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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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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