I read through all the reviews before purchasing this board. I had decided a few months ago that my old FM2+ build with the AMD Kaveri A10-7850K was getting long in the tooth and it was time to upgrade. Yay!
So this is my 3rd and final revision.
Revision 1.0: I went to the Ryzen 5 3400G APU on an MSI B450M Pro VDH Max, Corsair CX500 PSU, with TEAMGROUP Dark-Z 3200mhx 32GB RAM. HUGE upgrade from the old tech, lol!
Then I was like, you know, I would love to do some gaming, and since I just upgraded the monitor to a 32" Acer 2k 75hz display, wouldn't it make sense to get some hardware that can take advantage? Don't get me wrong, the 3400G is a great APU and can be perfect for some entry level gaming or non-gaming PC use, but I needed more!
Revision 2.0: Got the Ryzen 3600x and MSI 5500XT Mech OC GPU. NICE! Gaming was fun again! I could even play Gears 4 at 2k High settings for the most part. Gotta say, that little GPU surprised me with it's performance for the specs it had...but it wasn't enough! So I decided to use that build for a family member, and went to my current version:
Revision 3.0: Went from mATX to ATX, got the Fractal Meshify-C ATX case, Thermaltake Toughpower 750W Gold PSU, Ryzen 3700X CPU, WD BlACK 500gb nvme M.2 drive, and Sapphire Pulse 5700XT GPU (same RAM), and put it all on the Gigabyte X570 AORUS Elite.
OK now that we're all tracking, back to the actual review!
Like I said, I was worried about all the negative reviews...DOA boards, no POST, 20 hour initial boot, turtle-like BIOS load speed, used being sold as new, etc...I was like My God...
But two things sold me on this board...the nearly unanimous reviews that said the VRM was excellent, and the price point. Also, I had a Gigabyte F88A D3H for years that never let me down.
Package arrived in excellent condition, ALL NEW, SEALED. Board looks great, I love the design, and it has a quality feel to it, some real weight, which I appreciate. The LED strips are nice, low profile, not too gaudy at all and compliment my RGB fans perfectly.
I like the connections too. 2 CPU fan headers, 2 SYS fan headers, 2 3-pin 5V RGB headers, and 2 12V 4-pin RGB headers, 6 SATA ports, etc...nice and versatile. I don't even need the RGB headers, as I have 6 Thermaltake Riing 12 plus premium case fans wired to two controllers via one of the USB headers. Only RBG header I'm using is LED C2 for the Wraith Prism CPU fan.
Setup went without a hitch. Initial boot took maybe 30-40 seconds. Booted into BIOS to set XMP profile and rebooted to Windows 10 Pro.
And my one and only issue had arrived. My Seagate Firecuda 2TB SSHD storage drive was gone! Like...gone! BIOS saw it just fine, but windows couldn't see it at all. WTH? Tried DISKPART cmds, Disk Management, Partition software, nothing worked. I went to Device Manager and saw that "AMD SATA Drives" drivers had hardware conflicts. I tried installing latest chipset drivers from Gigabyte and AMD, still nothing.
Finally I just uninstalled via Device Manager, removed drivers, and rescanned, and that worked! All good now.
This is the nicest build I've ever done. Looks amazing, love the LEDs (so do the kids), and runs fast and smooth as butter.
Now I can play games on 2K resolution and all Ultra settings with no issues, and I love knowing I have quality power (Gold rated PSU) going to quality power management (MB VRMs), for my system.
My goal was performance and longevity, as I don't want to spend over $1,500 on building a family PC for at least another 5 years. And I cannot understate the importance of the right power delivery system for a system to run at it's optimum levels, which will ensure that longevity.
As for boot times, it's fast. I don't even notice what people were complaining about, my system loads to Windows login in like 10 seconds. I also was able to OC the CPU and tighten the timings on my RAM, using the Ryzen DRAM calc software, which is a nice bonus.
This board runs cool, also, the board fan hasn't even spun up once, even during stress tests.
I highly recommend this board for those looking for a nice, solid, reliable, but not exorbitantly priced X570 ATX board.
Happy hunting!
UPDATE 3/6/2021: Still going strong, no issues whatsoever, boot up time is ridiculously fast compared to my old system.
| Processor | 2666 MHz |
|---|---|
| RAM | DDR4 |
| Memory Speed | 2133 MHz |
| Wireless Type | Bluetooth |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
