We've had zero dedicated motherboard reviewers at AT for most of the year, as I'm spending all my time on CPU testing (or perhaps you'd want me to forgo the CPU tests?). I've been building a team in the interim to take care of MB review duties. Should be in full swing from about this point on.
You had 4 mobo reviews after the Ryzen launch , staff or no staff and it's statistically significant that none is for a Ryzen mobo. If you add context like interest in the product, value offered, it becomes more than odd. What's the cause, that's for you to figure out and adjust but that seems unlikely given your attitude. - "or perhaps you'd want me to forgo the CPU tests?)"
In the end, you lose money by not serving the market.
All by a single reviewer - who also does all the case, PSU, and keyboard reviews too and thus has limited free time available - and on a single platform. The latter is because as a distributed team Anandtech doesn't have a single office to store all their stuff. Each reviewer needs his/her own set of parts to test with; and for consistency the same parts (particularly the CPU for OCing) need to be the same for everything done on the platform. To avoid spending large amounts on shipping and customs fees that means any part time mobo reviewers are probably only going to have a single platform. E. Fylladitakis is doing Z270. One or more of the newbies is working on Ryzen.
There was a tweet a few days ago (don't recall if from Ian or Ryan) about having gotten 5 submissions from the new mobo reviewers that need edited. Since we haven't seen anything except the x399 overview article on the subject from a newish Author (Joe Shields started in July) they're presumably all still being revised to site standards. I'd imagine at least some of the Ryzen mobo reviews you're looking for are coming soon.
It's all tweets taking up the right hand side of the web page that gives users absolutely no context on what is being discussed. This really needs to go back to a hardware and news site with real reviews that don't chop up graphs with different products for different benchmarks.
Intel released a microcode update in April to fix the Skylake hyperthreading flaw (a crash/data corruption bug) but guess what AsRock's BIOS for the 170 version of this board is at? 2016, dude.
Just peddle a new board instead of providing the most minimal amount of customer service. We're supposed to just turn off hyperthreading, apparently.
AsRock should be tarred and feathered by the tech press but, instead, no one wants to talk about practices like this at all. Just push the latest thing. Am I surprised that Anandtech is clearly oblivious about the hyperthreading bug and AsRock's lack of support for the 170 board? Nope.
Small correction: I have this board, and it drives my two 4k displays at 60hz without issue (displayport and HDMi 2.0). So your article is wrong on this count. It is capable of driving three 4k displays at 60hz if you attach a third monitor to the thunderbolt 3 port (displayport alternate mode). I have found several sources online doing just that.
They've been standard on every board I've seen for years. It takes up barely more space than the pair of SATA connectors everyone uses it as, and otherwise serves as a handy pair of PCIe lanes for front panel modules.
A shame ASRock dropped a USB port over the previous Z170 Gaming ITX. Though at this point, I'm waiting for Z370 to see how the notional i7-8xxx compares to the i7-7820x on ASRock's X299 ITX board (probably a performance regression for most workloads, but dual m.2 NAND SSDs plus an Optane cache is a tempting option for ITX).
I'm still waiting for a mITX-board with two M.2 slots, so I can ditch cables alltogether. One small fast M.2 for the OS and one cheaper big one for storage. Add a picoPSU and you got rid of all the cables unnecessary cables.
Probably equal parts design inertia, the sockets are cheaper than 2x sata because obsolete, and to support USB3.1g2 front panel devices. The latter needs 2 lanes of PCIe, so 1x slots aren't a good fit like for adding other forms of IO.
It was sort of a cheap bandaid solution to the problem of SATA 3.0 bottlenecking contemporary SSDs that has never and probably won't ever take off since we now have M.2 interfaces instead. The idea was to quickly and cheaply double SATA 3.0 speeds in a backwards compatiable manner. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on it here if you want to know more:
I have the Z170 and used the feature to submit a support ticket direct from the BIOS. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a quick response from tech support.
On the Z170 I found that one of the fan headers would not allow speed control. Hopefully that has been fixed (review says that all fan headers support PWM).
Question: What devices could I buy today to use with SATA Express? Is it intended as internal or external expansion?
I want to build a system with multiple "personalities" by plugging in different external boot drives would thunderbolt or SATAe be suitable/better for this?
Damn, that Thunderbolt chip is literally physically larger than the USB C port it's used for. Intel needs to slim that mofo way down if they want to fit it in the CPUs and/or south bridges, because that's the only way TB is ever gonna gain traction.
Yup. One of the reasons why really high speed IO is expensive, TB3 wasn't built into chipsets from the start, and why not all chipset USB ports are the fastest possible version is that doing it needs lots of transistors which means a relatively large amount of die size. You can see the same thing with USB3 only cards where the USB controller itself is the same size as the USBC port.
I've owned this motherboard since March and it has begun to fail on me. After playing games like Civilization 6 and Xcom 2, the PC will completely freeze. After powering it down by holding down the power switch, I am unable to power it back on as the machine will turn on briefly then immediately shut down. It repeats this cycle over and over again. I have to wait half an hour to an hour before it turns back on completely.
I'm running an i7-7700k AIO watercooler from Corsair, Asus GTX 1080, Corsair case. Not sure what the problem is with this thing but even if I can get into BIOS, it will freeze while in the BIOS screen. I've also tried all the released firmware versions for this board, they all behave the same.
that's what i figured, so i tried a different GPU, same result. I even swapped the PSU, same result. Swapped the memory, same result.
The only thing i haven't swapped is the CPU but i'm running the Corsair H100i AIO watercooler and have never seen temps on it go above 70c.
I figure it has to be the mobo itself because it would even lockup while in the BIOS.
Oh and yes, i already requested an RMA. Just wanted to share my experience with this mobo after seeing this review and how after a few months it's now failing on me.
It was probably the VRM for delivering power to the cpu that was overheating causing the issue. There's no monitoring software for that so most people forget about it. Maybe you got some particularly hot chokes, mosfets, or caps that were just prone to overheating. At any rate, hope the RMA goes well.
Last month I ran into the same problem but with Asus MB. Most of the time "clock_watchdog_timeout" error appeared when it froze. The weather then was about 100F in Southern Ca. CPU stock HSF replaced + case opened = problem solved.
I would really like to know why they removed 1 USB port at the IO panel. It was still there on the Z170 version. Also putting in WiFi as part of the board, that cant be removed, is not a good idea either. They might have saved some space on the board, but they didnt use it (for example more USB headers), and instead wasted space on the IO panel. Some people just dont need WiFi and/or Bluetooth.
Also why doesnt AT test if the notorious ASRock USB problem with long or extended cables still exists, which could only be fixed by taking an non-Intel USB chip (either if one is on the board, or an extra PCIe card)? It has been known for at least 5 years...
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jjj - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
6 months after launch and AT is yet to review a single Ryzen mobo.nathanddrews - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
You should buy some and send them to AT.sonny73n - Wednesday, September 20, 2017 - link
"You should buy some and send them to AT."Without AT's permission or agreement to do a review? Or are you just being a foul mouth?
Oxford Guy - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
How about buying Asrock one of its 170 boards so it can fix the BIOS for it with the code Intel gave them in April.But, hey — who needs to worry about random crash bugs from a hyperthreading flaw?
Gavin Bonshor - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
You can expect a wave of them coming very soon :)Ian Cutress - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
We've had zero dedicated motherboard reviewers at AT for most of the year, as I'm spending all my time on CPU testing (or perhaps you'd want me to forgo the CPU tests?). I've been building a team in the interim to take care of MB review duties. Should be in full swing from about this point on.jjj - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
Interesting attitude and misleading statement.You had 4 mobo reviews after the Ryzen launch , staff or no staff and it's statistically significant that none is for a Ryzen mobo. If you add context like interest in the product, value offered, it becomes more than odd.
What's the cause, that's for you to figure out and adjust but that seems unlikely given your attitude. - "or perhaps you'd want me to forgo the CPU tests?)"
In the end, you lose money by not serving the market.
DanNeely - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
All by a single reviewer - who also does all the case, PSU, and keyboard reviews too and thus has limited free time available - and on a single platform. The latter is because as a distributed team Anandtech doesn't have a single office to store all their stuff. Each reviewer needs his/her own set of parts to test with; and for consistency the same parts (particularly the CPU for OCing) need to be the same for everything done on the platform. To avoid spending large amounts on shipping and customs fees that means any part time mobo reviewers are probably only going to have a single platform. E. Fylladitakis is doing Z270. One or more of the newbies is working on Ryzen.There was a tweet a few days ago (don't recall if from Ian or Ryan) about having gotten 5 submissions from the new mobo reviewers that need edited. Since we haven't seen anything except the x399 overview article on the subject from a newish Author (Joe Shields started in July) they're presumably all still being revised to site standards. I'd imagine at least some of the Ryzen mobo reviews you're looking for are coming soon.
Gothmoth - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
since anand is gone it´s spiraling down the drainrealistz - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
Forum is a mess too. It's run by pro-AMD mods.Dug - Wednesday, September 20, 2017 - link
It's all tweets taking up the right hand side of the web page that gives users absolutely no context on what is being discussed. This really needs to go back to a hardware and news site with real reviews that don't chop up graphs with different products for different benchmarks.Oxford Guy - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Intel released a microcode update in April to fix the Skylake hyperthreading flaw (a crash/data corruption bug) but guess what AsRock's BIOS for the 170 version of this board is at? 2016, dude.Just peddle a new board instead of providing the most minimal amount of customer service. We're supposed to just turn off hyperthreading, apparently.
AsRock should be tarred and feathered by the tech press but, instead, no one wants to talk about practices like this at all. Just push the latest thing. Am I surprised that Anandtech is clearly oblivious about the hyperthreading bug and AsRock's lack of support for the 170 board? Nope.
zepi - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
"and the 10Mbps ports are now called “USB 3.1 Gen 2”" - I suppose 10Gbps...Der Keyser - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
Small correction: I have this board, and it drives my two 4k displays at 60hz without issue (displayport and HDMi 2.0). So your article is wrong on this count.It is capable of driving three 4k displays at 60hz if you attach a third monitor to the thunderbolt 3 port (displayport alternate mode). I have found several sources online doing just that.
Vatharian - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
Oh no. They made SATA Express port. Don't tell me it's going to make a comeback now...edzieba - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
They've been standard on every board I've seen for years. It takes up barely more space than the pair of SATA connectors everyone uses it as, and otherwise serves as a handy pair of PCIe lanes for front panel modules.edzieba - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
A shame ASRock dropped a USB port over the previous Z170 Gaming ITX. Though at this point, I'm waiting for Z370 to see how the notional i7-8xxx compares to the i7-7820x on ASRock's X299 ITX board (probably a performance regression for most workloads, but dual m.2 NAND SSDs plus an Optane cache is a tempting option for ITX).jrs77 - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
I'm still waiting for a mITX-board with two M.2 slots, so I can ditch cables alltogether. One small fast M.2 for the OS and one cheaper big one for storage. Add a picoPSU and you got rid of all the cables unnecessary cables.wolfemane - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
Then what you are looking for is the Asus z270i Strix board . 1 sata/pcie m.2 slot and 1 pcie m.2 slot.jrs77 - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
Get rid of all this fancy stuff noone really needs and bring the price down to a reasonable level doing so and I'm interested.Gothmoth - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
would love anandtech doing a in-depth VRM analysis like some youtube chanels do....i can read the specs myself on the manufacturer website.
spend some of that time on more useful things.
peterfares - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
Why is there a SATA Express? I guess you can use it to connect U.2 drives right? But only at 2 lanes?DanNeely - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
Probably equal parts design inertia, the sockets are cheaper than 2x sata because obsolete, and to support USB3.1g2 front panel devices. The latter needs 2 lanes of PCIe, so 1x slots aren't a good fit like for adding other forms of IO.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
It was sort of a cheap bandaid solution to the problem of SATA 3.0 bottlenecking contemporary SSDs that has never and probably won't ever take off since we now have M.2 interfaces instead. The idea was to quickly and cheaply double SATA 3.0 speeds in a backwards compatiable manner. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on it here if you want to know more:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA_Express
OFelix - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
I have the Z170 and used the feature to submit a support ticket direct from the BIOS.I was pleasantly surprised to receive a quick response from tech support.
On the Z170 I found that one of the fan headers would not allow speed control. Hopefully that has been fixed (review says that all fan headers support PWM).
Question: What devices could I buy today to use with SATA Express? Is it intended as internal or external expansion?
I want to build a system with multiple "personalities" by plugging in different external boot drives would thunderbolt or SATAe be suitable/better for this?
Thanks
Oxford Guy - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Good luck getting them to patch the BIOS for that board to fix the hyperthreading crash bug.Intel released the code to board makers in April. Here we are with AsRock sitting on its thumb.
punjabiplaya - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
I've been running this board in my main rig since it launched. i7 7700k and a GTX1080 in a fractal nano. It's great.The_Assimilator - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
Damn, that Thunderbolt chip is literally physically larger than the USB C port it's used for. Intel needs to slim that mofo way down if they want to fit it in the CPUs and/or south bridges, because that's the only way TB is ever gonna gain traction.DanNeely - Wednesday, September 20, 2017 - link
Yup. One of the reasons why really high speed IO is expensive, TB3 wasn't built into chipsets from the start, and why not all chipset USB ports are the fastest possible version is that doing it needs lots of transistors which means a relatively large amount of die size. You can see the same thing with USB3 only cards where the USB controller itself is the same size as the USBC port.ex
https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/ASM1142-C...
only1jva - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
I've owned this motherboard since March and it has begun to fail on me. After playing games like Civilization 6 and Xcom 2, the PC will completely freeze. After powering it down by holding down the power switch, I am unable to power it back on as the machine will turn on briefly then immediately shut down. It repeats this cycle over and over again. I have to wait half an hour to an hour before it turns back on completely.I'm running an i7-7700k AIO watercooler from Corsair, Asus GTX 1080, Corsair case. Not sure what the problem is with this thing but even if I can get into BIOS, it will freeze while in the BIOS screen. I've also tried all the released firmware versions for this board, they all behave the same.
so yeah, never trusting ASRock again.
GeorgeH - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
100-1 something is overheating and the board is just fine.only1jv - Wednesday, September 20, 2017 - link
that's what i figured, so i tried a different GPU, same result. I even swapped the PSU, same result. Swapped the memory, same result.The only thing i haven't swapped is the CPU but i'm running the Corsair H100i AIO watercooler and have never seen temps on it go above 70c.
I figure it has to be the mobo itself because it would even lockup while in the BIOS.
Oh and yes, i already requested an RMA. Just wanted to share my experience with this mobo after seeing this review and how after a few months it's now failing on me.
Ej24 - Wednesday, September 20, 2017 - link
It was probably the VRM for delivering power to the cpu that was overheating causing the issue. There's no monitoring software for that so most people forget about it. Maybe you got some particularly hot chokes, mosfets, or caps that were just prone to overheating. At any rate, hope the RMA goes well.sonny73n - Thursday, September 21, 2017 - link
Last month I ran into the same problem but with Asus MB. Most of the time "clock_watchdog_timeout" error appeared when it froze. The weather then was about 100F in Southern Ca. CPU stock HSF replaced + case opened = problem solved.The_Assimilator - Wednesday, September 20, 2017 - link
Allow me to introduce you to this magical concept know as "RMA".lucam - Wednesday, September 20, 2017 - link
Still no iPad Pro review yet..:(Beaver M. - Wednesday, September 20, 2017 - link
I would really like to know why they removed 1 USB port at the IO panel.It was still there on the Z170 version.
Also putting in WiFi as part of the board, that cant be removed, is not a good idea either. They might have saved some space on the board, but they didnt use it (for example more USB headers), and instead wasted space on the IO panel. Some people just dont need WiFi and/or Bluetooth.
Also why doesnt AT test if the notorious ASRock USB problem with long or extended cables still exists, which could only be fixed by taking an non-Intel USB chip (either if one is on the board, or an extra PCIe card)? It has been known for at least 5 years...
DanNeely - Thursday, September 21, 2017 - link
They probably used a cheaper 1x USB3.1g2 controller. A year or two ago I don't think that budget version was available yet.bak0n - Thursday, September 21, 2017 - link
I find it odd that they release it now, when the 370's are right around to corner. A bit late to the game for my taste.mickulty - Thursday, September 21, 2017 - link
The 87350D mosfets (actually "power blocks" integrating high and low sides) are actually supplied by TI - NexFET is the range that they're from.Regis12 - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Looks pretty decent and also well priced. Any other alternatives?