ASUS ROG Strix X470-F Gaming review - Conclusion

Final Words 

ASUS is offering a solid performer on all fronts with the ROG Strix X470-F Gaming. Features and perf wise, it's all a bit of the same though, so brand preference will be a thing with your purchasing preferences. The ROG Strix X470-F Gaming offers most the connectivity and features you need including nice audio, Gigabit Ethernet (Intel) but no AC WIFI though. Other than that you get  M.2 performance on one slot, the second is slower but sure that's ok. Also, you get dual multi-GPU slots, six SATA3 slots, all the USB connectivity you need and overall a nice looking product.

The motherboard

ASUS offers rock-solid perf with the this X470 series motherboard. It functions well and offers a wide feature set. Please make sure that you flash the latest firmware to this new platform. That said, at €219 it remains to be a steeply priced product series. We did not run into stuff that worried us though. The motherboard used seems pretty well tuned, we had no stability issues. At this price, I would have liked faster ethernet though, something 5 or 10Gbit, and yeah  AC WIFI would have been nice. Overall this platform feels solid, it is a well-designed board. Memory worked straight out of the box, we tried both the 3200 and 3400 MHz kits we have from G.Skill. Tweaking wise, the motherboards will not be any limitation, not from any brand as the Zen+ processor all will reach that 4.2~4.4 Ghz domain. 

Gaming performance

Previous Ryzen reviews have taught me that it is extremely hard to convince a big part of the guru3d community and reader base that Ryzen is plenty fast for gaming. The new Zen+ processors and the respective platform overall bring a bit more oomph compared to last years Ryzen. The fact remains, that if you take a Core i7 8700K it will still beat Ryzen in CPU bound gaming situations (low resolutions or extremely high refresh rate where a game is not GPU bound). The difference and gap towards Intel are getting smaller though. Get yourself a nice G.Skill FlareX memory kit at 3200 MHz and you've covered your gaming bases. Keep in mind that a CPU bottleneck always has been far less important compared to a GPU bottleneck, which why I'll keep saying it, that differential is trivial at best. Honestly, with the money you save on this processor compared directly to the cheapest eight-core Intel processor you can find, you probably should invest in a faster graphics cards. 

DDR4 Memory

The latest firmware for both the older 300 chipsets series and the new 400 Chipset series including the X470 have matured and is an accumulation of DDR4 memory support that evolved when the original Ryzen series was released. Memory compatibility should not and likely will not be an issue as long as you stick to recently released DIMMs. I'll keep repeating this, but there are some really good Ryzen optimized kits out there. The G.Skill Flare X series at 3200 MHz CL14 is hitting a nice sweet-spot and is 100% stable + optimized for your Ryzen infrastructure. We also tested the new Ryzen Sniper X optimized kit from G.Skill, it runs 3400 MHz straight out of the box and will bring your memory bandwidth in the 50K rangers. However, take my advice:  Flare X at 3200 MHz CL14. Install it, activate the profile in the BIOS, restart ...  and never look back. 

Energy efficiency

With The 2700X processor now fabbed at 12nm TDP now has risen towards 105 Watts, that is a bit steep. Realistically, does anyone really care? I doubt it. A full PC at idle will sit in the 50 Watt range with a dedicated graphics card installed (GeForce GTX 1080 / 16 GB memory / SSD and the motherboard). When we stressed the processors with a Prime 1024M run we reached roughly 166 Watts. A threaded CB15 run, however, reveals close to 200 Watts of power consumption (for the entire PC). That certainly is on the high side. When we game we hover at 270~280 Watts, but obviously that factor is dependant on the type of game and graphics card you use of course. So yeah, it's all a notch higher with the 2700X for sure, it's up to you whether or not this is a relevant thing for your purchasing choices. Remember, this is a fully locked & loaded eight-core and 16-threads processor. 

The conclusion

Really, any new X470 motherboard will make a compelling proposition and bring in refined turbos for Ryzen 2000, a higher XFR and higher memory frequency support. Add all other features and the design to that and I will still say, the ROG series does seem a bit pricey? Hey, if you look around a bit, you'll spot  X470 motherboards starting in the 150 USD range, this one is 219,- It's a nice motherboard though, nice features, fast and also we feel like the ASUS BIOS, and if you're gonna tweak the proc, that certainly helps. ASUS offers a nice looking board that is Aura LED configurable and then offers all the usuals like the two x16 (x8 Gen 3) slots for SLI and Crossfire, a very nice audio solution and of course dual M.2 slots. Features like USB 3.1 are plentiful as well. AC WIFI is lacking and as always we would like to see the industry make a move towards 5/10 GBit compatible Ethernet. The motherboard otherwise feels stable thanks to a really quality build with proper components used. In the end, we can definitely recommend the ROG Strix X470-F Gaming, the price is a bit steep, but most of you will likely find it worth the money. Just pop on some compatible memory, a nice 2600X or 2700X and the sky is the limit.

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