Which X570 boards to choose now in 2021?

I’ve got a 5950X in hand and am anxious to get building, but it’s been very frustrating finding conclusive information. This is going to be an ITX build, which made things impossible to search for so I’m now just reading about and following all boards, but recent information seems scarce. I have no idea if the stuff I’m reading about in July 2020 or Nov 2019 is remotely relevant today in Feb 2021.

What I know so far:

  • Gigabyte has possibly some CMOS battery related issues
  • MSI has some broken IOMMU groups

This seems to leave me with ASUS and AsRock.

I also wanted to ask, Gigabyte seems to have this ACS option in the bios that somehow improves IOMMU groups. Is this only a thing on those boards?

I care about this now all of a sudden because the 5950x will effectively completely replace my separate 1950X and 8700K machines and in order to actually do that I’d want to finally give it a go virtualizing windows and passing the GPU in. I just want to do my homework properly the first time, measure twice and cut once, as they say. I always end up spending way too much time researching stuff. But this needs to be done right if I’m going to depend on it for work (so I can compile code on this monster chip).

Oh also I would really like to run ECC ram. For now I will just lift 2x16 Samsung M391A2K43BB1-CRC out of my Threadripper. And possibly overclock it a bit. Would get 32 gig sticks at a later time.

Things relevant for board choices: pretty high emphasis on competent VRMs. Would like as many M.2 as possible (this means 2 for ITX). One semi requirement is the possibility of running the ConnectX-3 40Gbit NICs I run at home. I plan to do this via an M.2 → pcie slot adapter; I also have a Sonnet eGPU enclosure that this would work for via thunderbolt. But thunderbolt still doesn’t seem very worthwhile and I’ll still leave that for use with my Macs.

The ASRock Rack > X570D4I-2T is intriguing but there are a lot of questions around overclocking usability/capability, ECC compatibility/shopping, and IOMMU. Plus I would not be able to recycle ram for it.

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My suggestion is to not get the Asus Crosshair VIII Impact, if it was ever on your radar. Not because it’s a bad board or it’s not reliable, quite the opposite. What really makes it tricky to use is the DTX size + the SoDIMM.2 for the M.2 that makes difficult, if not impossible, to install short air coolers that are bigger than the socket area. Also that expansion card is quite high off the motherboard so it might not fit in every case.
But, if you’re going for a liquid cooler and the DTX format fits in the case of your choice, is an outstanding board in every way. Reliable, very good integrated audio, lots of USB ports, clear CMOS + debug display on the outside, 8 pin CPU connector next to the 24 pin to simplify cable management.
The only real downside is the ethernet that’s limited to gigabit, while many ITX boards, even with the B550 chipset, are opting for the 2.5 gigabit connection.

P.S. if it wasn’t clear I own one. Feel free to ask me details about it and I’ll try and give you them.

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Thanks for the advice. You are correct that I neglected to mention the Impact in my post. I was already steering away from the Impact because it’s a lot of added cost without features that are particularly necessary. The DTX-ness also prevents use in sandwich style ITX cases.

I don’t mind getting the best mobo since im putting the best components inside, I can afford it, but given the way that ITX has taken over and that I’ll be running it in bench top mode till I finalize the case setup I’d like to maximize my options by sticking to ITX. This leaves me with 3 choices actually, although yes some B550 has 2.5Gb networking I think I still value the extra oomph of the pcie4 chipset link of X570:

  • Strix x570I
  • Aorus itx
  • AsRock itx with tb3

Today I am researching the viability of swapping the AX WiFi out of the m.2 key E slot for alternative networking or maybe slow nvme or maybe even secondary GPU shenanigans. Hard to find info on that. But it seems that at least in laptop land plenty of people have had success with key E adapters to at least some nvme ssd’s. Seems promising.

Not always true, but just because the RVZ03 exists I suppose. But going sandwich with an ITX case + 5950x requires a cooler that’s wider and any of those coolers will interfere with the SoDIMM.2.

All of those three options have high-ish heatsinks for daughterboards near the PCIe slot so I’d be careful aswell about them.

If I’m not mistaken all the ITX boards have soldered wifi cards compared to the ATX counterparts so wifi it’s just wifi unfortunately and not re-usable bandwith for other devices.

Cool I didn’t know about that case, it’s not ventilated enough for my needs I suppose, I think 280 or 360mm rad is a requirement (for picky me) whenever going beyond a certain absolute linear size. Honestly for the console format (thin and long and wide) cases I would only consider ones that support full ATX boards. The main problem with them then is that a lot of the connectivity would still need janky solutions for, since allowing for full height cards will result in it being far too large in volume. Those cases make for a nice catch-22 situation there. Anyway the main thing is I think those could end up too long and wide to easily go in a carry-on.

Ncase M1 or NR200 is also viable for the DTX board. But to be honest the only thing I think I see that is nice on the impact is the peace mind that I don’t need a zen 2 chip to flash the bios and the more overkill VRM. I think I would need to see some clues that it’ll be better in some other way (ram compatibility? IOMMU groups/support?) to convince me that it’s worthwhile. I would appreciate OC headroom but I don’t think I’m going to want to OC heavily long-term. I care more about being able to run ECC RAM and being able to tune it up a bit.

I saw that on Newegg, only the Asus boards have a respectable rating. It’s really not ideal to use Newegg review volume to evaluate board quality but it’s a fairly strong signal in favor of ASUS.

Still leaning toward the Strix ITX board, I can borrow my friend’s 3600x if I get one with an old bios.

Absolutely not. Also it’s not for an high end build. The build quality is a bit lackluster. I had to go with that case due to space constraint. But it fits really nicely alongside my monitor and for GPU cooling is very nice!

Absolutely! But I’d say go for a 280 since it’s functionally the same surface as a 360 but it surely fits in cases like the NR200 or the Ncase M1.

The crazy thing that I think only this board support are the 64GB sticks. So techincally you could get those crazy expensive and rare modules to have 128GB of RAM on an ITX board. I don’t know if it’s has better memory support than other ITX boards thou since this is my first ITX AM4 build. But I can tell you that 3600C18 has been plug and play no stress (but it’s a pretty safe config aswell).
Other than that all the other boards you mentioned, especially the Strix and the Aorus are functionally the same when it comes to ambient cooling and I don’t think you’ll ever regret not getting the C8I.

I’m gonna buy it once I get more space and upgrade the CPU cooling. It’s too good of an ITX case to pass up. Also much better value thanthe Ncase for functionally the same possibilities (if not better). So that’s a +1 for me on that one.

No official support from Asus on this motherboard. But I can test them for you if you have some. Also densetsu has one and maybe has some ECC aswell to test on it.

Aha! You’re correct the Impact does uniquely have support for the ultra tall DIMMs!

I just think that given my desire to go ECC, the process of going about sourcing doubleheight ECC DIMMs I expect will be painful and prolonged. It is something worth considering even though the likelihood of leveraging it properly remains quite low.

At this point I’m already pretty set on preferring the VRM overkill for longevity and tweaking over being able to get past 64GB of RAM. I have been running 64GB ram on my machines for a long time now, and still i can count on one hand the number of times I’ve gone past 32GB of usage. Now, ZFS cache is one thing, but this machine ain’t gonna be hosting ZFS. It’d be a (the) compute node, not the storage node.

If I get into After Effects or other rendering type workflows that would be a good excuse to go threadripper…

I had a look and I can’t find either double capacity/double height 64GB non-ECC UDIMMs or any DDR4 server double height DIMMs. Unfortunately. I reckon 32GB DIMM (which exist, affordably, today, in both ECC UDIMM and gamer grade RGB flavors) is perfectly adequate. 64GB will be enough for the ITX build.

I did find some evidence that it may be possible. See M.2 E-key adapters on Desktop/ITX boards?

Well the CPU power to push something that would require 128GB of RAM is absolutely there, but I don’t think there are many cases in which it happens on a non-HEDT platform.

Sure some motherboards might have a detachable wifi card, but they’re very few since ITX boards now need to pack more and more to be up to a certain standard. Even not needing to pack an M.2 slot I think makes a big difference when it comes to packaging.

Even if money is not object is always nice saving some. So I don’t think the C8I really makes a difference when it comes to longevity. The 5950x is the last processor for the AM4 socket IIRC so even a slightly step down model will outlive the CPU 1000%.
But if you’re set for the best of the best, there’s nowhere else to look.

I just wanted to leave breadcrumbs. I’m going ahead with my backorder on BLT for the ITX Strix X570-I board.

I found this https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/lf3i6b/overclocked_ecc_memory_with_a_5900x_my_results/ topic which details the existence of 32GB ECC DIMMs which clock up well with ok timings at 3800Mhz. I’ll be looking for deals on that, that will definitely take care of the memory situation. I have high hopes that the ASUS board will run and OC this memory well and I will be on my way without having to worry about running out of 32GB.

I’ve already got my build into the IQUNIX ZX-1 case. It’s got radiator tubes running outside of the case now though, because I need to get my SF750 PSU in to utilize the bottom mounting position. Very happy so far and I’ll be looking forward to completing the build in the coming weeks.