The ASRock X570 Aqua: A $1000 Ryzen Halo Motherboard Reviewed
by Gavin Bonshor on December 19, 2019 9:00 AM ESTCPU Performance, Short Form
For our motherboard reviews, we use our short form testing method. These tests usually focus on if a motherboard is using MultiCore Turbo (the feature used to have maximum turbo on at all times, giving a frequency advantage), or if there are slight gains to be had from tweaking the firmware. We put the memory settings at the CPU manufacturers suggested frequency, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.
For X570 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1903 update as per our Ryzen 3000 CPU review.
Rendering - Blender 2.7b: 3D Creation Suite - link
A high profile rendering tool, Blender is open-source allowing for massive amounts of configurability, and is used by a number of high-profile animation studios worldwide. The organization recently released a Blender benchmark package, a couple of weeks after we had narrowed our Blender test for our new suite, however their test can take over an hour. For our results, we run one of the sub-tests in that suite through the command line - a standard ‘bmw27’ scene in CPU only mode, and measure the time to complete the render.
Streaming and Archival Video Transcoding - Handbrake 1.1.0
A popular open source tool, Handbrake is the anything-to-anything video conversion software that a number of people use as a reference point. The danger is always on version numbers and optimization, for example the latest versions of the software can take advantage of AVX-512 and OpenCL to accelerate certain types of transcoding and algorithms. The version we use here is a pure CPU play, with common transcoding variations.
We have split Handbrake up into several tests, using a Logitech C920 1080p60 native webcam recording (essentially a streamer recording), and convert them into two types of streaming formats and one for archival. The output settings used are:
- 720p60 at 6000 kbps constant bit rate, fast setting, high profile
- 1080p60 at 3500 kbps constant bit rate, faster setting, main profile
- 1080p60 HEVC at 3500 kbps variable bit rate, fast setting, main profile
Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7.1: Ray Tracing - link
The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, or POV-Ray, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 1-2 minutes on high-end platforms.
Compression – WinRAR 5.60b3: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30-second 720p videos.
Synthetic – 7-Zip v1805: link
Out of our compression/decompression tool tests, 7-zip is the most requested and comes with a built-in benchmark. For our test suite, we’ve pulled the latest version of the software and we run the benchmark from the command line, reporting the compression, decompression, and a combined score.
It is noted in this benchmark that the latest multi-die processors have very bi-modal performance between compression and decompression, performing well in one and badly in the other. There are also discussions around how the Windows Scheduler is implementing every thread. As we get more results, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz, and IPC win in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here.
Neuron Simulation - DigiCortex v1.20: link
The newest benchmark in our suite is DigiCortex, a simulation of biologically plausible neural network circuits, and simulates activity of neurons and synapses. DigiCortex relies heavily on a mix of DRAM speed and computational throughput, indicating that systems which apply memory profiles properly should benefit and those that play fast and loose with overclocking settings might get some extra speed up. Results are taken during the steady-state period in a 32k neuron simulation and represented as a function of the ability to simulate in real time (1.000x equals real-time).
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vr69 - Tuesday, December 24, 2019 - link
Unlike your comment, I thought his was directly to the point and relevant -- correcting the earlier mistaken post. The waterblock itself isn't made of aluminum. That's important.Dug - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
For $999 I would like to know how the other components do such as 10Gb nic, wifi6, TB3, USB, sound, m.2 ssd's in each slot, etc. So many of these boards fail at one thing or another when loaded up.A cpu benchmark and overclock really isn't a review.
careyd - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
true. since it is specifically the combination of thunderbolt 3 and 10Gbe on the same board that has drawn me to it.coyote2 - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
I've killed a number of motherboards because only the CPU was cooled, so I'd love a board that was cooled. Unfortunately I've never made a custom loop, so I wish I could plug an AIO into it.Operandi - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
This board is literally just too much of everything to even interesting let alone rational. Way too expensive, way too overbuilt, too much bling.Its like buying a Bugatti Chiron but then platting the entire thing in 24k gold. At some point it just because extravagant for the sake of being extravagant and all you have is gaudy waste of money.
DigitalFreak - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
They're using a PCIe 2.0 switch to run 4 SATA III ports, 1 Gig Ethernet port, 3 PCIe x1 ports and the Wifi off of a single PCIe 2.0 x1 uplink. What a joke. For as much as this board costs they should have used a PEX chip.DanNeely - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
That's a surprising cheapout for as extravagant as this board otherwise is. I don't know if any PCEe x4 chips are available yet; but just staying within ASMedia's products an ASM2812 would use both remaining PCIe lanes on the chipset and run everything at 3.0 speeds instead of 2.0; and then use a 4 port sata controller instead of 2x 2 port controllers (or splurge for the 2816 which supports 12 devices and 16 downstream lanes instead of 6 and 8).Tomatotech - Friday, December 20, 2019 - link
I'm no expert in PCI lanes but this seems marginally acceptable.a) You mostly wouldn't be using wifi and the second (1gb) ethernet at the same time. The primary 10gig ethernet port would be the first port used for people only using one ethernet port.
b) Fast storage goes in the dual m.2 ports. There are 4 directly connected SATA III ports for SSDs. The switched SATA III ports are more likely just for huge slow HDDs.
c) the three PCIe x1 ports are for slower add-on cards that don't need huge bandwidth.
I'm not seeing a lot here that would overly benefit from huge bandwidth upgrades. Don't forget the board has 2 x thunderbolt 3 ports for staggeringly fast access (faster than SATA III) for more m.2 cards, eGPU, extra 10gb ethernet ports etc.
Tomatotech - Friday, December 20, 2019 - link
I'm no expert in PCI lanes but this seems marginally acceptable.a) You mostly wouldn't be using wifi and the second (1gb) ethernet at the same time. The primary 10gig ethernet port would be the first port used for people only using one ethernet port.
b) Fast storage goes in the dual m.2 ports. There are 4 directly connected SATA III ports for SSDs. The switched SATA III ports are more likely just for huge slow HDDs.
c) the three PCIe x1 ports are for slower add-on cards that don't need huge bandwidth.
I'm not seeing a lot here that would overly benefit from huge bandwidth upgrades. Don't forget the board has 2 x thunderbolt 3 ports for staggeringly fast access (faster than SATA III) for more m.2 cards, eGPU, extra 10gb ethernet ports etc.
B3an - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
I just got a Threadripper motherboard, with far better features, and even that doesn't cost as much as this ripoff. It looks better and i'm water cooling it too. If you're going to spend this much then just go for the superior Threadripper platform. This is a pig with lipstick, and not very nice looking lipstick at that.