MSI MAG X570 TOMAHAWK WIFI Motherboard ATX - Supports AMD Ryzen 5000 Series Processors, AM4 - Mystic Light, DDR4 Boost (5100MHz/OC), 2 x PCIe 4.0 x16, 2 x M.2 Gen4 x4, HDMI, 2.5G LAN, Wi-Fi 6E

Product Information

Things like this is why I test with a slightly older CPU to see if the level of standards you would expect extend to the slightly older hardware as well because most people do incremental upgrades when the time is right, not all at once so it is very common to see a slightly older CPU on a up to date mainboard either because upgrades are being done incrementally or because a certain CPU was significantly cheaper than the newer ones while still offering a large portion of the performance the newer CPUs offer. We don't plan to make a thorough review of every aspect of the Tomahawk (see a full list of specs here), we've already tested over a dozen AMD X570 motherboards, and our recommendations can be found in the corresponding buying guide. Across the bottom are several headers, including RGB, USB and more. There’s also a convenient switch in this area to disable the integrated RGB LEDs. Here’s the complete list, from left to right:

MSI's new Tomahawk is the most impressive X570 motherboard we've tested at this price point. Like we just said, it's a shame we had to wait so long. MSI certainly didn't get it right the first time, but so far the do-over at a few different price points is working out great. Next we have the AIDA64 results, nothing out of the ordinary here to talk about so let’s move straight on to the gaming benchmarks. The results are in and they are good, very good, dethroning the reigning champion of 3 years, the X370 Titanium, is deserving of applause thermal load balancing is clearly not an issue here either despite there being no heatpipe, I would still like to see one on every board though especially the ones that have very minimal VRM heatsinks. I did also peek at chipset temperatures and with an idle load and default fan speed (none) for me it runs a little warm at 54c, this is quite typical for an X570 chipset but an extremely minimal 15% of the chipset fans maximum RPM will drop that temp to about 43c which is much better. Do the chipset a favour and use some nice thermal paste with a tiny amount of airflow it’ll thank you for it. Military style with Pre-installed IO shielding, tuned for better performance by Core Boost, DDR4 Boost, M.2 Shield Frozr, Wi-Fi 6, Frozr Heatsink Design, Lightning Gen4 I am absolutely elated by the fact the Tomahawk is not loaded with LEDs but the placement of the few LEDs the board does have I don’t like, MSI for reasons that I’m quite sure absolutely nobody can fathom still insist on placing the LEDs on the rear of the board at the edge near the DIMM banks, this position someone clearly has a real turn on for heh... lights, turn on and off, yes, another intended pun. The most logical place to put LEDs if you are going to use them is somewhere you can’t easily illuminate yourself if you want to, like as part of the shroud over the rear IO like on the X470 GPC (you’re going to see this board referenced a lot). Finally coming to the M.2 slots I am pleased to see both of them have a heatsink, you either include heatsinks for every M.2 slot you have on the board or don’t include any there is no halfway house here because people like to match things like that up.Right, to the RMAA results the first two charts are for people less experienced with audio to show more clearly what is considered good and bad the Xonar will go first; Appreciate the detail of the review but disagree strongly with your priorities and I'll be buying this board anyway. Our primary focus will be on testing VRM thermal performance as this is a key differentiator among these motherboards that will house a powerful new generation Ryzen processor. The VRM is not something that can be easily upgraded either. But before we jump into that, we should note that the Tomahawk does offer some new features over the Gaming Edge such as 2.5 Gbit networking, an additional USB 3.2 Gen 2 USB port and the Wi-Fi has been upgraded to Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 with Bluetooth 5.0. Other than that, it's very similar to what we saw before in terms of design, VRM excluded, of course. Unsurprisingly there is nothing unusual or out of place here, I will make a note that the newer AMD drivers look to have fixed Gears 5 performance at 1080p where it has jumped about 10FPS. Tomb Raider results are also interesting as the system managed 121FPS average for both 1080p and 1440p.

How I OC has changed a bit since the R7 1700 days I mainly now look to optimise CPU frequency with required voltage, in this area the X570 Tomahawk performed well getting up to 4200MHz with 1.35v, the X470 Carbon couldn’t manage this with even up to 1.4v which is curious given that the board has a VRM that is still pretty strong so without more time it’s difficult to say what the issue here was. Memory results are as good as you can expect from a 2700X really so unsurprisingly all is square here between the Tomahawk and Carbon. When compared to the Gaming Edge, the board the Tomahawk is replacing, we see a 48 degree drop in PCB temperature. It's also 15 degrees cooler than the TUF Gaming and 5 degrees cooler than the Aorus Elite which performs very well under this load. Now for testing, my RMAA results will differ from most as I test with the system loaded not idle because this is when EMI and crosstalk potential is going to be at the highest levels, and guess what sorts of scenarios this happens in, Yup, gaming, so testing this way will give you a more accurate representation of how the audio will perform in actual usage and why I test the audio with a gaming benchmark in addition to RMAA. AUDIO BOOST: Reward your ears with studio grade sound quality for the most immersive gaming experience

MAG X570S TOMAHAWK MAX WIFI

By default MSI uses a 500 KHz CPU switching frequency for both boards and Buildzoid calculates that at 1.2v with a 200A draw the Gaming Edge VRM puts out 46 watts of heat and that would explain why these boards run so hot given a 3950X will pull around 170-190A with PBO enabled. Meanwhile Buildzoid also calculates that the new Tomahawk board will generate just 17 watts of heat under the exact same conditions. That's over a 60% reduction in thermal output. Speaking of components capacitors on the board are standard looking through hole polymer, I’ll guess they have a lifetime guarantee of 5000hrs, but could be anywhere between 1000hrs and 5000hrs. I’d hope they are the upper end of that scale as pricing is negligible for much better caps, for example when looking on farnell.co.uk a 105c rated 6.3v Panasonic 560μF polymer through hole 5000hr capacitor is 25.9 pence per piece while a 6.3v 105c rated KEMET 560μF polymer through hole capacitor specified for a mere 2000hrs is 24.7 pence per piece. 1.2 pence for a much more durable capacitor is nothing at all so there’s no reason not to use higher life guarantee capacitors for extra durability.