM-bandwidth limited, PCIe-limited, or do the slower boards drive the CPU with more voltage for the same clock rate, resulting in lower clock rate at the power limit? Or something else?
mblataric - Tuesday, August 13, 2019 - link
Since this is workstation oriented, it would be nice to see how it works with Windows Server 2019 perhaps with Ryzen 3900X CPU which os more suited for this board.I am looking to build new virtualisation host and I would like to run WS 2019 as on OS, instead of Windows 10 (which just updates way to frequently to be used for my scenario).
quantumshadow44 - Tuesday, August 13, 2019 - link
no default 10GbE = failzzing123 - Tuesday, August 13, 2019 - link
+1rrinker - Tuesday, August 13, 2019 - link
Almost was thinking it's time to go back to Asus. No RGB! Hooray! But only 4 SATA ports? Well, so much for that... I'm looking to rebuild my server, M.2 for the OS drive, SATA for my storage drives, but I need way more than 4 ports. Intel NIC is a plus, wish BOTH of them were, instead of one Realtek.CityZ - Tuesday, August 13, 2019 - link
If you just need lots of SATA ports, but don't need lots of speed, you can use a SATA port multiplier. With 5x multipliers, you could hook up 20 SATA drives. This is good for archive storage drives.rrinker - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Needs to be fast enough to stream a couple of 1080 streams, tops. Unless there is an (unlikely) massive drop in large capacity SSD prices in the next couple of months, the bulk with be spinny disk, with a pair of SSDs for fast cache (the storage software I use supports this), and SSD for the OS drive (I'd use the M.2 slots on this MB). Many f the others I've looked at might have 8 SATA ports, but use one M.2 and you lose TWO SATA ports, use the second M.2 and you lose another SATA - so not much better off. Current server as a 2 port SATA PCI card. 10Gbe would be nice but I don;t have a 10Gbe switch, 2 of the same 1Gbe would be fine for basic teaming.StoltHD - Friday, July 10, 2020 - link
for approx 100USD you can buy a U.2 to M.2 NVME adapter, one U.2 cable and a NVME m.2 to 5 port SATA 3.0 adapter, giving you 5 ports (multiplier) on the U.2 port (Or you can buy a NVME m.2 to 4-port SATA adapter ...And if you can also add a NVME to SATA to the second M.2 slot ... thats 10 sata ports.
I do not know yet of the motherboard sata chip support sata multiplier but if it does, you can add 4 multipliers to those to and get 20 sata ports on thos 4, if you set up a ZFS system correct, you will get near the speed of 4x sata-6 ... or you can use the second (2x pci-e 4) for cache ...
The second M.2 runs a little over half speed on a pci-e v3 ssd, so it should be usefull for cache ...
WatcherCK - Tuesday, August 13, 2019 - link
Can someone explain how the ECC support for Ryzon Pro works? Do you need a Pro cpu to be able to fully utilize ECC, from what I understand the Pro cpus are more for OEMs to be used in business grade machines...would a standard Ryzen CPU still work?With 3 PCIe slots you could do alot with it, NAS or virtualization and for less than what a threadripper system would cost... Just not available in NZ :(
zzing123 - Tuesday, August 13, 2019 - link
No, all Ryzen (except maybe the really low-end/mobile ones) support ECC. The only thing you need to look for is the motherboard and DIMMs.