There’s a flipside to that, though. AM4 is in the twilight of its venerable career. We’re casting an eye towards Zen 4, Alder Lake, and DDR5. There’s always something over the horizon though. But if you’re coming from something older, such as a B350 or Z170 system, and you need more cores or PCIe 4.0 support, you'll see a huge jump indeed.

Once the rest of the X570S boards land in stores, that may change depending on the price. Overall, we like the update that Gigabyte brings to the X570X Master. Not only was some hardware updated, but the appearance was too. Performance in all of the benchmarks was right around the average of the other boards. Jumping down to the bottom half of the board, we’ll start with the audio, located on the left side. Hidden under the shroud is the Realtek ALC1220-VB codec. This flagship-class audio includes an ESS Sabre Hi-Fi 9118 DAC for headphones along with Chemicon and WIMA audio capacitors. Also visible is the audio separation line keeping the rest of the motherboard away from the audio bits. Although the codec used is from the last generation, it’s one of the best available and performs well enough for many users. Supports AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series/ Ryzen™ 4000 G Series/ Ryzen™ 3000 Series/ Ryzen™ 3000 G Series/ Ryzen™ 2000 Series/

On top of that, power delivery (50A to 70A MOSFETs) and Wi-Fi (6 to 6E) both get a bump. The X570S version took an ethernet port away in the process, but I’d imagine an overwhelming majority of users will be satisfied with one 2.5 GbE port. In the end, though this is still more of an iterative update than an overhaul. Whether or not that’s worth the additional cost is up to you, since both the X570 and X570S boards are still available. But a bit over an 8% price increase for having the latest and greatest doesn’t feel steep. But if you’ve been holding off on upgrading, for example, you are looking for something upmarket to pair with a (now readily available) high core count processor, then it’s definitely worth a look. If/when AMD releases a Zen 3+ refresh or V-Cache models in a few months, premium tier X570S boards will be first out of the gate with support. Supports AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series/ Ryzen™ 5000 G-Series/ Ryzen™ 4000 G-Series/ 3rd Gen Ryzen™/ 2nd Gen Ryzen™/ 2nd Gen Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics/ Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics Processors AMD X570 AORUS Motherboard with Direct 14 Phase Infineon Digital VRM, Fins-Array Heatsink & Direct Touch Heatpipe, Triple PCIe 4.0 M.2 with Thermal Guards, Intel ® WiFi 6 802.11ax, ESS SABRE HiFi 9118, 2.5GbE+1GbE LAN, USB Type-C, RGB Fusion 2.0

The X570S Aorus Master tore through the synthetics, leading the rest of the boards in Fire Strike and coming in second in Time Spy. That said, the difference between the boards in these tests isn’t large, with most falling within the margin of error. Starting with the X570S chipsets, we’ve updated our game tests and hardware (video card) to match the Intel platform. We stopped using The Division 2 and Forza Horizon 4 and now use Far Cry: New Dawn and F1 2020, and are using the Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3070 card. The games are run at 1920x1080 resolution using the Ultra preset. As the resolution goes up, the CPU tends to have less of an impact. The goal with these settings is to determine if there are differences in performance at the most commonly used resolution with settings most people use or at least strive for. Above the DRAM slots is the first four 4-pin fan headers. All headers support both PWM and DC control, each delivering up to 2A/24W of power. This configuration should be enough to power your watercooling loop directly from the board. You can control the devices through the BIOS or the company’s Smart Fan 6 application. Just to the right of these fan headers are the first (of two each in total) RGB and ARGB headers. Across the bottom are several headers, including USB ports and RGB headers. Here’s the complete list, from left to right: We’d like to have a 5G option at this price. Additionally, the non-S Aorus Master had dual LAN. A second may be desirable for some but now that Wi-Fi 6 and 6E is becoming widespread, dual LAN and Gigabit in particular is not as important as it once was.Smart Fan 5 Features Multiple Temperature Sensors, Hybrid Fan Headers with FAN STOP and Noise Detection Smart Fan 6 Features Multiple Temperature Sensors , Hybrid Fan Headers with FAN STOP and Noise Detection