MSI's X570 Tomahawk May Become Go-To OC Board??

[RBImGuy]

I would say that given your dealings with the companies you are perhaps not completely unbiased in this discussion. There is a lot of evidence to support that MSi have behaved unethically. Are they only one in the industry doing so? No, but they have done it enough to get special attention at the moment...

well they did fix the x570 and b550 is now solid mboards with good reviews.
Looking at various offerings MSI has there, they fixed the initial impact with their new design.
cutting corners is never good.

 

[Mensy]

is this board worth £220 ? i currently have a Msi b450I Gaming and looking to upgrade

 

[Stewart Copson]

is this board worth £220 ? i currently have a Msi b450I Gaming and looking to upgrade

Fantastic board can't fault it!!

 

[ScottiB]

FYI, I haven't watched that video yet. I will, I just haven't had the time yet, I'm working on some product dev atm so this is purely a personal response to this statement rather than a commentary on any recent developments.

I would say that given your dealings with the companies you are perhaps not completely unbiased in this discussion.

I would say the opposite. I pride myself in staying neutral and because it's OcUK who pay my salary I have no reason to be otherwise. If you look at OcUK as a whole, my system specs, the boards that we tend to recommend, the boards that we tend to use and the boards that we sell most of. It's obvious to most that our relationships with Asus and Gigabyte are much stronger than MSI. MSI aren't exactly a majority contributor to our turnover. Until recently they were even behind Asrock on that front.

I use almost no MSI in my system specs, so if I wasn't unbiased you'd think that I'd take this opportunity to bash MSI, a brand which one of my major system competitors relies on, wouldn't you?

In the spirit of full disclosure, many years ago I was MSI's UK marketing manager which is how I knew internal details of the company structure. However, a lot has changed since then, the UK laptop team was a whole new entity created after I left and none of my former colleagues or friends are involved in that side of the business. In fact, I'm fairly sure that all of the people that I had personal relationships with all moved on from the company.

I don't wish to disparage any media in particular because I have no knowledge of their internal relationships but, as I said before, media make their money from advertising agreements with specific brands and video hit driven monetisation. Surely, they have more motivation not to be unbiased than I do?

 

[Richdog]

FYI, I haven't watched that video yet. I will, I just haven't had the time yet, I'm working on some product dev atm so this is purely a personal response to this statement rather than a commentary on any recent developments.


I would say the opposite. I pride myself in staying neutral and because it's OcUK who pay my salary I have no reason to be otherwise. If you look at OcUK as a whole, my system specs, the boards that we tend to recommend, the boards that we tend to use and the boards that we sell most of. It's obvious to most that our relationships with Asus and Gigabyte are much stronger than MSI. MSI aren't exactly a majority contributor to our turnover. Until recently they were even behind Asrock on that front.

I use almost no MSI in my system specs, so if I wasn't unbiased you'd think that I'd take this opportunity to bash MSI, a brand which one of my major system competitors relies on, wouldn't you?

In the spirit of full disclosure, many years ago I was MSI's UK marketing manager which is how I knew internal details of the company structure. However, a lot has changed since then, the UK laptop team was a whole new entity created after I left and none of my former colleagues or friends are involved in that side of the business. In fact, I'm fairly sure that all of the people that I had personal relationships with all moved on from the company.

Scotti, I think you may be over-simplifying what bias is. Bias is not measures solely by who pays your salary or whose products you own, nor is bias always conscious. I had already gathered from your post that you had familiarity with MSI, and am not surprised to see that you were an employee, though I didn't expect something as lofty as marketing manager for the entire UK. This major role, and your time and relationships there, will inevitably cause some bias, whether you realise it or not.

I don't wish to disparage any media in particular because I have no knowledge of their internal relationships but, as I said before, media make their money from advertising agreements with specific brands and video hit driven monetisation. Surely, they have more motivation not to be unbiased than I do?

It really depends on the media outlet as to how influenced they are by the companies they review and that is well discussed in the above video. Comparing the bias of media as worse should not be used as a measure of your own.

To be clear, I am not accusing you of anything and I do not think you have done anything wrong, I am talking only about the existence of bias and how it can influence our views.

 

[ScottiB]

This major role, and your time and relationships there, will inevitably cause some bias, whether you realise it or not.

Ironically, until recently, the guys here though that I hated MSI because, as I said, they were a tiny percentage of my business and I showed little interest in resolving this. I do what I think is best for my business, and that's giving the customers the right range of products.

To be clear, I am not accusing you of anything and I do not think you have done anything wrong, I am talking only about the existence of bias and how it can influence our views.

I appreciate that. I still don't think that I'm biased towards MSI in the slightest, if anything I'd call myself a bit of an Asus fanboi, if any bias exists it's towards my motherboard category as a whole, which is why I felt the need to point out that there is no crossover between their component business teams and their laptop teams.

I didn't expect something as lofty as marketing manager for the entire UK.

Not really lofty, I was the only guy in the marketing team for most of that time
I was always more of a technical marketing than corporate. I could talk to reviewers on their level and feedback to HQ. One of the reasons why I used to test most of the review samples myself before sending them was so that I could avoid having to have this sort of difficult conversation following a poor review.

Part of the reason why I left MSI was that, despite growing the social media channels massively and MSI being one of the top gaming laptop brands in the UK at the time, the HQ Laptop team wanted to take direct control of the UK marketing activity and I did not agree that their approach was suitable for our market and I didn't like being stuck in the middle of that.

 

[Mensy]

Fantastic board can't fault it!!

Just not sure i will see any benefit from upgrading

 

[ScottiB]

Just not sure i will see any benefit from upgrading

more connectivity, more expandability, better VRM capability and better future upgrade support.

 

[Smiffy-UK]

more connectivity, more expandability, better VRM capability and better future upgrade support.

Agreed, absolutely love this motherboard! If you can get it for £220 inc. Shipping then I'd do it if you can afford it. I managed to sell my B450 mortar max for £80, and paid £85 for that from here!

 

[Scotty pro]

Can anyone that is using this board verify that there are no problems with sound. I have a B450 Gaming plus max and I cannot get any sound from either the front or back outputs. Seems to be a common problem with the Realtek chip on the board.

 

[Stewart Copson]

Can anyone that is using this board verify that there are no problems with sound. I have a B450 Gaming plus max and I cannot get any sound from either the front or back outputs. Seems to be a common problem with the Realtek chip on the board.

Got it plugged into my 5.1 surround system and all working fine but isn't it possible there is a hardware issue with your current board?

 

[Scotty pro]

Got it plugged into my 5.1 surround system and all working fine but isn't it possible there is a hardware issue with your current board?

don't know if it is hardware or the MSI drivers from the ewebsite. Seems loads of folks have had problems with the drivers and Nahimic not working on Windows 10. Funny though that I can get sound over display port from my Sapphire RX GPU but not from the rear ports or even headphone socket.

 

[JRS]

Both the rear ports and headphone port on my case connected to the HDA header working fine here.

 

[bris]

Ironically, until recently, the guys here though that I hated MSI because, as I said, they were a tiny percentage of my business and I showed little interest in resolving this. I do what I think is best for my business, and that's giving the customers the right range of products.

I appreciate that. I still don't think that I'm biased towards MSI in the slightest, if anything I'd call myself a bit of an Asus fanboi, if any bias exists it's towards my motherboard category as a whole, which is why I felt the need to point out that there is no crossover between their component business teams and their laptop teams.


Not really lofty, I was the only guy in the marketing team for most of that time
I was always more of a technical marketing than corporate. I could talk to reviewers on their level and feedback to HQ. One of the reasons why I used to test most of the review samples myself before sending them was so that I could avoid having to have this sort of difficult conversation following a poor review.

Part of the reason why I left MSI was that, despite growing the social media channels massively and MSI being one of the top gaming laptop brands in the UK at the time, the HQ Laptop team wanted to take direct control of the UK marketing activity and I did not agree that their approach was suitable for our market and I didn't like being stuck in the middle of that.

As a business man myself I can say that bias isn't about brand loyalty, bias is about the brands that give the best margins at any given time so we push those products regardless of which brands we prefer.

Scotti, I think you may be over-simplifying what bias is. Bias is not measures solely by who pays your salary or whose products you own, nor is bias always conscious. I had already gathered from your post that you had familiarity with MSI, and am not surprised to see that you were an employee, though I didn't expect something as lofty as marketing manager for the entire UK. This major role, and your time and relationships there, will inevitably cause some bias, whether you realise it or not.



It really depends on the media outlet as to how influenced they are by the companies they review and that is well discussed in the above video. Comparing the bias of media as worse should not be used as a measure of your own.

To be clear, I am not accusing you of anything and I do not think you have done anything wrong, I am talking only about the existence of bias and how it can influence our views.

As a business man myself I can say that bias isn't about brand loyalty, bias is about the brands that give the best margins at any given time so we push those products regardless of which brands we prefer.
However in this case it would be fair to assume bias given the past relationship with MSi, it's just human nature to favour things you have had a close relationship with so assumption of bias is fair whether it's true or not.

 

[TriSuit666]

Oh dear!

Gamer's Nexus:

"Unlike MSI, we have ethics!"



Fair play to him.

It's one of the reasons I pay attention to his website, more so than most of the others who proudly display adverts for their major sponsors. I just know they are likely to never give a negative review of said companies product.

Although it's a little annoying Steve didn't give credit to the Hardware Unboxed lads who did the video first and almost two weeks prior to GN's video, apart from a seemingly snidy remark buried in the middle of the video.

Hardware Unboxed had to say something themselves in the comments.

 

[Richdog]

Although it's a little annoying Steve didn't give credit to the Hardware Unboxed lads who did the video first and almost two weeks prior to GN's video, apart from a seemingly snidy remark buried in the middle of the video.

Hardware Unboxed had to say something themselves in the comments.

You make it sound like Hardware Unboxed has said negative things about Gamers Nexus... I saw only supportive comments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6BXwCJtaZE&t=2s

Fortunately, most the companies realize it's a bad idea to sue media over objectively backed statements. ASRock blacklisted us as well, it seems, also because of our Z490 content. Same boat! We even told them we had good things to say about B550, but they stonewalled us. Some companies are too stuck in the past to realize that it's best for everyone to work together -- they'll forget about YEARS of good things that have been said after one critical review drops. It's absolutely insane.

@Gamers Nexus Pretty funny, exact same story here about the B550 boards and their response, or lack of. Well done Asrock, I'm sure blacklisting Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed will help boost their dwindling sales.

Which specific comments are you referring to?

 

[Kelt]

Any thoughts I had of purchasing an Asrock mobo have gone out of the proverbial window after reading they blacklisted both Gamers Nexus AND Hardware Unboxed for daring to tell the truth, just about the only YT reviewers I pay any heed to!

 

[Mensy]

Agreed, absolutely love this motherboard! If you can get it for £220 inc. Shipping then I'd do it if you can afford it. I managed to sell my B450 mortar max for £80, and paid £85 for that from here!

Yea id have to try and sell my MSI B450I Gaming AC to help fund it. I think i might treat myself before i move all my current rig into its new case. Hopefully with the X570 cpu upgrade path i can at least get a good few years out of it

 

[Smiffy-UK]

Yea id have to try and sell my MSI B450I Gaming AC to help fund it. I think i might treat myself before i move all my current rig into its new case. Hopefully with the X570 cpu upgrade path i can at least get a good few years out of it

I'm very sure it'll sell, I think when I sold mine (after I had set my toma up) was a good time to sell as there wasn't many b450 boards new let alone very good condition like mine, mine wasn't 6 months old, I only got the x570 as I knew it'll last for a couple year at least was because of zen3 and now I'm thinking of not even bothering upgradeing come end of year, same with big navi. My decision is mainly due to the 3600 not even being utilised in what I use it for (gaming)

On this board I've managed to OC the IF, CPU and MEM, voltage for that is 1.5v daily, probably the best board I owned and I had an nforce 2 which I thought was the dogs swallocks back 18 or so years ago lol.

(edit the nforce 2 came out 2002,when I had left school lol!)

 

[clv101]

I still have an nForce 2 board.