Question Which x570 motherboard for Software Development?

[oughtsix]

I am a software developer, mostly in the Visual Studio world and I am addicted to fast hard drive speeds! Processor speed and graphics speed are pretty much irrelevant to me as they have almost no affect on build times.

My old MB / CPU is a 8+ year old AsRock with Athlon processor. Try as I might I could never get it to run Windows 10 (due to MB drivers) so I decided to upgrade. As a replacement I ordered:

1. AsRock X570 Steel Ledgend
2. Ryzen 3400g
3. 32MB GSkill ram
4. 1 TB Sabrent Rocket Gen 4.0 x4 NVMe.

The speed is addicting, I can do a full workstation setup including Win 10, Visual Studio 2019 and all my utilities in about a half hour loading everything off my old 2TB SATA SSD. A full workstation install used to be a whole day affair. Build times on my larger projects are amazing!!!

The problem is it isn't stable. The GSkill RAM was very unstable with lots of BSD's so I replaced it with Corsair Vengeance LPX ram. Now instead of BDS's the system will just freeze. I am giving up on the AsRock X570 Steel Legend and AsRock in general.

What x570 MB should I get to replace it? I really like the looks of the GIGABYTE X570 AORUS Ultra. It has HDMI 2.0 which is important to me since I use a Samsung curved 55" 4k TV as my main monitor. I also like that is has 3 x M.2 4.0 x4 slots! The down side is it does not have the Display port 1.4 that the AsRock has to drive my secondary monitor. I will probably use my old AMD R7 graphics card to drive my secondary monitor and use another PCIe slot for my LSI caching SAS raid controller.

Is the GIGABYTE X570 AORUS Ultra a good match for me? I have had generally good luck with Gigabyte. I usually prefer Asus but they don't have a 3 x M.2 MB with HDMI 2.0 that I can find?

Are there any other MB's that I should look at that have:

1. HDMI 2.0
2. 3 x M.2 4.0 x4 slots
3. At least 2 PCIe x16 ports (LSI raid card + R7 graphics card)
4. Around $300

Thanks for the help/recommendations!

 

[oughtsix]

I ended up going with the GIGABYTE X570 AORUS Ultra and I am very pleased. Using all the same components and even the Windows 10 install from the Asrock MB the Gigabyte has been rock solid. No more freezing! There was definitely something wrong with the ASRock x570 Steel Legend. I am very happy I switched to the Gigabyte. This is a shame because for me the AsRock offered GREAT bang for buck. The GIGABYTE X570 AORUS Ultra cost almost exactly double what I paid for the AsRock when I got it on sale. P.S. I did try several different versions of the BIOS on the AsRock and none madea difference with the freezing.

The GIGABYTE X570 AORUS Ultra has an extra M.2 Gen 4.0 x4 slot which is nice for future drive upgrades. I miss the Display port on the AsRock X570 Steel legend though. I have to add an old graphics to add a second monitor. There are a lot of nice little details with the Gigabyte MB missing on the AsRock... but there should be at twice the price. If the AsRock X570 Steel Legend had been solid it would have been a great deal!

As far as speed and compile times I couldn't be happier! For my purposes this system if FAST!

1. GIGABYTE X570 AORUS Ultra
2. Ryzen 3400g
3. 32MB GSkill ram
4. 1 TB Sabrent Rocket Gen 4.0 x4 NVMe.
5. 2Gb Sata SSD
6. An old Saphire AMD R7 graphics card (I haven't actually added it yet).

For the fun of it I plugged the computer (not the monitor) into a Kill-a-Watt meter, The system Idles at around 40W - 45W. Normal operation 50W - 65W. Compiling (High SSD usage and a bit of processor usage) spikes to ~ 105w. I just thought it was fun to see how much of my 600W power supply is actually being used.