Looking for a decent X470 motherboard to pair with the 2700X?

Space Monkey · 26 Jun 2018 at 18:38

Hi guys,

Looking for a really solid, high quality motherboard for my 2700X, being paired with 16GB 8Pack 3200MHz C14 RAM.

Budget approx £270

Any personal experiences good and bad gratefully received

orbitalwalsh · 26 Jun 2018 at 20:33

Space Monkey said:
Hi guys,

Looking for a really solid, high quality motherboard for my 2700X, being paired with 16GB 8Pack 3200MHz C14 RAM.

Budget approx £270

Any personal experiences good and bad gratefully received

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Asus ROG Crosshair VI Hero (WI-FI AC) AMD X370 (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £235.99
1 x Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 Wifi AMD X470 (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £224.99

Total: £472.08 (includes shipping: £11.10)

Asus for the better bios and bios layout, very clean and simple . Clean cut looks if Orange and RGB isn't your style
Aorus for the sound, better WiFi and customer support

Both use same phase count /IR units but different controller

eddiew · 26 Jun 2018 at 21:37

I would have called the Crosshair VII rather than VI... X470 vs X370 and all (better memory support?)

But both are solid boards, I'd just always favour the newer model

IMO the Gigabyte board can be immediately discounted due to the placement of it's m.2 slots. Trust me, it's a recipe for drive throttling when gaming, and I don't believe those metal shields/heatsinks help any when the area is blasted with 65 degree+ air. Asus have the grace to get the drives well away from that.

orbitalwalsh · 26 Jun 2018 at 22:37

Heat sinks are fine, uses both boards with a trial 3D geomapping ( very kindly lent as I do t have a few grand to spend on it ) , both were fine after 8 hours of pulling 500 MP images for reading and writing .

Both use awesome thermal pads though , changing to Thermal Grizzlies will shave off min 5c !

Space Monkey · 27 Jun 2018 at 23:09

Thanks guys for the input so far

I've been eyeing up the ASRock Taichi Ultimate?

ChocoViennese · 28 Jun 2018 at 08:42

I have this: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...qBl6P92k9nLvWOwkxRxzg6wer4ATFxJcaAuO7EALw_wcB
with a first-gen 1600x, and exactly the same RAM as you have and has been rock solid since I bought it on release day. OC'd to 4 GHz on all cores. Quite a bit below your budget, but a great board unless you need more extreme oc'ing

Ross Thomson · 28 Jun 2018 at 15:58

msi x470 gaming M7 AC - easy bios, shown to be great overclocking (CPU&RAM) and VRMs are top notch. I paid £219 for mine.

Jamin280672 · 28 Jun 2018 at 20:30

Ross Thomson said:
msi x470 gaming M7 AC - easy bios, shown to be great overclocking (CPU&RAM) and VRMs are top notch. I paid £219 for mine.

I actually ordered a Gigabyte Aurous Gaming 7 X470 board a couple of days ago from my catalogue company £229, received it today and sent it straight back as when I opened the packaging, there was an MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC in there instead, wasn't too sure about it, I wanted the Gigabyte for the new fin MOSFET heatsink they have on it, the MOSFETs on my current MSI board are like toasters, under prime small FFTs they were at 122oC which is only 3oC away from auto shutdown, especially in this weather we are currently having, and with the fin heatsink, it makes it very easy to attach a 40mm fan I have sitting in my draw to it.

Currently sitting here typing this, so pretty much idle, they are at 48oC and that's with a big fan blowing directly at them, I removed the stock AMD fan from the heatsink and set the up to keep them cool.

Ross Thomson · 28 Jun 2018 at 20:42

I had a b350 tomahawk before and it was pretty bad for vrm temps. The gaming M7 is in a different league.

Using AIDA64

Tomahawk VRM temp with extra aluminium finned heatsinks on OE heatsink.

105C with no extra airflow
99C with exhaust fan at rear
68C with inlet at rear
65C with direct airflow (AMD wraith cooler fan)

Gaming M7 (inlet fan set to 30%) 1.325 for 3.9 and 1.4 for 4.0

full standard 42C CPU 55C VRM
with fan 42C CPU 47C VRM

3.9 56C CPU 56C VRM
with fan 56C CPU 51C VRM (putting little finned alu heatsincks ontop dropped it to 48C)

4.0 70C CPU 60C VRM
with fan 70C CPU 53C VRM

4.0 4k render 63C CPU 57C VRM
withfan 63C CPU 55C VRM

orbitalwalsh · 28 Jun 2018 at 20:53

Jamin280672 said:
I actually ordered a Gigabyte Aurous Gaming 7 X470 board a couple of days ago from my catalogue company £229, received it today and sent it straight back as when I opened the packaging, there was an MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC in there instead, wasn't too sure about it, I wanted the Gigabyte for the new fin MOSFET heatsink they have on it, the MOSFETs on my current MSI board are like toasters, under prime small FFTs they were at 122oC which is only 3oC away from auto shutdown, especially in this weather we are currently having, and with the fin heatsink, it makes it very easy to attach a 40mm fan I have sitting in my draw to it.

Currently sitting here typing this, so pretty much idle, they are at 48oC and that's with a big fan blowing directly at them, I removed the stock AMD fan from the heatsink and set the up to keep them cool.

Wtf ... That sounds like returns job and someone's mixed them up !!!

Wonder if reps will allow name and shame of that site .

Space Monkey · 28 Jun 2018 at 21:38

orbitalwalsh said:
Wtf ... That sounds like returns job and someone's mixed them up !!!

Wonder if reps will allow name and shame of that site .

VRM's are overkill or the VRM cooling is overkill?

eddiew · 28 Jun 2018 at 21:44

Space Monkey said:
VRM's are overkill or the VRM cooling is overkill?

Be happy with either, be delighted with both

Rare to see a real heatsink on VRMs these days, that picture looks good!

orbitalwalsh · 28 Jun 2018 at 22:36

eddiew said:
Be happy with either, be delighted with both Rare to see a real heatsink on VRMs these days, that picture looks good!

Missing my Abit core 2 duo board - nforce Chipset I believe .. so much copper !!!!

Space Monkey · 28 Jun 2018 at 22:39

orbitalwalsh said:
Missing my Abit core 2 duo board - nforce Chipset I believe .. so much copper !!!!

My all time fave motherboards, Abit, such a sad day when they disappeared

Space Monkey · 28 Jun 2018 at 22:41

eddiew said:
Be happy with either, be delighted with both Rare to see a real heatsink on VRMs these days, that picture looks good!

If it's overkill on both then that would make me delighted, I was genuinely unsure what the comment referred to as I've not had time to research the Gigabyte board?

Jamin280672 · 29 Jun 2018 at 01:50

Space Monkey said:
If it's overkill on both then that would make me delighted, I was genuinely unsure what the comment referred to as I've not had time to research the Gigabyte board?

Gigabyte basically doubled up on all the vrm's using doublers lol, so every power phase to the CPU gets shared between 2 vrm's so to speak, this alone helps keep it cool, but to cool things down even more, they wacked a finned heatsink across the whole lot, as far as im aware, its only the X470 Gaming 7 which is their flagship board and only Gigabyte who have done this, VRMs on AM4 are a big issue, especially when overclocking, so anything anyone does to cool them down in my books is a massive plus.

Space Monkey · 29 Jun 2018 at 02:02

Jamin280672 said:
Gigabyte basically doubled up on all the vrm's using doublers lol, so every power phase to the CPU gets shared between 2 vrm's so to speak, this alone helps keep it cool, but to cool things down even more, they wacked a finned heatsink across the whole lot, as far as im aware, its only the X470 Gaming 7 which is their flagship board and only Gigabyte who have done this, VRMs on AM4 are a big issue, especially when overclocking, so anything anyone does to cool them down in my books is a massive plus.

Excellent, thanks

orbitalwalsh · 29 Jun 2018 at 06:40

Hero and Aorus share the same IR components and ssme number of phases but you different controllers. Taichung uses older version and have increase phases count to match a balance to hero/7 and it uses the same controller as the Aorus