Introduction

Reviews have been written, benchmarks run, and graphs plotted. The Ryzen 3000 series has lived up to the hype in almost every way. There is finally real competition in the mainstream CPU marketplace, and with competition comes greater consumer choice. One of the biggest debates that is still ongoing with this launch is which chipset to buy. Do you need X570?

Unlike Intel, AMD has made a commitment to supporting the AM4 socket over multiple CPU generations. So far, the team in red has held to that promise, and the new Zen 2 processors are widely supported on older-generation motherboards. While this is great for consumers, it also creates more complexity as more choice inevitably must. Do you need a new X570 motherboard? Due to the cost of the new chipset, the new generation of boards are more expensive feature for feature than the last two generations. This is largely due to PCIe 4.0, a costly and complex feature to implement.

In the graphics department, no card on the market has saturated even PCIe 3.0 yet, at least in the x16 configuration. The largest immediate benefit is with high-speed storage. NVMe drives in RAID configurations can and will take advantage of the extra bandwidth to push never before seen sequential read and write speeds. With your average game, even the switch from SATA to NVMe can be hard to notice, let alone to an even faster and more expensive RAID array. This is more relevant for content creation and media production, where high-speed storage can save significant time and therefore money, which is further bolstered by the near-HEDT core counts on the high-end Ryzen 3000 CPUs. Of course, graphics cards will eventually catch up as well, so for the discerning gamer who only upgrades every three to five years, the new standard could prove a good investment as well.

With the MEG X570 ACE, MSI is targeting the top end of the mainstream category. While the flagship boards range from $500 to $1000, these high-end mainstream boards sit in the $350 to $370 range. For that price, you get most of the flagship features and performance. With X570, this price point is especially competitive because of offerings from all four major board vendors with nearly identical specs. They all feature WiFi 6, 2.5 Gb/s LAN from Realtek, an overkill VRM design of one sort or another, and all the basic overclocking aides.

MSI has their work cut out for them, and they came prepared. The MEG X570 ACE features a heat pipe connecting the chipset and VRM heatsinks, so that the chipset fan, which turns off completely when not needed, can stay powered down for as much as possible. Aside from the heatpipe, the MEG X570 ACE will have to prove its worth through performance and overclocking, so let's get to it.

Specifications