ASUS PRIME X570-PRO Motherboard
ASUS has not changed the overall style of their PRIME boards from the X470 series, so you have a black PCB with silver heatsinks, a white I/O cover, and a white cover over the chipset fan. Overall the design of the board is very clean.
Starting at the CPU socket we of course have AMD’s AM4 socket. X570 motherboard will support both 2nd and 3rd generation AMD Ryzen processors. Surrounding the CPU socket you have your power delivery components, which are covered by large heatsinks. ASUS is using a 6 phase (4+2) VRM. ASUS is using three power stages for each Vcore phase, each of these power stages is 50A, so for each Vcore phase you have 150A. So in total you have 600A total for Vcore. ASUS is making use of alloy chokes and durable capacitors.
Moving up to the top of the board we can see that I/O cover, which looks quite nice and sort of sits over one of the VRM heatsinks, making the whole thing look like a single piece. Towards the top left of the board are your CPU power connections, which you have your normal 8-pin EPS connector and an additional 4-pin if needed.
Moving over to the right top corner of the board we find four headers. They are for your CPU fan, optional CPU fan, AiO pump, and the last is a 4-pin standard RGB header. Coming over to the memory slots there are four DDR4 DIMM slots which support up to 128GB of DDR4-4400 (O.C.) memory. These slots are color-coded for dual-channel operation and do not have the locks on the bottom which makes swapping out your memory much easier if you have a graphics card installed. At edge of the board there is another 4-pin standard RGB header, small power switch, 24-pin ATX power connection, and a USB 3.2 gen 2 internal connection.
Moving down the board there are six SATA 6GB/s ports. These ports are controlled by the X570 chipset and support RAID 0, 1, and 10 modes. As we come down the board the chipset fan comes into view, ASUS has covered it with a white cover, which has ventilation holes cut out of it. Since the X570 chipset uses 3 times as much power as the X470 chipset you’ll see most X570 motherboards with active cooling fans.
At the bottom of the board you’ll find the rest of your headers and connections. From left to right you have your HD audio headers, COM port header, two USB 2.0 headers, a USB 3.1 gen 1 header, ASUS node header, two 4-pin fan headers, a 4-pin pump header, a 3-pin addressable RGB header, and your front panel headers.
As far as expansion slots go there are three PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots and three PCI-Express 4.0 x1 slots. The top two x16 slots are metal reinforced and the top slot is color-coded, which is great to help beginners.
When it comes to M.2 slots there are two on this board. The first sits above the top PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slot and the second is between the second and third x16 slots. Both of these slots are of course PCI-Express 4.0 and they will support M.2 SSDs up to 110 mm. The bottom M.2 slot is covered by a nice large metal heatsink and it appears that ASUS has designed the chipset fan to blow out on to this slot. Right above the top M.2 slot is another 4-pin fan header which is perfect for a rear exhaust fan. In total you have 7 headers for fans and watercooling pumps on this board.
As far as audio goes on the board ASUS is making use of the Realtek S1220A audio codec plus their Crystal Sound 3 audio solution. Crystal Sound 3 brings with it a power pre-regulator, integrated amplifier, de-pop circuit, audio shielding, a separate PCB layer for left and right tracks, and premium Japanese-made audio capacitors.
Finally we come to the rear I/O, which has a nice integrated shield on it. It is a great to see ASUS bring this feature down to their PRIME series boards. As far as connections go from left to right you have a PS/2 port, two USB 3.2 gen 1 ports, DisplayPort, HDMI, four USB 3.2 gen 2 ports (3x type-A, 1x Type-C), two more USB 3.2 gen 1 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and your audio connections.
