ASUS ROG Strix X470-F Gaming Motherboard review

ASUS ROG Strix X470-F Gaming Motherboard review

ASUS ROG Strix X470-F Gaming Motherboard review

Pros
Solid core features
Decent performance, especially in games
Smart, subtle design
Cheaper than ASRock

Cons
Inconsistent in peripheral benchmarks
Few enthusiast features
No audio shielding.

hey everyone know AMD have just released their new x4 70 chipset and along with that comes a whole host of new motherboards today we're looking at the Zeus ROG Strix x4 70 F gaming this is set to replace the previous x3 70 F gaming buy adds a few new features into the mix so let's jump in and take a look first up let's see what we get in the box the x4 70 F gaming comes with a manual driver CD stickers thank you note a door hanger to notify people when you're

deep in your favorite game a cable mod discount coupon code cable ties and SLI HP bridge 4 SATA cables an RGB cable and an addressable RGB cable and finally some mounting screws for the m dot 2 slots built on the ATX form factor this board is finished in a black and stealthy style the heatsink is covered in reflective writing kind of like buzzword graffiti which gives it a pretty unique look if I do say so lighting wise I have to say it could be better the only zone that

has any lighting is the top of the i/o shield where it meets the heatsink this is fully RGB and can be controlled with the aura sync software along with any other compatible devices such as memory and graphics cards although you can hook up LED strips to the board via addressable LED headers it would have been nice to see more onboard lighting zones and it does fall a little bit short in these areas 18 months ago AMD claimed a 4 year minimum lifespan for the am 4

socket and that means backwards and forwards compatibility as such this board can be used with all summit ridge Raven Ridge with their built-in Vega graphics and of course pinnacle rich second generation CPUs power is provided by an 8 plus 2 phase pwm design and there is also a single 8 pin connector providing the CPU socket with power this board features high quality solid capacitors designed to withstand temperatures from minus 55 degrees C to 105 degrees C

which is Zeus claim is a range that's a hundred 10% better than the industry standard while the patented digi+ vrm provides smooth power delivery directly to the cpu we have two heat sinks surrounding the socket one is incorporated into the i/o panel cover which helps reduce ESD the only RGB on the board is featured here on the strip and the ROG logo another heatsink flows from this one into the MDOT two shroud and towards the PCH some will like

the graffiti like style while others won't it's a subjective thing but I've got admit I kind of like it to be honest it doesn't light up but it does reflect to give a little bit of color one odd thing here is a zoo so fabric on the board a bit like the tag that you'd find on a t-shirt or a pair of trainers clearly someone thought this was a good idea but I just don't get it the X 470 F gaming supports up to 64 gig of ddr4 3466 dual channel memory it also boasts over current protection with

onboard resettable fuses protecting all connection ports and DRAM modules against damage for an extended lifespan you may be able to push your RAM a little bit further but obviously this depends on your modules CPU and how good you are at overclocking in common with the rest of the F Series motherboards from a Zeus this one doesn't have any sort of onboard overclocking buttons or switches or controls if you do want these types of features you're going

to have to maybe spend a little bit more and go up to the crosshair series of motherboards there are seven fan headers on offer here two for the CPU fan one to the right for the system fan two more system fan headers at the bottom of the board and two headers in the middle scanning along the front panel headers we find HD audio TPM and our to RGB headers including one

addressable among the usual other assortment of connectors as well as a comp all who still uses these there is also a further RGB header in the middle of the board next to the two fan headers for your storage needs the board provides six SATA 64 second ports a USB 3.1 gen2 front panel connector port a USB 3.0 header and two USB 2.0 ports for legacy devices there are two m dot two one on which is a type 22 one one zero pcie 3.0 x4 slot and the other of which is a type 2 2 8

0 pcie 3.0 x2 slot as we've already said one of the m dot 2 slots comes complete with a large aluminium heat sink which is obviously a useful feature to have moving on to the expansion slots we find two pcie 3.0 x16 slots but one does operate a x8 speeds there is also a pcie 2.0 x16 slot running at x4 speeds and three pcie 2.0 x1 slots Arthur M video two-way SLI and AMD 3-way crossfire X are also both supported the rear connectors are protected by a pre-installed IO shield cover making it easier when installing the board into a chassis in terms of ports we have

5 USB 3.1 gen2 on type I ports a display port which is nice to see an HDMI port for if you're using an AMD Raven Ridge processor with built-in Vega graphics we have a USB 3.1 genuine type C port and 2 USB 3.1 gen2 type-c ports the X 470 F gaming gives us Intel one-to-one 180 Gigabit Ethernet and strangely a ps2 keyboard mouse combo pod on the audio side of things we see an optical s/pdif out and five supreme FX 8 channel audio 3.5 million estimate X 8 channel

HD audio technology for some years now and with each iteration they improve it it uses the s12 2-0 a codec and the board comes with dual headphone amps that should definitely maximize your audio quality okay enough about the features and the design let's talk about overclocking we managed to overclock the Rison seven 2700 x2 4 point 2 gigahertz at one point four volts sadly this is pretty standard based on the other boards that we've tested from competitor

brands we managed to do all of this on the stock air cooler that AMD provided the wraith prism which in its own right is pretty good with higher voltages you may be able to increase the overclock maybe just a little bit but we wouldn't recommend doing it on a 24/7 system overclocking is also a little bit easier on x4 17 compared to the previous generation chipset but

enough of that let's jump in and take a look at the benchmarks,priced on launcherin the UK and in the US we think this board represents a significant jump in functionality from the previous range of X 370 boards while also maintaining a good price point in common with all new X 470 boards you'll be able to make use of some of the really neat features if you combine it with one of the second-generation Rison CPUs these include XF r2 and precision booster 2

which automatically tailored the performance of your CPU to your operating and thermal environment by increasing performance on the fly the visual styling is a bit hit-and-miss some people going to love it some people are going to hate it personally I do like the graffiti on there but I would have maybe liked to have seen a little bit more RGB but we can't have everything .

so here we are with our first look at the Strix I'll show you inside the box first because it's quite quick and quite quick quicker than me that's what she said so we've got a couple of our GB extension cables one is addressable one is the normal for pin you get four SATA cables you get a door hanger you get the usual Gump

which is your manual you drive a CD and your sticker pack then you have a sli bridge and then that's it the box is pretty light I'm saying about lights there aren't really many of them on the board if you've seen what I've said about the Strix is in the past I think they're a bit light on the lighting so with this you just get it down here it's kind of the one that dances it's addressable

but that's it there's no are jeebies anywhere else on the board this is kind of like a hologram down on the chipset I was actually hoping that it's going to light up underneath or something or have like a strip of lights here so that when the LEDs are on it looked kind of nicer but this is kind of nice effect but on the OC 3d forums this seems to a split opinion so I'd like to know your thoughts about it you do get an uncovered m2 down here but the covered one is up here they're

saying that it can take drop your temperatures of your Mt by up to 10 degrees rather than some of the manufacturers the the heat sinks seem to just delay how much they warm up but over time they do just you know they do just eventually get to the same temperature I was seeing somewhere between 6 & 7 degrees difference with this heatsink just so that you know other weird thing that's got on it this is like a little tag from clothes it's actually fabric now I think

that's kind of cool it does kind of like give a different type of texture to the board and like I said I kind of like it but again that was something that I've seen in the YouTube comments and on the OC 3d forums that people were kind of divided about so you do get a pre fitted IO shield you don't have to fit it into the back it's already on the board it's kind of nice I'm talking about light again compared to the I did think this one was a little bit limited on USBs I will say though

that when it does come to USBs I don't even like connecting you loads of us bees into the back of my case I've actually got a USB 3 hub underneath my desk and I've run on my cable was underneath there and hide them out the way so I don't see him on the back of my rig so maybe for the sake of buying an anchor one someone could pick up on that and then literally just have one or two USBs in the back of their case so yeah something for you to think about this one

does have video out on it though so the risin two like the Roy's and Gen 2 CPUs that we've done the 2600 X and the 2700 X do not have onboard video so even if you buy one of those processes these won't work if you want these to work you need to buy one of the AP use and that's the 2200 G and the 2400 G so don't go thinking just because these are there they're magically going to work there has been some confusion with some beginners out there so I'm just you know

kind of letting you guys know that so that you don't end up buying this and then wondering why you're not getting any review so is M it's a m4 so it means it can fit all of the processes that's the glorious thing about it I'm I kind of like the fact that they've now got this rogue writing all over the board there is some round the back as well obviously you're not going to see it on this other board I thought it was quite cool we do still get your normal satyrs down the side for

those of you running mechanicals or 2.5 inches there are quite a few header ports on here for fans and RGB so you got a couple of them found Heather's down here plus an RGB header I don't like it here if I'm honest I think it should be up here at the way that this is something to do with this stock AMD cooler location would be a bit easier but the stock only clear location the cables massive so you wouldn't have any issues so to fan her nose to fan headers another fan

header there there's another to fan headers here as well so there's quite a few on in there decent places you do get a RGB and an addressable down the bottom two USB 2 s awesome for those of us with a iOS or smart power supply's USB 3 there you do get USB 3.1 there gonna be upgrading to a newer case you can see you've got some of the Japanese capacitors down there for your audio and your supreme FX cover but the audio side of it is relatively basic but it will

be better than like the old-school onboard audio so few bits and boobs for us to look at there how does it perform okey-dokey so this Strix performance-wise actually did better than I was expecting so overclocking it managed to do the 4.2 at 1.4 it's kind of a little bit of kind of a sideline benchmark that we've got going on to see whether the boards can kind of cope with it and that's 4.2 on all the cause by the way and then it did manage to do a four point two seven

five four full stability at one point five volts and then we also did then manage to kind of mess around a little bit and we've got four gigahertz four sorry four point four gigahertz for a screen shot so it did quite well screen shot yes they do seem to be able to go high but they're not maintain the stability not really worked out why yet it's early days but that was what Rison did before so it's just kind of got a little bit more Headroom but you just can't get the stability and I

think really it needs more volts if I'm honest but then more volts can end up yeah it's just not going to be good for the processor it's going to be one for the subzero boys so first of all compared to the crosshair seven the gaming wasn't as good to be honest with you the game not it wasn't that good at all not even wasn't as good wasn't good so what I would say with the gaming on this is it's going to be something that they they are going to end up fixing with the BIOS but it is something they need to get fixed relatively quickly it's nothing kind of like

shocking but when we've got early day graphs like this and the other thing you need to think about as it is pre released by also things will get tweaked but it was just where it was so night and day different compared to the crosshair considering all of the other kit was the same yeah I think it's just something that I'll end up tweaking but then when you move on to something like Cinebench the single core result so one core result it absolutely topped the graph with so did

really really well with that with the the multi-threaded result it did the same again where it went right to the top but well not right to top the stock and well yeah when you compare stop to stock it was at the top me compare overclocked overclock it was at the top blender this same whizzing through the results so at launch this strict at stock and overclock was better than the crosshair it was actually better than everything it's an absolute little cracker it's a bit of a

diamond in the rough so some people aren't going to like the aesthetics but I think the value for money aspect on this when you consider the crosshair this is a little a little gem but the other thing that you do need to remember is we're all on pre-release biases right now I would assume this one is only going to go only going to get better in the fact that I think they'll tweak those 3d results and they'll have that dialed down because essentially they'll be running around Jesus was it quicker than slower than the crosshair and anyway they'll sort that out but I do also

think the crosshair is going to get significantly better as well because there's another bios come through that they're raving about but anyway so this I think for the money did really really well this is a very very kind of decent lower end of the x4 17 market purchase I do think now that they need to kind of give it a little bit more lighting I know there are people out there that don't like loads of lights but its options those of you out that don't like it turn them off those of

you that out there do like it don't get them and I think this is just a little bit limp wristed now you can do better than that peeps you know you can do better than that the packaging itself you know I mean as as a whole you're going to be able to build a decent system with it it's proven that it can overclock and it's spanking out good performance numbers better consistently
performance numbers than the crosshair seven so it didn't absolutely little gem of it.

ASUS ROG Strix X470-F Gaming Motherboard review

Asus for years because for a long period it seemed like every dead motherboard that I encountered every dead on a rival mobo that I encountered as well was an Asus board so they kind of built up a rep with me for just being unreliable motherboards but this was like five to eight years ago when Rob was barely even a thing and so I figured it was about time that I

buried the hatchet took an objective look at a modern rock board to see what all the fuss is about so this is the Strix x4 7tf gaming and despite us being about four months into the era of X 570 this board still commands a price tag on Amazon right now I'm happy to report that I didn't pay that for it I bought this one secondhand on eBay and it's in perfect working order now normally when I review a motherboard is because it's the

board is the cheapest in its class or it's got a good balance of functionality to take it out of the poor man's class or it's just got awesome features that I like but this one I bought on brand name alone I was browsing eBay for a mid 8 a mid-range x4 70 board and I saw Rob's tricks and thought sorry I'm buying it don't care what it is he says Rob's tricks let's see if that's worth anything but while it looks pretty impressive and it's got a silly rob clothing tag on it I'm

honestly not convinced that this thing is remotely worth it not because it's bad but just because it's just a motherboard it showed up in the post and I started looking over it and I was like okay not much in the way of RGB and no fancy BIOS system and pretty standard connectivity it does have SLI support but that's basically it and it's the kind of feature set I'd expect to see on a gigabyte board the costs I don't know like that or so but that's not to say that it's crap so on that note let's do a tour of the board and see what you do get with it

starting on one of its strongest points and that is a CPU vcore this board has got ten physical phases on it eight of them are CPU and two of them are SOC and for those of you don't know an SOC is the little system on a chip inside the CPU that controls the CPU because what a lot of people don't realize is the CPU itself is divided up into sections and a modern microprocessor actually has multiple power rails going to it CPU v core is just the big huge workhorse rail that runs off a 12 volt supply coming into your a pin connector but the SOC that is also driven off

the 12 volt source these days but SOC and a couple of other voltages that go to it are lighter rails and don't need as much power but yeah that's why v core is the big workhorse SOC though is the auxilary that you will see on boards so these are all hooked up in a 6 plus 2 configuration the main vrn controller is an asp 1405 i and according to google and all of my research that is a rebadged ir35 201 and ask international rectifier so the IR 35 201 has eight

PWM outputs on it making it a pretty respectable controller but this is where people start getting a bit confused as we also need to handle that SOC power as well and when I was looking around online to confirm my research lots of people were going always eight phase-- or no it's not it's got a true phases and or it's six plus two or it's seven plus one and so on and so forth how it works is that Asus I have placed a pair of IR 3599 phased doubler chips on the top row

of V RMS this gives six directly controlled CPU phases with the final tube controlled in tandem through one phase doubler and then the two SOC phases are on the other phase doubler given that all these phases are PWM control this is a pretty rad setup and it gets even better when you get the vrm he sinks and find that it has ir35 55m mosfet packages so these aren't just discrete MOSFETs as you'd find on cheaper motherboards it's a full regulator in a single chip meaning

that it can talk to the main vrm control with volts amps temperature and so on which give the whole thing a very accurate degree of control so now this is where the cost starts coming into a factor because this vrm setup is expensive now if you've got you know a mid-range motherboard that has four discreet MOSFETs like two high side and two low side MOSFETs which would be considered fairly decent those those MOSFETs are gonna cost about you know

16 cents inch whereas these integrated packages are actually about a pop so right away each vrm on this board is nearly four times the price of one on a cheap motherboard and it's got ten of them on the board so you're looking at past price just on those chips alone moving around expansion is pretty standard fare for an x4 70 board we've got four Ram Schloss single and hold-down so it's a pain to fit modules into them we've got 2 m2 connectors with one up

here and one hiding under this heat spreader that requires 4 screws to remove then a fifth screw for your actual SSD well we've got three PCI Express one time slots and 3/16 length slots slot two is eight lanes only and slot three is four lanes only although that's still good enough for a PCI Express SSD or a fork a capture card which is probably the only two things that you'd

ever want to put in there anyway and then finally we've got six good old SATA connectors for those of you who still swing that way Audio is a pretty respectable eight-channel supreme FX job with a big bank of niche econ audio caps all nicely standing off the board by about a millimeter as they should and drivers withstanding this audio should run anything up to top-end headphones without any worries at all it's certainly gonna cover you for any consumer or

game a great headset the headers we've got a really kick-ass selection of four pin fan headers we got seven of them we've got two at the rear i/o we've got two at the CPU we've got two more down the bottom and we've got another one at the back next to the RAM connectors the Q fan utility and the BIOS is kind of dim-witted but you drill into the monitor section you'll find all the fan control stuff that you'd normally expect to see so that's all there as well we do also have

USB 3.0 and 3.1 headers and you've got dual USB 2 headers on top of that giving you four internal USB 2 headers for peripherals and things like that we've got one digital RGB headed down here with an analogue connector next to it which is not great if you want to drive a big RGB setup without having a separate controller but it's fine for a couple of our GB fans and an LED strip it's also got the digital RGB header for the Wraiths max cooler but I haven't had a

chance to investigate how or if this can be used for other stuff as well last but not least we've got the rear i/o which has a built-in IO shield which is awesome because it means you won't lose it and everything that I want is here we've got eight USBs including USB 3.0 3.1 3.2 gen 2 and type C and we've got HDMI and DisplayPort on top of that as well plus we've also got proper Intel gigabit networking on top of all of that so amazing selection of the back panel here for a

mid-range board so feature set wise as I hinted earlier on there's nothing here that I wouldn't expect to find on most other x 417 motherboards I mean heck even the X even the MSI X 470 gaming plus has got most of these features but what features that this board has it has the versions of everything is premium on in this board using the VRMs as an example you can see why I ended up costing so much you know the audio on it is standard

fare but it's really good for what it is the VR aims are really good for what they are the fan connectors are really good for what you get so is it the rob tacks or is it a premium product well I think it's probably a premium products this thing uses build quality I will give it that much credit you know this is one of the best built motherboards I've used in a long time and

admittedly I generally work with low-end stuff most of the time so you know I'm sure people who deal in super high-end motherboards may scoff at this but you know compared to the usual you know a mark that I normally aim for with motherboards this really does feel like it's worth the extra money but of course we have to consider the fact that it is not doing anything that a cheaper motherboard could not do you know apart from you know

like that USB C type connector or something like that but you get the idea so you know as I say when I ran 3d mark on this it gave me the same score as my gigabyte p450 or SM that I've got in the shop at the moment but then the B 450 or SM is the same board that I spent most of the day recovering from a crap BIOS update and another afternoon getting my 3400 Ram to run at 3,400 so I got to admit it Cillian clothing logo tag or not asus were not messing around with this board so yeah I'm not gonna I'm not gonna give you a full tour of the BIOS today because

honestly unless the manufacturer does something really wild with their BIOS design there's nothing really interesting to see there anymore once you've looked at one bias you've seen them all but suffice to say so all the requisite overclocking settings that you've won the only thing I'd know is that as I mentioned earlier on with things like you fan controls some of the settings are not quite where you'd expect to find them so you may have to do a little bit of digging if you're more familiar with a BIOS like MSI or gigabyte the Asus bias has what seems to be a

completely different layout the other brands but it's all in there if you just go digging for it but what I definitely do like about this board is I do like the aesthetic of it a lot so the aesthetic on this board asus is calling this the cyber outlook so that's all of this stuff here you know with the game on and Strix and you know the flashy stuff dead this doesn't light up or anything which i think is a bit of a shame but I like the concept behind it I like all of the silkscreen on this board

with the writing on it and things like that it looks futuristic rather than the rather than the sort of the game and military aesthetic that grog generally goes for like I still don't like the the asus rog logo I think this logo looks a bit naff however all of this kind of thing I think that looks pretty cool myself the only thing I do wish that they would do with it is just give it actually some

meaningful writing on it like they've got speed and 25 point one two four seven nine a and as well what does that even mean like if you wanted a cool number to run it put x4 70 on it or something like that put the shopping list on it put x4 70 Intel Giga Byte you know 10 faves vrm you know put the shopping list on there if you want something cool to write on the motherboard so I like the idea of it I just wish the the what the writing was a bit more

meaningful like for all I know and some of these kanjis could be the kanji for soup or something like that I don't know however as a concept I really like the look of it and I'm kind of liking this futuristic design and this is actually a motherboard I would consider running in my home PC because my home PC I'm kind of picky about aesthetic with and when I bought my rise in 3600 as a demo cpu for the shop I've actually been kicking around the idea of taking it home and putting it in my PC at home and in which case this is definitely a contender

motherboard that I would want to put in that PC where I'm saying you know it's me and that's not to say that other motherboards I wouldn't use the other motherboards that I review are they're good boards they work they do their job but for me if when I'm picking that I really want to look just so and really match the aesthetic I I really care about that and this really does look switched to me so enough of my waffle offer the scripts let's get into a computer with this

thing and let's see what it looks like when it's built into a case , so with the very striking IO back plate and vrm he sinks this motherboard does take center place inside your case which is a really good thing I'm always slightly disappointed by motherboards that kind of look a little bit weedy once they're fitted whereas this one provides just enough sort of bulk and structure that it actually fills the case and makes it look like it's built up without being overly obnoxious as

some motherboards I think can be obviously some of the good stuff like you know the PCH cover and things like that you will lose these behind your graphics card I've only got a small graphics card in here and I'm struggling to find a camera angle where I can show off that that you know rainbow effect on the Strix logo and stuff like that but you can still see all the other metal work across your m2 connector and stuff like that so it does work out and the and a dab

at a casual glance the board looks visually impressive the RGB is pretty lackluster if you're trying to do an RGB setup then this motherboard is not gonna help you with that you only get the logo in the top left there for RGB and all these are all this other lighting and fans that I've got in here I've got connected to a controller built into the case because with only one digital RGB header on the motherboard you know is just you you have to you'd have to use splitters to the nth degree so you know it's it's art I feel like I could say that if you're buying an expensive

motherboard you're probably going to be running course our IQ or it's a text EQ or something like that but the thing is I feel like you know it's not difficult to add these RGB headers to the board and if they added like two or three of them well even if we only had two digital RGB headers you know a couple of splitters would give you your full fans and stuff like that and I feel like it wouldn't be difficult for motherboard manufacturers to keep a couple of extra RGB

headers on the motherboard and then we wouldn't need dedicated RGB controllers like the IQ or the NZXT hue you know these fans and lights in here these are being controlled by a really rudimentary RGB controller built into the case you know so but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna rag on this board just for not having RGB which isn't to everyone's tastes from a performance perspective I've been using it on and off for experiments and it has been absolutely brilliant I

haven't done any serious overclocking on it yet I will do a review at some point demonstrating how well this thing can try and eat a bit more out there 3600 and however the design of the VR ins alone gives me extreme confidence in this and also did take my 3400 rated memory straight up to 3600 with absolutely no adjustments at all literally just tapped in 3600 and it ran it at 3600 stable so you know memory overclocking on this board is going to be solid as well and that is really what counts here is you know I'm paying money for a premium board so I expect some

measure of premium performance from it obviously the actual raw speed of your computer is going to be exactly the same which is the reason why I still don't really care about X 570 because you're paying you know as I say at the time review in the UK at least you're paying extra for X 570 for basically lesser boards I believe in America is slightly different I think some of the X 570 boards are just as cheap as X 470 so you might make a

different decision now however this does offer a shiny board for less money I don't think it's worth it or so not by a long shot it's just I really don't think it's worth that price for her for a previous gen board but like with the Auris and the I you that I've been looking at a lot recently if you find it on sale if you find it at a low price then it's actually a really nice board so this is what to look out for for cheap haven't paid for it I feel quite satisfied so past that thank you very much .