@ waltc3 , not sure why you are so worked up about a mobo review, but personally feel all x570 boards are a joke when it comes to overclocking capabilities or potential. Since Ryzen 3000 cpus are best left at stock, so any $200-250 board can do that while retaining most of the useful features. Therefore, anyone looking to buy a x570 board, forget about robust power stages, phases or VRMs, as no point in OC'ing Ryzen 3000 series. But I can see people buying higher priced boards for features they may need or are useful to them. Lastly, the only thing I find a bit pointless in mobo reviews are benchmarks. I mean come on, they are all within 1% (or less) of each other, so why bother when the only results we see are due to the different CPUs used.

waltc3:

HH, what follows is 100% constructive--the review was OK, but it lacked some perspective, I thought--probably because I own the Master. First, have you seen the x570 boards selling for $269? Doesn't matter who makes them--imo, they suck, every one.

Walt, good post. First off, if you feel that the 399 EUR price tag for the Aorus Master is warranted then that proofs my argument wrong. However, over the years (much like graphics cards) we are seeing a price influx that IMHO is not always warranted. You purchased about 50 bucks worth of components at eight times the price. Now I have no problems with build quality or looks (aside from the red WIMA caps for audio). It's a good board but sticks close to reference chipset features aside from the Realtek 2.5 Gbps jack. Does that warrant an award? Well, no .. if I assign an award then the products need some sort of x- or value factor. Price is an upwards trend that I see with ROG boards as well. However, with 400~600 EUR boards, you see at least 5 or 10-gigabit jacks, OLED info screens, add-in M2 boards, liquid cooling blocks etc. embedded (thus extra stuff). For the master, I cannot see where the extra money going to, yes the PCB and VRM designs are a notch better, but does that warrant the pricetag? I mean the Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultra Gaming you can purchase for 139,- EUR which gives you a better understanding of what the bill of materials cost is for a mobo (and they still make good money). There yes, yes you will lack WIFI and the 2,.5 Gbps LAN jack. That leaves PCIe 4.0 (for which we all can argue the validity in the year 2019). You get the same performance for CPU and memory. That's a 260 buck difference and herein lies the conundrum, I am fighting the price tags more and more as of late. For it to warrant that price tag, it needs something more/special. Regardlessly I am not writing articles to step on anyone's toes, I am happy to hear you like the board and as stated in the review it's a good one. However, I cannot get past that 399 EUR price tag for what you get back in return of 'additional' features. But if you feel it is warranted, then I cannot argue that as for you it's worth it.

waltc3:

Your gaming conclusion that keeps putting the ancient-architecture 9900k ahead of Ryzen by "5-25%" in frame rates @ 1080P just doesn't jive with the great majority of opinion as I've read it elsewhere.

I think I am using a very representable suite of games that many people play, I mean I could sherry pick games that favor AMD but what would that say about me as a reviewer?

:)I am trying to find a decent review of the passively cooled X570 aorus extreme , i know its expansive but it looks like the best MB for the 16 core that will arrive in September , Hilbert what are the chances that gigabyte will send you one for testing ?:D

@waltc3 ... HH is testing UHD and QHD ... you said that 1080p is so yesterday but I think that QHD is like 5% ( can't really find a survey now ) ... So if you are in that 5% ELIT .... good for you ... but some mortals still game on 720p and 1080p

Hilbert Hagedoorn:

I think I am using a very representable suite of games that many people play, I mean I could sherry pick games that favor AMD but what would that say about me as a reviewer?

Please, just ignore me here--I had some bad indigestion that day...;) I think you do a fine job, as you know...!

alanm:

@ waltc3 , not sure why you are so worked up about a mobo review, but personally feel all x570 boards are a joke when it comes to overclocking capabilities or potential. Since Ryzen 3000 cpus are best left at stock, so any $200-250 board can do that while retaining most of the useful features. Therefore, anyone looking to buy a x570 board, forget about robust power stages, phases or VRMs, as no point in OC'ing Ryzen 3000 series. But I can see people buying higher priced boards for features they may need or are useful to them. Lastly, the only thing I find a bit pointless in mobo reviews are benchmarks. I mean come on, they are all within 1% (or less) of each other, so why bother when the only results we see are due to the different CPUs used.

I don't know why I got so worked up, either...;) I would try and blame it on a sudden attack of indigestion brought on by looking at my credit card bills....grrrrrr-r-r-r-r-rrrr. (Not really!) Also, after working with this board and my cpu (3600X) a lot, I've settled on an all-core overclock of 4.325 GHz @ 1.362v. System is 100% stable, still idles well below 1v, and the cores still sleep and barely run when idling. My temps are paralleling stock clock & boost exactly. Even after the newest x570 chipset driver install (yesterday), I find I still prefer this to stock 3.8GHz defaults & boost. Performance in benchmarks and applications is markedly better @ 4.325GHZ & no boost, to standard clock & boost. Frankly, this is the way I will keep things unless something happens to force me to rethink. Kind of surprised, really, that AMD didn't do it this way to start. Performance differential is fairly significant--while none of the cores ever see > 1.362v, and all see < 1.v when idling and sleeping. There just doesn't seem to be any downside to overclocking all the cores sans boost of any kind.

hi guys, does anyone have the bitspower or EK monoblock for this motherboard? Is it worth the money?

The VRMs on this board don't need anything beyond passive cooling. Just get a good quality CPU block and you'll be fine. Unless you want your board to be blingy bling purty, then by all means.

buhehe:

Here (UK), on Amazon, 9900K is 50% more expensive than 3700x and 10% cheaper than 3900x EDIT: checked Amazon.com prices... the $799 3900x is simply because of 3rd party sellers price-gouging it. It looks like Amazon itself doesn't have it in stock (same for 3700x), but its historical price when sold directly has been $499

Price in canada. 3700x 455CAD 3900x 688 CAD 9900k 648 CAD 9700k 438 CAD 10700k 530 CAD 10700KF 489 CAD 10900k 762 CAD 10900KF 638 CAD 10900KFC unkown price not listed The new parts (AMD and nVidia) are simply not avalaible in Canada so hard to know the real price because reseller prices on Amazon and Newegg are all crazy. You can also buy a b550. For most people out there no real reason to buy a x570 over a quality b550. [edit] in fact nothing is in stock in Canada. Most of the price listed up there are reseller prices but those are not as crazy as the new parts. The fact so many resellers have stock while none of Amazon and Newegg have any should almost be investigated honestly.