ASRock X570M Pro4 Micro-ATX Motherboard Review

ASRock Delivers A Rare Micro-ATX X570 Board

In the eight months since AMD and its partners released the X570 chipset for Ryzen processors, the tech press has left very few superlatives unused in their assessments of the 3000 series processors and the new chipset. The performance of the latest Ryzen chips and boards has been astounding and has knocked the blue team back on their heels.

With that said, the launch hasn’t been without a small share of controversy. The Ryzen Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature still doesn’t seem to work as well as it should. Various AGESA versions have seemed to fix, unfix, and then fix again the boost issues, and X570 does require extra attention to cooling the chipset as it runs hot.

The thing is this series is so good that those problems almost don’t matter. No matter what your price range or needs, there is a Ryzen 3000 processor and motherboard combo for you…unless you are a fan of the Jan Brady of motherboard form factors, Micro-ATX.

Micro-ATX: The Middle Child

Micro-ATX always seems to be left out. It’s just not as hot, sexy, and fully featured as Full Size ATX, and not as cute and tiny as Mini-ITX. It’s a crying shame because Micro-ATX has the ability to support more devices, and provide better power delivery than Mini-ITX, and still fit in a much smaller enclosure than a full ATX motherboard.

There are also some excellent cases for Micro-ATX which aren’t much larger than many of the ITX cases on the market right now.

ASRock seems to be known for occasionally trying a few unconventional things with their motherboards, and when X570 was announced, they decided to be the only major motherboard manufacturer that would provide a Micro-ATX form factor in the new chipset.

At the time of writing there are only two Micro-ATX motherboards available in this chipset; the first of which, the ASRock X570M Pro4, we will take an in depth look at here.

Motherboard Layout

The ASRock X570M Pro4 is a full width (9.6 inch) Micro-ATX form factor board. It has a black PCB which ASRock calls ‘Sapphire Black’. The PCB itself is 2oz copper layered, but doesn’t feel quite as heavy as some premium boards.

The VRM heatsink and the first M.2 slot have bright aluminum heatsinks, and the X570 chipset is actively cooled by a 40mm fan. The design of the VRM heatsink leaves a bit to be desired; it’s basically just a shaped piece of aluminum with a few grooves. Function seems to have taken a backseat to form on this, as ASRock apparently wanted a certain appearance, and for it to double as the rear I/O cover.

This design does not have appear to offer sufficient surface area of the heatsink to help it dissipate the heat being generated by the 10 power phases. The X570M Pro4 also has only a single 8 pin ATX12V CPU power connector which, in combination with the VRM heatsink design, makes me wonder if it would be up to overclocking either the Ryzen 9 3900 or 3950x.

Speaking of the heat generating components on this motherboard, that brings us to the X570 chipset. The thin 40mm fan is situated in the center of yet another aluminum block that doesn’t do much in the way of design to increase surface area, and the fan is covered by a pretty restrictive grill.

The tiny fan, grill, and heatsink design made me a bit leery, but the chipset temps are actually well managed, and I was able to program a custom fan profile in the bios that keeps the noise to a minimum.

At system boot however, before the profiles go active, this little fan spins up to 5800 rpm, and emits a pretty intense, shrill, whine until the profile loads, then it’s fine. Once the profile is active, and under even intense usage, I have not noticed any noise from this fan.

The PCIe x 16 GPU slot is nicely spaced away from the CPU socket, and reinforced with steel to help support large GPUs. It was a pleasant surprise to see a Micro-ATX board with Three M.2 slots, two of which are full PCIe Gen 4×4 M.2 slots, the third is reserved for an M.2 wi-fi card.

Sadly, there is no USB 3.2 Gen 2 internal header present on the motherboard, although the rear I/O has both 3.2 Gen 2 Type A and C ports. The board also has five fan headers, in addition to the plug for the chipset fan. Each of these can be set in the UEFI to be controlled with either PWM or DC, and use either the CPU, or Motherboard temperature.

There are eight SATA 3 ports and, like most modern boards, there are both RGB and ARGB headers to control your various RGB accessories.

The audio choices ASRock made on this motherboard seem a bit odd to me. It uses PCB shielding for the chipset and ELNA caps, and the Realtek ALC1200 Audio codec pack, and supports 7.1 channel HD audio. Some real effort was made to insure good quality audio here, but the rear I/O only supports analog line in, microphone in, and stereo out.

There is also no SPDIF out, which was a bit puzzling. The audio controller supports 7.1 channel HD audio, but the board only supports stereo output. Honestly though, most people buying this, or almost any motherboard are only hooking up to stereo out, or they’re going to use an external audio solution through USB.

Despite the lack of an internal USB 3.2 Gen 2 header, and the odd choices in audio output, the ASRock X570M Pro4 is a pretty feature-packed motherboard, especially for a Micro-ATX form factor. The end user is really giving up very few features, if any, to a similarly priced ATX model.

UEFI

While I may have had some issues with a few of the hardware choices with this motherboard, I’m pretty content with the newest ASRock UEFI interface. The interface is really easy and intuitive to navigate. The main screen gives you the relevant data you might need on initial entry into the UEFI before you start digging deeper.

The OC Tweaker page is also pretty straightforward with all the settings you’ll need for setting XMP and a basic overclock. If you want to get a little more advanced, the DRAM timing and Voltage and Load Line calibration are in clearly labeled sub menus.

The Advanced Menu page gives you access to your more in depth configuration settings, including some really deep dives into advanced overclocking.

If you go to the AMD Overclocking sub menu from the Advanced tab, you will be presented with a user agreement that you can agree to if you want to tweak the processors power management, duration, and limits beyond what is intended by AMD. Honestly, unless you’re competitively overclocking, using LN2, or some other extreme cooler, I don’t see the need for most people to delve into this.

The UEFI boot menu is also very intuitive and clear:

I don’t see why anyone who had spent much time in other UEFIs or even older BIOS’s should have much trouble navigating the ASRock interface.

Performance

After getting the test bench configured, I set to getting some performance numbers. First, I ran Cinebench R20 at stock, then overclocked. The first thing I noticed in my stock testing was the extremely high temps of the processor. During the Cinebench R20 run, the processor reached 96 C at stock. With all voltage and clock settings at default in the UEFI, the board is pumping 1.44 volts to the CPU, and despite the fact that the load line calibration is at its lowest setting by default (the largest amount of V droop), temps were at the edge of safe.

This is not the first I’ve heard of X570 boards feeding too much voltage at stock settings with 3000 series processors, but I didn’t expect it to be this extreme. I immediately set to overclocking and never looked back. At my 4.4 ghz, 1.34 volt settings, the CPU never topped 84 C in any test, and the Cinebench scores show that there was a substantial performance gain as well as better managed temps.

Ryzen 3000 CPU overclocking and stability are very dependent upon temperature, and once you try to go past 1.35-1.4 volts, the temps rise too much with little additional return in clock speeds, and a large drop in reliability. I was able to take a Ryzen 7 3800x to 4.4ghz stable on all cores at 1.34 volts using only the basic OC Tweaker and standard voltage control within the UEFI. I could not get any more out of the chip.

I have previously seen other 3800x processors get close to 4.5ghz all core, but from my understanding, most hit a wall around 4.3 GHz. Unfortunately, not having access to either another X570 board, or another Ryzen 3000 processor on hand, I can’t say if this CPU or this motherboards power delivery was the limiting factor. Still, 4.4 GHz all core is quite good for Ryzen 3000. As mentioned before, I just don’t know that I’d be comfortable with this board trying that with a 12 or 16 core processor.

The system basically went out and put down impressive numbers in all the standard system benchmarks. Again, not having another X570 board to do a direct comparison with did complicate things, but judging by the memory bandwidth numbers from SiSoft Sandra 2020, it performs right in line with the X570 motherboards that my fellow PC Perspective reviewer Morry has tested (ASRock X570 Steel Legend, ASUS ROG Strix X570-E Gaming, ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus).

Conclusion

Despite some of the questionable design choices ASRock made with the X570M Pro4 motherboard, the board is laid out very well, has a nice UEFI, and performs at least on par with its reasonable (for X570) price point. MSRP is $185.99, but I’ve monitored the actual selling price to fluctuate between $155 and $180 USD (current price is down to $149 – Ed.). The lack of an internal USB 3.2 Gen 2 is disappointing, and the VRM heatsink is just a poor design. The audio I/O choices are a bit odd, but certainly no deal breaker.

ASRock X570M Pro4: $149.99, Amazon.com

In the end, if you have a Micro-ATX enclosure that you love, and you want the benefits that X570 offers, you have few choices. But if you’re planning on 8 cores or less, you could certainly choose the ASRock X570M Pro4 and not have to worry. With the dwindling popularity of Micro-ATX, it is a bit of a niche product, and the questions regarding the power delivery and VRM cooling remain on the top tier Ryzen 9 Processors.

But with anything from a Ryzen 3600 up to 3800x, in combination with fast storage, a good GPU, and a nice Micro-ATX case, the X570M Pro4 would serve as an excellent base for a gaming or production PC. If that’s your use case, then it’s an excellent board, but I just have a difficult time recommending it considering the unknowns of the power delivery with the 12 and 16 core Ryzen 9 CPUs.