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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Tunnah - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
I really love how advanced motherboards are nowadays. I can pick up the most "basic" model and it'll cover everything I need, and even include stuff I won't. Gone are the days frantically trying to find a motherboard that ticks all the boxes for even the most basic of needs.Plus having such a competent board as my soon-to-be secondary system means I can leave all my drives in that and put it in a nice quiet place. I'm fairly certain the 8 HDDs in this one are what caused my tinnitus :/
Jansen - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
The ASUS Pro WS X570-Ace has officially validated ECC support. This is a really big deal, as Ryzen has usually only had unofficial ECC support. It opens up a whole other revenue steam for AMD that Intel has deliberately cut off in order to drive Xeon sales.Micron is ramping up its 16GB 3200MHz DDR4 ECC modules MTA18ADF2G72AZ-3G2 specifically for this market.
JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
I'd much sooner get a Ryzen platform for their value and unbuffered ECC support for an upgrade for my NAS box running FreeNAS, but it's well documented that FreeBSD still has teething issues with Ryzen chips, scheduling, and overall reliability... FreeBSD is what powers FreeNAS OS.So I'm kind of stuck with Intel workstations/server CPUs and ECC ram for a FreeBSD machine (assuming I don't want to do the legwork of trying to get it stable first, and even so, I may not always have the same stability that mature FreeBSD+Intel support...)
I'll very likely be moving to Ryzen for my main PC, though.
quorm - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
I agree with the general sentiment. Core i3 is another option if you don't need a lot of cpu power.teldar - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
I used a ryzen 1600 for my bad. Rock solid after updating board bios.danjw - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
I built a file server on Ubuntu Server. You might try that.BillC - Saturday, October 31, 2020 - link
You might want to check out Open Media Vault which uses Debian Linux for the OS, it can be installed as a NAS only installation or on top of the full Debian OS.spikebike - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
Wow, pricey board. Sad that AMD handles ECC in such a half assed way. Intel's price premium for low end servers is approximately $0. Xeon E3's were priced very similarly or even cheaper to the similar desktop parts. In particular the cheapest hyperthreading E3 was often cheaper than the cheapest i3/i5/i7 with 4 cores/8 threads. Similar with the HEDT, the intel premium for a better socket/additional memory busses is much less than the low end Eypc/Threadripper.So you either have the luck of the draw trying to buy a reliable AMD with ECC (not just physically compatible, but actually corrects memory errors), or you pay a substantial price premium.
Aikouka - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
ASRock Rack has a Ryzen motherboard that officially supports ECC and also has IPMI support (X470D4U). They're also developing a Threadripper variant of their Epyc server board that has IPMI support, but it uses the X370 chipset.cascadehealthcare - Tuesday, August 13, 2019 - link
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