X570S (Fanless) Motherboards are here… Too late? ASRock X570S PG Riptide Review
This is the ASRock X570S PG Riptide, a mid range motherboard with.. Wait. X570S? That’s new! What could that mean? Oh, there’s no fan on the chipset heatsink! Huh. So, yes, this is a brand new board design for the now 2 year old X570 chipset and it’s coming out right under the looming shadow of Zen 4… So, what’s the deal?
Well, if you were hoping for a fully new, or even updated chipset perhaps with some more features or I/O, that’s not what this is. As best as I can tell, this is the exact same chip you’d find on any other X570 board, although perhaps thanks to the manufacturing process and microcode updates maturing, it seems to be a little less power hungry and therefore needs less cooling power. The heatsink ASRock have gone with here is pretty slim, it’s not the smallest but it’s hardly a behemoth.
As for connectivity, including through the chipset, you’ve only got a single PCIe Gen 4 x16 reinforced slot at the top, then while it does have two more x16 sized slots below, both are only connected at x4 electrically, assumedly with the lower going through the chipset. You do also have 3 open ended PCIe x1 connectors, a gen 4 M.2 slot, and an E-Key WiFi slot just above the Realtek ALC897 audio codec. I’d have liked to have seen the WiFi module included and an ALC1220 instead as the 897 is definitely on the aging and lower end of the range but it’s not the end of the world.
You do have another M.2 slot up at the top under a heatsink, that one, much like the X16 PCIe slot that’s just under it, is directly connected to the CPU. You even have a Thunderbolt header, which will be useful when Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 rolls around.
On the rear I/O you get a bracket for a WiFi module, should you want to purchase one separately, a BIOS flashback button, HDMI out, PS/2 combo port, 4 USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) ports, 2 USB 2, 2 USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) ports with one being a Type A and the other a Type C, 2.5Gb ethernet with a Killer E3100G NIC and 7.1 audio out with SPDIF. It doesn’t come with a pre-attached I/O shield, something that even their Steel Legend boards offer.
As for the VRMs, that’s a 10 phase, 50A driver setup wrapped in a single aluminium heatsink, leaving the top 2 phases open to the air. It uses a uP9505S controller which offers a maximum of 4+2 channels, although I expect ASRock are using 4+1 from the controller and doubling each output channel. It’s driven by a SiC654 50A driver, and uses 60A chokes. I’ll be honest, for an AMD board, this is still overkill. The maximum power draw you’ll see from any of the chips that fit in this AM4 socket is 142W at stock, and even using PBO to push your CPU harder you’ll still only see around 200W which is laughable compared to team blue’s most recent chips.
ASRock’s BIOS is still more on the basic side, since this is a PG or Phantom Gaming board you do get some nice red accents, but it’s the same layout. You have info on the first page, overclock settings on the second including full memory timing control, then on the third is all the folders of options. That includes Re-Sizable BAR support which is enabled by default, and SR-IOV support too although that one is disabled by default. You also have fTPM 2.0 settings, useful for Windows 11, and you have a page dedicated to all the version numbers not just of the AGESA but even the chipset firmware version which is strangely listed as “X570/590” – X590 confirmed??? You’ve also got the option to enable Thunderbolt 4 support, although that’ll only work with a Thunderbolt 4 add-in card and the cable hooked up to the Thunderbolt header.
Of course you’ve also got the full suite of PBO settings, and while it’s clear it’s not the main focus of this board I did have a little play with the Ryzen 5600X I dropped in it and it works well. One thing that definitely dates the BIOS is the fan control. There’s no easy to use graph to click and drag, instead you either set it to one of the pre-defined modes or set it to custom and manually enter what temperature and fan speed percentage you want for 4 steps, per fan. Oh and you can also pick which temperature sensor it’ll be monitoring. This is great control, but MSI offers all that (and more?) all in an easy to use click/drag graph.
The other confusing thing about ASRock’s AMD boards is their stock power limits. AMD’s spec is 88W of total socket power for their 65W TDP chips, and 142W for their 125W ones. ASRock set just 76W of socket power for this 5600X, that’s the same across their X570 and B550 boards as I found out in my recent Ryzen memory testing video where because the chip was only getting 76W of socket power, the 17W the I/O die needed to run 3600MHz memory ate heavily into the core die power budget meaning less performance. Now, you can correct this incredibly easily, just set the PPT to 88W in the PBO settings, but you shouldn’t have to.
All of this is somewhat missing the bigger picture question though, which is why would you buy one of these right now? In fact, why is ASRock even releasing new X570 boards this late into 2021? Well, the impending might of AMD’s Zen 4 architecture and the slew of new chips that comes with it, is at best 9 months away, at worst it could be more like 12. That’s a whole lot of time that people will be building new systems in, so it makes sense that these boards stay available.
As for the mild refresh, I think it’s good to see this update. Removing the pesky chipset fans from the X570 boards is a welcomed change. I can tell you the chipset isn’t magically heat-free, even sitting in the BIOS with only a single gen 3 SSD connected has the heatsink at over 40°c and under heavier loads pushing more like 50°c, but that’s hardly anything for a PC component.
So, should you buy this X570S PG Riptide board? Well, it’s not bad. It offers plenty of VRM potential, reasonable I/O, a few nice features like the Thunderbolt 4 and SR-IOV support in-BIOS already, and at $180 or so it’s hardly expensive. I’d quote a UK price but it’s not available anywhere here yet. For a comparison the B550 Steel Legend board I normally use and still recommend is more like $150, so unless you really need 2 PCIe Gen 4 SSDs (and if you do, why?) I’d still generally recommend B550 over X570 anyway. This board is still plenty for it’s price, so if you were going to buy one anyway you can rest easy knowing it’s decent enough.
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TechteamGB Score
