X570 Tomahawk vs Unify?

Associate
Joined
8 Nov 2006
Posts
424
Location
Scotland
Hi guys, my Strix Gaming-F motherboard has died and ASUS RMA process has been doing my head in (customer service is awful) and now looking like a 4~6+ week repair job.

Out of my whole build its probably been my biggest regret picking this mobo as the Gaming-E is better and now with what's looking like a lengthy sideline for my PC waiting on a potential repair I want to buy something else and I'll just sell this Strix whenever it gets repaired.

Was tempted to scrounge for a Dark Hero, then I began looking at the Aorus Master but low and behold there is a lot of advice online to look at recent MSI efforts (not their earlier efforts which are apparently terrible).

I'm watercooled and have b-die/5950x so I'm into my overclocking. Good VRMs and good memory controllers are a must. It seems the Unify might slightly pip the Tomahawk here but OCUK has some Tomahawk B-stock at an amazing price that might be worth a punt. Just hope they wouldn't be in really poor condition or missing anything important.

I don't need SLI, I have a 2080Ti that will become a 3080 later this year. I have one PCIE 4.0 NVMe drive (bought 2TB for longevity) and I might get a second later this year. But likely no more after that. Wireless isn't needed, I connect over LAN.

RGB I couldn't care less about. My waterblocks and some of my fans are already a lightshow if needs be, and with my Strix F one of my radiators at the rear of my case (120mm) already covered a bit of the onboard mobo RGB.

Just really looking for raw performance/overclockability. It doesn't need to be either MSI if anyone else has other recommendations, these two just pop up often and are a bit cheaper than Asus/Gigabtye flagship mobos.

Cheers!
 
I'm in a very similar boat to you, have similar requirements for the board, and these two exact models are the ones I've been looking most closely at. (also looking at the same OCUK B-Stock boards but they've got plenty in so no issues lol)

There are also B550 Unify boards which represent far better value than X570 as they're retailing for around £175, but still have extremely tough VRMs and are among the best boards in existence for overclocking. I've been put off the Unify models due to widespread complaints about coil whine and quality control.

I don't see any point in going for X570 Unify over the Tomahawk to be honest, unless you can get one for well below £200. For strict VRM quality and overclocking, many B550 boards (Tomahawk/Gaming Edge/Gigabyte Aorus Pro/Master etc etc) are equal or better than the X570's so very likely the better option for you if you don't need the X570 specific features (basically just more than 1 PCIe4 lane and more USB slots).

And lastly be aware if you aren't already that an X570 'S' chipset refresh is rolling out as we speak, from all the manufacturers. Stock should hit UK shelves any day now which gives you more options plus should bring down the prices of older X570 boards nicely. Personally the only reason I haven't bought an X570 Tomahawk yet is waiting for this X570S rollout so I can get a better deal.
 
Hi mate for your needs I'd look at the msi x570 tomahawk got one in daughters pc great board also have a look at the gigabyte x570 elite I've used 3 of them
 
I'm in the exact same boat as you, have similar requirements for the board, and these two exact models are the ones I've been looking most closely at. (also looking at the same OCUK B-Stock boards but they've got plenty in so no issues lol)

There are also B550 Unify boards which represent far better value than X570 as they're retailing for around £175, but still have extremely tough VRMs and are among the best boards in existence for overclocking. I've been put off the Unify models due to widespread complaints about coil whine and quality control.

I don't see any point in going for X570 Unify over the Tomahawk to be honest, unless you can get one for well below £200. For strict VRM quality and overclocking, many B550 boards (Tomahawk/Gaming Edge/Gigabyte Aorus Pro/Master etc etc) are equal or better than the X570's so very likely the better option for you if you don't need the X570 specific features (basically just more than 1 PCIe4 lane and more USB slots).

And lastly be aware if you aren't already that an X570 'S' chipset refresh is rolling out as we speak, from all the manufacturers. Stock should hit UK shelves any day now which gives you more options plus should bring down the prices of older X570 boards nicely. Personally the only reason I haven't bought an X570 Tomahawk yet is waiting for this X570S rollout so I can get a better deal.

Is there? Hmm, might need to take a look. Only issue I believe turned me off B550 boards when I bought this Strix is I thought they only had 1 NVMe 4.0 slot for storage. While I do only have 1 NVMe 4.0 drive right now as I said I think I'm going to buy another 1~2TB later this year.

But if the overclocking performance is stellar on some B550 boards it might change my mind if the only diffence is one NVMe slot is 3.0.

Asus have finally decided after a million back and forths to let me know they won't handle RMAs on consumer motherboards and I need to go back to my original retailer lol. I guess this might escalate the process anyway. I bought this mobo September last year from a well known high street retailer and I'll print off my Asus email, online web receipt and take a visit to them tomorrow when I have time. If they can exchange/repair or gift receipt, great, won't be waiting 4~6 weeks which I read for Asus RMAs online (I guess some of these horror stories might be from America or it must be specific products in UK if Asus don't do consumer motherboards on RMA in UK).

My biggest drive to make this topic is I don't want to be without my main pc for months and it's been a niggle in my mind to change this X570F gaming mobo at some point anyway. Was going to hold off for next generation, or maybe even the S boards, but no chipset fan doesn't really bother me. Never heard it on my Strix, maybe in part due to me being all watercooled, so unless the chipset fans are awful on other boards waiting for S to probably have to pay premium day 1 is a bit *shrug*

Seems good deals are out there on B550 or X570 stock of the moment. It's just what do I go for. Likely buying this from OCUK so that's why I clocked the Tomahawk B-stock maybe being worth a punt. But I'll look into some B550 boards as well.
 
Hi mate for your needs I'd look at the msi x570 tomahawk got one in daughters pc great board also have a look at the gigabyte x570 elite I've used 3 of them

What is the main difference over the Elite and the Master other than a much nicer price on the wallet? I've read some horror stories about Gigabyte BIOS issues, especially with the Master, so it's again trying to weigh up what to go for.

Good feedback on the Tomahawk though!
 
Is there? Hmm, might need to take a look. Only issue I believe turned me off B550 boards when I bought this Strix is I thought they only had 1 NVMe 4.0 slot for storage. While I do only have 1 NVMe 4.0 drive right now as I said I think I'm going to buy another 1~2TB later this year.

But if the overclocking performance is stellar on some B550 boards it might change my mind if the only diffence is one NVMe slot is 3.0.

Asus have finally decided after a million back and forths to let me know they won't handle RMAs on consumer motherboards and I need to go back to my original retailer lol. I guess this might escalate the process anyway. I bought this mobo September last year from a well known high street retailer and I'll print off my Asus email, online web receipt and take a visit to them tomorrow when I have time. If they can exchange/repair or gift receipt, great, won't be waiting 4~6 weeks which I read for Asus RMAs online (I guess some of these horror stories might be from America or it must be specific products in UK if Asus don't do consumer motherboards on RMA in UK).

My biggest drive to make this topic is I don't want to be without my main pc for months and it's been a niggle in my mind to change this X570F gaming mobo at some point anyway. Was going to hold off for next generation, or maybe even the S boards, but no chipset fan doesn't really bother me. Never heard it on my Strix, maybe in part due to me being all watercooled, so unless the chipset fans are awful on other boards waiting for S to probably have to pay premium day 1 is a bit *shrug*

Seems good deals are out there on B550 or X570 stock of the moment. It's just what do I go for. Likely buying this from OCUK so that's why I clocked the Tomahawk B-stock maybe being worth a punt. But I'll look into some B550 boards as well.

Check this LTT.com motherboard tier list which is extremely handy for a quick check of VRM quality and has most AM4 boards on it. You can see that the X570 Tomahawk is almost top-tier for VRMs, but there are several options at the same standard and many of them are cheaper. Gigabyte's offerings stand out as cheaper across the board but solid on VRMs.

If you're planning to make the second 1-2TB NVME a gen 4 one then yes you will need X570. But for any gen 3 drive you will get its full speeds on any B550 board. Personally I really don't see any need for a second gen 4, it feels excessive enough having one as my primary drive considering I don't use it for any heavy production tasks.

OCUK have B550's on B-stock too, e.g. B550 Tomahawk £120. If you just want a board urgently you won't go too wrong buying something now, but I do expect prices to be driven down at least £10-20 further when the new X570S models get stocked.
 
Check this LTT.com motherboard tier list which is extremely handy for a quick check of VRM quality and has most AM4 boards on it. You can see that the X570 Tomahawk is almost top-tier for VRMs, but there are several options at the same standard and many of them are cheaper. Gigabyte's offerings stand out as cheaper across the board but solid on VRMs.

If you're planning to make the second 1-2TB NVME a gen 4 one then yes you will need X570. But for any gen 3 drive you will get its full speeds on any B550 board. Personally I really don't see any need for a second gen 4, it feels excessive enough having one as my primary drive considering I don't use it for any heavy production tasks.

OCUK have B550's on B-stock too, e.g. B550 Tomahawk £120. If you just want a board urgently you won't go too wrong buying something now, but I do expect prices to be driven down at least £10-20 further when the new X570S models get stocked.

Ohh thanks, a list like that is exactly what I want to dig into! You're probably right about worrying about another NVMe 4.0. For the most part I just have to stop installing everything on Steam ‍lol.
 
What is the main difference over the Elite and the Master other than a much nicer price on the wallet? I've read some horror stories about Gigabyte BIOS issues, especially with the Master, so it's again trying to weigh up what to go for.

Good feedback on the Tomahawk though!
The master has better audio chip and extra nvme slot (3) also has wireless and bluetooth 2.5 gig lan aswell as 1gig intel lan 2 bios all nvme slots come with heatsink on the master only one comes with heatsink on elite oh and master has type c usb on rear of board aswell as front
 
The master has better audio chip and extra nvme slot (3) also has wireless and bluetooth 2.5 gig lan aswell as 1gig intel lan 2 bios all nvme slots come with heatsink on the master only one comes with heatsink on elite oh and master has type c usb on rear of board aswell as front

Thanks.

The B550 master still looks like a good option, just lose front USB C and the usual issues with PCIE4.0 NVMe drives if you want to run two.

Funnily enough the B550 Master seems to rank slightly better than the X570 on VRMs, not sure why. Also fanless, but I think all B550 are fanless. I guess the chipset fans got introduced on X570 due to the chipset handling one of the PCIE4.0 for NVMe drives.
 
The B550 master still looks like a good option, just lose front USB C and the usual issues with PCIE4.0 NVMe drives if you want to run two.

Funnily enough the B550 Master seems to rank slightly better than the X570 on VRMs, not sure why. Also fanless, but I think all B550 are fanless. I guess the chipset fans got introduced on X570 due to the chipset handling one of the PCIE4.0 for NVMe drives.

I'd personally buy the B550 Master right now (used £150) if not for the lack of front USB C. Boggles my mind how Gigabyte can make a £250+ motherboard so recently and just neglect to include such a simple thing.

The Tomahawk isn't even MSI's top tier product, that's why the Master eclipses it on VRMs. It's just a better quality board. Especially in terms of VRMs, the MSI equivalent to an Aorus Master would be the MEG Unify models.

The chipset fans are just mildly annoying and something that will likely break before anything else on the board. I'd rather get a board without one but the vast majority of people say they never even have to spin up.
 
If your into overclocking the memory then generally B550 boards are better in that regard over X570.

Thanks. This might tip me over to B550. I can live with the negatives over X570.

I'd personally buy the B550 Master right now (used £150) if not for the lack of front USB C. Boggles my mind how Gigabyte can make a £250+ motherboard so recently and just neglect to include such a simple thing.

The Tomahawk isn't even MSI's top tier product, that's why the Master eclipses it on VRMs. It's just a better quality board. Especially in terms of VRMs, the MSI equivalent to an Aorus Master would be the MEG Unify models.

The chipset fans are just mildly annoying and something that will likely break before anything else on the board. I'd rather get a board without one but the vast majority of people say they never even have to spin up.

Yeah its a bit annoying but I've thought how much I've used my USB C on the front of my case in the past year since I've had it and its not a lot.

The Tomahawk still gets some really good praise on VRMs mind you. MSI seem to have gone the other way, taken a lot of criticism for the VRM on their older boards and then ignored the RGB stuff and made their X570 offerings far better.
 
Thanks. This might tip me over to B550. I can live with the negatives over X570.



Yeah its a bit annoying but I've thought how much I've used my USB C on the front of my case in the past year since I've had it and its not a lot.

The Tomahawk still gets some really good praise on VRMs mind you. MSI seem to have gone the other way, taken a lot of criticism for the VRM on their older boards and then ignored the RGB stuff and made their X570 offerings far better.
The tomahawk is a great board mate to be fair
 
If I was building now and wanted a great overclocking board then I'd go for the B550 unify X.

It has a 16 phase VRM with 90 amp power stages vs the tomahawk that has 12 phase 60amp and also has the superior memory overclocking.
 
Last edited:
If I was building now and wanted a great overclocking board then I'd go for the B550 unify X.

It has a 16 phase VRM with 90 amp power stages vs the tomahawk that has 12 phase 60amp and also has the superior memory overclocking.

Hmmm interesting, hadn't clocked that with it only having two slots for memory. Ideal for me running 2x16GB DDR4.

I was going to go with the B550 Aorus Master but this looks like it could be the one.
 
Hmmm interesting, hadn't clocked that with it only having two slots for memory. Ideal for me running 2x16GB DDR4.

I was going to go with the B550 Aorus Master but this looks like it could be the one.

Yeah both the B550 Unify boards are extremely good for overclocking, the X version being the one with only 2 RAM slots for even more overclocking stability. If your priority is an overclocking beast of a board with also top-tier VRMs I don't think there's a better choice.
 
Yeah both the B550 Unify boards are extremely good for overclocking, the X version being the one with only 2 RAM slots for even more overclocking stability. If your priority is an overclocking beast of a board with also top-tier VRMs I don't think there's a better choice.

Only thing that confuses me a bit over X570 is the handling of NVMe drives. I know you can do one PCIe 4.0 on top slot and not impact graphics card. If I've got an older second NVMe drive that isn't PCIE 4.0 can I also use it and still preserve full speed graphics card? Like I literally don't care what speed this one runs at, its just used for backups/a bit of extra storage.

My main drive is a 2TB PCIe 4.0 which is enough for me.
 
Only thing that confuses me a bit over X570 is the handling of NVMe drives. I know you can do one PCIe 4.0 on top slot and not impact graphics card. If I've got an older second NVMe drive that isn't PCIE 4.0 can I also use it and still preserve full speed graphics card? Like I literally don't care what speed this one runs at, its just used for backups/a bit of extra storage.

My main drive is a 2TB PCIe 4.0 which is enough for me.
X570 you can not sure about b550
 
X570 you can not sure about b550

Oh the B550 is absolutely fine for my MP600 2TB. It will get PCIE 4.0 speeds along with a GPU at x16.

It's just wondering if I can throw my old NVMe drive in too and put it on PCIE 3.0 or lower and still maintain my MP600 at 4.0 and GPU at x16.

I read a generic comment suggesting something about a second NVMe drive is fine at 3.0 speeds while still retaining x16 on the GPU if you turn off some sata connections.

But at the end of the day if I can't keep my GPU at 16x with 2 NVMe drives ill just ditch the other and use an external USB drive. I "only" have a 2080Ti just now but it should be called up in the EVGA step up queue for a 3080 in the next few months.
 
Only thing that confuses me a bit over X570 is the handling of NVMe drives. I know you can do one PCIe 4.0 on top slot and not impact graphics card. If I've got an older second NVMe drive that isn't PCIE 4.0 can I also use it and still preserve full speed graphics card? Like I literally don't care what speed this one runs at, its just used for backups/a bit of extra storage.

My main drive is a 2TB PCIe 4.0 which is enough for me.
Both X570 and B550 will run the primary m.2 as PCIe gen 4.0, X570 will run the 2nd m.2 also as gen 4.0 but B550 will run it at gen 3.0.

Some B550s like the unify X also have an option to use lanes from the GPU to run a couple more M.2 slots as gen 4.0 and this cuts the GPU down to x8 but you don't have to do that and can just run the other M.2 slots at gen 3.0 and keep the GPU at X16.

So if you wanted to run 1 gen 4 and 1 gen 3 drive you would select chipset mode and use the gen 4.0 drive in M2_1 and the gen 3.0 drive in M2_4 for them both to run at full speed while also keeping the GPU at X16

Screenshot-118.png
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom