ASRock X370 Killer SLi Motherboard Review + Linux Test | Level One Techs

For Asrock X370 boards, the ranking as follows:
X370 Professional Gaming
X370 Taichi
Fatal1ty X370 Gaming K4
X370 Killer SLI

Wendell is correct.

This particular board is using the IR35201 8+0 phase flex mode pwm,
which on this board runs in a 4+2 phase configuration.
4 phases being doubled to 8 phases using 2x IR3598 doubler / dual driver
and +2 phases being doubled to 4 for soc voltage.

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Hm ok thanks then the info I read is incorrect I guess :slight_smile:

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The IR3598 is a special doubler / driver.
it can either be used as a doubler, but it can also be used as a dual driver.
Which on this board its used as a dual driver..
The out come is basiclly still the same.
THe IR3598 basiclly takes 2 pwm signals in, and provides dual driver outputs.
Which basiclly means that you can create 8 phases with just 2 dual drivers.
Because each signal get its own set of power components.

I think this is the best way i can explain it.

These boards basiclly have the same vrm implementations.
They are indeed a significant step down from their bigger brothers the Taichi and Professional gaming.
But never the less the vrm implementations are basiclly fine in most cases.
They just have less phases, and the mosfets are cheaper and have less current capabilities.
Its just a bit less efficient overall.
But thats why those boards are midrange afterall.
Still great to see that they still offer the IR pwm, which means great voltage control.

The Taichi and professional gaming really use top class components as far as the vrm circuitry is concerned.
You cannot find anything better then the X370 Taichi or X370 professional gaming atm.

It is hard to beat the price aswell.

Yeah the Taichi in particular is just great value for money.
I can recommend it to any OC enthusiast who wants to get the max out of their R7 chips.

But never the less, for people who cannot afford those higherend boards.
The Asrock X370 Killer Sli or the Asrock X370 Fatal1ty gaming K4 are,
definitelly not a bad middle of the road choice.

Writing this from a system based on that board^^ https://forum.level1techs.com/t/new-horyzen-datacap-warning/114708

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I place it equal on the chart with taichi .. my reasoning same overall board design.. the additive to the professional gaming seems to be all the gamer bling which honestly is usually buggy and shitty and i havent a need for it as a gamer but thanks for clarifying

I have/had this motherboard, as for the BIOS/UEFI updates...They have 3 methods to update.

  1. BIOs/UEFI -- This is only after upgrading from the base to about version 1.5 I believe.
  2. DOS - Boot to DOS and then run the update application
  3. Windows -- This is an application that runs in Windows that will update your UEFI. I honestly do not recommend this method except to get to at least version 1.5 so you can use the BIOS/UEFI updater.

The reason I say have/had this motherboard, I updated the UEFI through Windows at version 2.0...it started running, my screen went black, and the system rebooted....MID UPDATE. So it bricked my board. ASRock did RMA it, but when I got my RMA board...it was DOA and damaged. So I am waiting on the second RMA to get this system back up and running.

The Taichi and Professional gaming from a build quality standpoint are pretty much the same.
They have the same vrm components and all that stuff.
The main difference is mainlly a few feutures.

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yeah and you know my feelings about overloaded with features and bugginess cough asus cough

Yeah it really depends on a persons needs basiclly.
Asrock doesnt really overbloat their boards too much.
The Taichi is a very good example of a powerhouse board with all the base feutures,
and functionality that a general user needs for a good price.

Well to be blunt ive never found a use for the "gaming" features on boards. Have you found any useful?

Not really nope.

Main thing i care about is vrm implementation and overall build quality,
UEFI and just the basic feutures i need.
I dont really care for gaming feutures or flashy RGB leds.
However i can be picky about certain design flaws on a board.

actually this is ONE feature I might be catching onto when its done elegantly

You ... picky... you dont say hahah :stuck_out_tongue: ehh dont worry im probably more picky

I was wondering if this board supported USB 3.1 gen 2 speeds in the rear i/o since every website specifications state that the only has usb 3.0. Even though it looks like it should be USB 3.1, and almost every board this generation seems to have it, this left me wondering if they left that feature out on this MB.
I'm thinking about building my first PC with either this MB or the Asus prime-pro and was curious about this since Wendell said in the video that it is 3.1 gen 2.
Any thing else I should know about these MBs would be usefull.

That's one point the Professional Gaming is really bad at imo. Like... RGB and RGB Header, and then a red finish on the components ... wat? Also the one RGB under the Chipset block is basically just there so they can say it has RGB for the l33t-g4m0r-crowd and doesn't look particularly good either...

I can't access the video from work but if I remember correctly he said "a USB 3.0 header, that's USB 3.1 Gen 1 as protocol", something along those lines.
/edit
From the MP3 it's around the 1 minute mark for the internal headers and around 3:20 for the rear-I/O

Bought this board some time ago, have been using it as a workstation/hardcore overclocking board for a few months now. Few things to note here;

  • Probing around the VRM and the back of the CPU socket leads me to believe that the IR35201 voltage controller is running in 6 + 2 phase mode, with a doubled 4 phase for the SoC component of the VRM (datasheet listed here: http://irf.com/product-info/datasheets/data/pb-ir35201.pdf)
  • For the current and temperature capabilities of said VRM, and with how relatively low power Ryzen is (even under LN2), you should not have to worry about throttling hard on the VRM, however as with most boards, active cooling on the VRM never hurts
  • You do NOT get a POST code or LED boot indicators to help you with troubleshooting. This isn’t too much of a problem for average use, but is a real pain with high memory overclocks. Further note, with my Kingston 2133 CL14 kit I was able to overclock to 3200 CL18, or I actually noticed that 2933 CL16 also boots and is considerably faster. Your mileage always varies.

All in all, my only real gripe with this board is the lack of POST code indicator. Onboard buttons are overrated, a pair of tweezers or a screwdriver are more than enough for me, and the BIOS has everything I need. I should also mention that the LLC chart indicator is INCORRECT, Level 1 LLC will overvolt your CPU by about 60-80 mV, level 2 overvolts 30-50, and Level 3 is relatively steady under load. Measurements were taken with a multimeter off the back of the socket, so I’m really confident in my accuracy.

If you find it on sale, it’s certainly not a bad buy, I picked it up for $120 new, and it works great with both my 1600 and 1700.

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The vrm consists of a IR35201 pwm running in 4+2 phase mode,
that is doubled to 8+4 using IR3598 doubler / dual driver…
8 phases for Vcore and 4 phases for SOC.
However its not a standard doubling scheme like i mentioned above.
Because the IR3598 is special, it can either be used as a standard doubler or a dual driver.
On this particular vrm implementation the IR3598 is running in dual driver mode.
The nice thing about this method of doubling is that you only need three IR3598´s,
to create an 8+4 phase design out of a 4+2 phase pwm, 2 for the cpu rails and one for Soc rail.

The only thing with this particular board is that they “could” have used better mosfets.
But still its not too bad for its price point.