The ASUS Pro WS X570-Ace Review: x8x8x8 with No RGB
by Gavin Bonshor on August 12, 2019 9:00 AM ESTSystem Performance
Not all motherboards are created equal. On the face of it, they should all perform the same and differ only in the functionality they provide - however, this is not the case. The obvious pointers are power consumption, but also the ability for the manufacturer to optimize USB speed, audio quality (based on audio codec), POST time and latency. This can come down to the manufacturing process and prowess, so these are tested.
For X570 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1903 update as per our Ryzen 3000 CPU review.
Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system while in a single ASUS GTX 980 GPU configuration with a wall meter connected to the Thermaltake 1200W power supply. This power supply has ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.
While this method for power measurement may not be ideal, and you feel these numbers are not representative due to the high wattage power supply being used (we use the same PSU to remain consistent over a series of reviews, and the fact that some boards on our test bed get tested with three or four high powered GPUs), the important point to take away is the relationship between the numbers. These boards are all under the same conditions, and thus the differences between them should be easy to spot.
Looking at the power consumption numbers outputted from the ASUS Pro WS X570-Ace, it performs slightly worse than the MSI MEG X570 Ace model in both a long idle and idle power state. At full load, the tables are turned and the WS X570-Ace without RGB LEDs and unnecessary fluff managed to pull around 7-8 watts less at the wall than both the MSI MEG X570 models.
Non-UEFI POST Time
Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we look at the POST Boot Time using a stopwatch. This is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.)
In our POST time test, the ASUS Pro WS X570-Ace took a considerable amount of time to boot into Windows 10, but with controllers disabled, we managed to squeeze a much quicker time with a POST time of around 20 seconds. This is down to the Realtek RTL8117 Gigabit NIC requiring extra POST time to initialize, which in a professional environment, isn't too much of a burden to bear.
DPC Latency
Deferred Procedure Call latency is a way in which Windows handles interrupt servicing. In order to wait for a processor to acknowledge the request, the system will queue all interrupt requests by priority. Critical interrupts will be handled as soon as possible, whereas lesser priority requests such as audio will be further down the line. If the audio device requires data, it will have to wait until the request is processed before the buffer is filled.
If the device drivers of higher priority components in a system are poorly implemented, this can cause delays in request scheduling and process time. This can lead to an empty audio buffer and characteristic audible pauses, pops and clicks. The DPC latency checker measures how much time is taken processing DPCs from driver invocation. The lower the value will result in better audio transfer at smaller buffer sizes. Results are measured in microseconds.
We test DPC at default settings, out of the box, and the ASUS Pro WS X570-Ace performs very well in comparison to other models on test.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
110 Comments
View All Comments
umano - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
It seems a great mb and it has a wonderful look. It is not the board for me, I'd go HEDT with an Atx board, but I like the approach based on quality, caring about details that do not shine on paper or on images but they shine on performance, reliability and why not pleasure to use. The shield and separation for the audio it is a needed touch of design elegance.I really hope this is not the last we heard from x570 boards, to me the x570 offer lacks an outstanding pro oriented Itx board.
FredeBR - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
I saw comments that 3900x works very hot (high temperature). On this asus board is it possible to configure processor downclock, like lowering the cpu voltage? I will use for full load processing for more than 24 hours in a row.TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, August 22, 2019 - link
The 3900x is a 12 core CPU. It's goona need some big boy cooling. If you dont want to deal with the heat you should probably stick with an 8 core ryzen. You could turn off turbo boost, but then why bother shelling out more for the big chips if youre just gonna kneecap it?abufrejoval - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
As much as I like the 3x8 general option, it pains me that the first logical addition to a GPU and perhaps a RAID controller, 10GBase-T Ethernet is going to swallow 8 lanes of PCIe 4, while a single lane would be quite sufficient and actually the Ethernet IP block for that is already supposed to be inside the 'chipset'! And that price, whatever licence cost required to make use of it, should be included.Otherwise it looks like one of the sanest mainboard designs I have seen so far.
alpha754293 - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
"One of the key elements to this board design is the x8/x8/x8 PCIe 4.0 slot layout. This motherboard is the only one on the market that uses a full PCIe 4.0 x8 lane available from the AMD X570 chipset, enabling an array of different use cases that ASUS believes this market needs. Technically the upstream link to the CPU is still limited to PCIe 4.0 x4, however this does enable PCIe 3.0 x8 cards to have full bandwidth, which accounts for a lot of add in cards (RAID, high-end networking)."This is quite possibly one of the worst boards on the market then.
They have three PCIe 4.0 x16 physical slots, but either only run at its native x16 speeds if you only have one card installed, x8 if you have two, and really x8/x8/**x4** if you have three cards installed since the chipset to CPU interface is a PCIe 4.0 **x4** link.
That is so dumb.
Why would they bother putting in a x16 physical slot, and then because of the chipset link, only run it at x4 electrically?
Quite possibly one of the worst product development/engineering decisions ever.
A single NVMe PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD would be able to consume all of that bandwidth.
moriz - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
i think the key here is that the third slot can *supposedly run at PCIe **3.0** x8, which allows it to give full bandwidth to any PCIe 3.0 x8 add-in card.*supposedly, because i've yet to see any confirmation that it is capable of doing the PCIe version switch.
YaroslavZ - Sunday, August 18, 2019 - link
hey! , I bought this mobo a couple of days ago, I bought it because I wanted to upgrade my old cpu to R9 3900X, I also happened to have 4 R9 390 gpus (2 390s 2 390x) , sadly I don't have the cpu yet, I do have the r5 1400 lying around but I don't feel like taking it out from completely different cpu and adding it into that costly mobo just to test things out,I bought that mobo exactly to run 4way CFX with these gpus, 8x 8x 4+4x* & 4x from m.2 to pcie adapter,
based on your words, in theory the 3rd slot should be able to use more bandwidth than a simple 4x 3.0 , is that correct? if so then that will pretty good upgrade over a simple 4x.
anyways just to give you some info, a simple 4x 3.0 uses around 70~75% power of R9 390, while 8x around 99% ,
I do know that because atm i'm sitting through 8x 8x 4x in asus z170-a , which also have m.2 at x4 so 4way is possible as well but I bought the adapter just recently and I don't really want to sit through sata ssd, as well as this mobo currently have problems with 2 ram slots because of which I can't use dual channel atm, which obviously makes 3gpus to barely outperform a single gpu so adding 4th on top of that is pointless, wish the prices on r9 3900x will fall soon.
here is stock 3way (8x 8x 4x) 3dmark (firestrike ultra) score in dual channel when I still had it, also, R9 390X performing with stream processors of R9 390's if I got it right(aka it's like 3x of R9 390 even when some of them have X's), because I was forced to use R9 390 as gpu1 to enable CFX,, https://www.3dmark.com/fs/18192586
tristank - Tuesday, August 20, 2019 - link
How does this even works? Is there some kind of translation between PCIe 4.0 x4 to PCIe 3.0 x8. I dont get it. I thought this was not possible.JKJK - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
A card like this without 10GbE is completely idiotic.You shouldn't have to waste a pci-e port on it. And it should be intel. Let the gamers use the unstable Aquantica shit chips and drivers (been there, done that).
Tomyknee - Sunday, September 1, 2019 - link
All I hear about is the chipset fan. I have read (Buildazoid in May 2019 Gig Master review) that it is the RAID setups going through the Chipset that sets the fan off. Unfortunately the second M.2 is only PCIe x2. Other than SATA drives maxed at 6gbs, it does not make sense to run RAIDO for speed. Samsung will have PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 that surpase 7gbs R/W within a year and the 2x will not take advantage of that.A deal breaker for me, (I really like this board, really want to order it - looks great and no RGB!)