MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk Review

ket

ket

Associate
OP
Joined
7 Aug 2018
Posts
49
That is the very reason, among others, why I didn't score the board above 66% Pennor ;) Given recent revelations among other things with GB such as PSUs that literally blow up and GB simply just trying to sweep that under the rug I honestly would not recommend anything GB, at all, for the forseeable future at this stage.
 
Associate
Joined
20 Dec 2021
Posts
3
Location
uk
Thank you for the detailed review.
I already have the MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk (6 months but due to medical problems only just about to turn on for first time) - Want to make the best of it.

I'm not expecting personal advice, but the existing review could perhaps do with an update that emphasises more of what you (would) do to improve some of its glaring weaknesses in audio and memory compatibility...
(Also perhaps consider vertically flipping the second 'laid bare' image to match the orientation of the first?)

Personally I'm not interested in extracting the last 1.5% of performance with tweaked memory settings etc.
Using a modern CPU (5600X) and not the latest components

> G.SKILL TRIDENT Z NEO 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3600MHz Dual Channel Kit
> NVIDIA Geforce RTX 3060 12GB Graphics Card (poor but stuck with it)
> 2 X WD_BLACK SN850 500GB M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD (Read: 7000MB/s | Write: 4100MB/s)

My goals are:
Better audio hardware/software - your recommendation? Ignore built in, but good alternative?
Likely mostly to care about clicking and intermods under load rather than ultimate performance I couldn't detect. So equalised and punchy but not necessarily audiophile.

Assume your suggestion for better audio hardware would avoid any Bios/default realtek codec bloat/dependency e.g. completely disable built in audio h/w and codecs.

Any impact on drivers and perhaps audio solution for an update to Windows 11 e.g. the curse of windows store updates you mentioned.

Can I avoid Dragon Centre all together - LEDs are not important
 
Last edited:

ket

ket

Associate
OP
Joined
7 Aug 2018
Posts
49
@Paul Baxter I do actually suggest what I would have done to make the board better in the review and even expand upon what I say in the review in another post ;), unfortunately there isn't anything that can be done to really improve the Tomahawks failings by the user. The best you can do with the on-board audio is try some modded Realtek drivers for a more complete audio package but those drivers are a serious pain in the arse to get working properly, in fact out of the 3-4 attempts I made I couldn't get the Nahimic or Sonic Studio software working the former would crash on launch and the latter would suffer some kind of driver timeout. The Creative suit seemed to work... but that's crap. Link for modded drivers. As for physical alternatives I'd say find yourself either a used Xonar DX 7.1 or Xonar SOAR, other sound cards are about on the level of the ALC1200 on the Tomahawk, but something like the Xonar AE for example is probably much better implemented on the PCB, no guarantees on that though I've not reviewed it and Asus have released some real turds in their later, "updated" and "revised" Xonar cards. The one thing you can do prior to building the system is remove the rear IO plate and use some flat nosed gripless pliers to ensure the brass nuts for the built-in WIFI are good and tight, during the review they came very loose and the antenna just flopped about like worms.

Probably my greatest annoyance about the board now though is that MSI released a beta firmware update with AGESA 1.2.0.3C August 27th and it is STILL in beta, compare that to even Asus who are FAR from perfect when it comes to firmware updates and for the X570 TUF Gaming they had a final version firmware with AGESA 1.2.0.3C August 17th, so not only were MSI 2 weeks slower the update they delivered was only beta, 3 months down the line MSI still can't release a final version. If anyone is to build an AM4 system right now the only X570 boards I'd recommend are the Asus TUF X570-Plus (weaker VRM, but better in every other way except SATA port layout and still plenty robust enough for a high end CPU)... and thats it. Manufacturers failed hard with the X570 boards, the "S" X570 models are absurdly overpriced for the few that are about, and many other X570 boards are just flat out not worth the money, there are certainly better boards you can get than the X570 TUF, but the more you spend the return on your investment drops dramatically the TUF is about 85-90% as good as some of the most expensive boards you can buy.

Gigabyte are a special case, and not the good kind, their X570 boards can, and do, spontaneously die with alarming regularity this has been going on for some time and in some cases the boards literally do not have hardware they advertise. At least with some revisions, I had a v1.1 X570 Aorus Pro I think it was intended for review (still don't know if I can be bothered to finish that review) that advertised a backup ROM chip on the product page of Gigabytes site, but on physical inspection of the board I had that backup chip was flat out AWOL from the PCB. Suffice to say Gigabyte did not take too kindly to me bringing this up publicly... I'll let you fill in the blanks of what happened next given their recent reputation of incompentence like ******* off all of China for a jab they made about their boards not being made in China, and trying to sweep under the rug PSUs they have been making that will literally blow up. Link for that. In short, never touch Gigabye regardless of if its for a mainboard, GPU, or PSU.

You can avoid Dragon Center entirely if you don't care about LED control, utilities like CPU-Z and HWInfo64 do exactly the same job, and more competently and in more detail. Should you want to use the LEDs however you can also look at Open RGB and Signal RGB. As for Windows 11, just avoid that completely for now its slower than W10 and has a plethora of bugs, IF the OS is fixed properly you're looking at a year down the line at least, in other words, the first or second major update.

I have a lot more reviews and articles to come, including putting ones I've already done into video form for my YT channel my problem is getting the time to do it.
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
20 Dec 2021
Posts
3
Location
uk
Thanks for taking the time to respond once again.

It seems to me that a serious Motherboard manufacturer should harness your skills to either review their early designs or encourage your more active participation.

I did have a number of your points in my previous reply until I culled them as TL;DR, particularly the beta bios. Downloaded latest beta and unzipped - it still didn't sound convincing!

Also looked at the Xonar AE but based on review comments that also looks like a nightmare - I'd expect the ability to deliver at least real 5.1 and Dolby ATMOS support.
Eventually compromised and chose the Creative Soundblaster Z SE mainly for ongoing support reasons for the next few years
 
Last edited:

ket

ket

Associate
OP
Joined
7 Aug 2018
Posts
49
Thanks for taking the time to respond once again.

It seems to me that a serious Motherboard manufacturer should harness your skills to either review their early designs or encourage your more active participation.

I did have a number of your points in my previous reply until I culled them as TL;DR, particularly the beta bios. Downloaded latest beta and unzipped - it still didn't sound convincing!

Also looked at the Xonar AE but based on review comments that also looks like a nightmare - I'd expect the ability to deliver at least real 5.1 and Dolby ATMOS support.
Eventually compromised and chose the Creative Soundblaster Z SE mainly for ongoing support reasons for the next few years

@Paul Baxter some manufacturers do, Asrock, Mushkin memory, and ATi (before AMD bought them) all have in the past, not all that long ago I forwarded my thoughts to Powercolor on the 6800XT Red Devil they sent me as well as the 6700XT Hellhound on what I would have done differently, the latter of those I did have a very small amount of input on before it was released, I knew about that one a good while in advance of the rest of the tech world ;)

I'll be prodding MSI on that beta firmware, theres no excuses for it not being in a "final" state at this point, so perhaps some movement will happen there.

Indeed the Xonar AE isn't all that spectacular once you move past the fancy looking software but it is a solid baseline, the Xonar DX while having excellent hardware is limited by very old software and the SOAR while somewhat the best of both worlds is cumbersome needing its own power from a PCI-E 6 pin connection. Creative are subjectively worse though their hardware has regularly been scrutinised and criticised while their software has also been regularly pointed at for being sub-standard with a long list of driver bugs and bad support software and customer support while Creative have also been widely panned for intentional driver crippling of some of their older hardware in an attempt to force people to upgrade. Honestly right now the best thing anyone can do is make sure they get a mainboard with a well implemented audio solution because you get much better and far more regular driver updates with Realtek solutions and the accompanying audio software you'll get with many boards such as the Dolby packages or Sonic Studio, and to a lesser degree Nahimic 3 (it can be buggy and personally I find it inferior to Nahimic 2.5+) just blows whatever other audio solutions offer out of the water.
 
Back
Top Bottom