My Gaming 5 has been a great motherboard but has had quirks since day 1. Lately I’m running into kernel input/output errors if I do a lot of writes to it. It’s not heat. I think it’s some bus issue. I’ve tried multiple NVMe know (though they’re both Samsung EVO). I recently started playing with 10gb which is a direct connect to my NAS using some used Broadcom cards. I thought part of the NVMe issue might be I used to run PCIe Passthrough (with the ACS patch) but I’m not on a fresh install and can still cause the issue.
So! I’m thinking it’s time to upgrade. I’ve held on for so long because I’ve had a monoblock on it which means I had to add the cost of a new CPU block to any new motherboard. Which is kinda cool in one way - my 1st gen kinda quirky board has lasted from an 1800X all the way up to a 5900X across 4 CPUs. That’s impressive!
Anyways, for an upgrade here’s what I’d like:
Since it’s watercooled, ideally no chipset fan (so B550 or X570S)
2 NVMe (speed isn’t super important, one for Linux, one for Winders)
1 GPU (currently a watercooled 1070)
1 PCIe for a Firewire card / Thunderbolt compatibility (that’d be PCIx4?)
1 PCIe for a 10gb NIC (or a mobo with 1gbit and 10gbit onboard)
2 SATA for spinning rust
Perhaps a spare PCIe and good IOMMU if I want to try PCIe Passthrough again (I quite liked it but am currently dual booting). I have a nice ASUS PCIe sound card if I want better normal audio so being able to jam that in if the on board isn’t good enough is an option, though I also have USB and FW sound devices that are great (if not well optimized for gaming).
The thunderbolt is a kinda late thought. Reason I have a firewire is for audio devices (Motu828 and Saffire Pro40). Pondered trying Tbolt with those but it otherwise represents a future upgrade to a Tbolt sound device which would be really nice. It’s not strictly required but seems like a good idea. I’d only generally be using those under Windows.
10gbit likewise isn’t needed but I do want min 2 NICs (I have that now) and the 10gbit indeed makes my NFS mounts quite snappy on Linux to the point I might try iSCSI again for Windows to see if it’s fast enough to edit video, say, in Davinci right off the NAS.
After perusing soooo many options, apart from the halo products which are very pricey and also seemingly unobtanium, the ASRock Riptide X570s, despite being “budget” seems to hit all these boxes. I was curious if anyone else had ideas?
Part of the Riptide’s design that I like is the GPU slot is always 16x. All my other devices top out at 4x (the 10gb NIC) and even if I want to do PCIe Passthrough again, typically I just need a card for good desktop use when in Linux (though the reason I stopped doing Passthrough is, in part, Proton is getting to be so good).
I found most of the higher end X570’s, for me, frustratingly split 2 PCIe slots down to 8/8 from the CPU and that seems like a worse setup for my particular use case. And that fan. Oh my that fan. I’m slightly bummed there aren’t that many X570S motherboards and now that X670 and a new socket is out, I don’t expect too much additional love for the AM4 socket at this point. Hence why I’m looking at the Riptide. It handles most of my needs now and in the future, with perhaps the exception that the onboard audio isn’t amazing (though my current motherbaord has aged enough where I’m getting a ton of digital noise over the onboard so anything is probably an upgrade from that).
That was a lot haha but Wendel’s review video of the Riptide suggested folks with questions should hop onto the forums and I thought I’d go ahead and give it a try to see what people thought!
