If you are looking for an AMD motherboard under $200, the general advice would be to look for one of the many high-quality B550 products. However, it is important not to overlook the X570 version. While the basic chipset is a few years old, with the newly released X570S model, it may be time to consider AMD's top boards more seriously.

Importantly, the "S" in the new X570S nomenclature stands for quiet. With few exceptions, early generation X570 boards had annoying and noisy chipset fans. In addition to passive chipset cooling, the new X570S boards allow upgraded connectivity options, including Gigabit LAN and faster connectivity options than WiFi 6E.

The new ASRock X570S PG Riptide we are reviewing does not include these features, but then again, it is a $185 board, so don't get your hopes up. However, all of these boards lack key features that are unique to the X570 board.

And it all has to do with excellent PCIe 4.0 support.

The X570S Riptide, like all X570 boards, has a PCIe 4.0 x4 link between the CPU and chipset. This compares to the B550's PCIe 3.0 link. This means better performance when using two PCIe 4.0 drives or multiple PCIe expansion cards. This factor alone may be the deciding factor in considering the X570 chipset over a B550 board with similar performance.

The X570S Riptide may not be what you would call a feature-packed board, but it has most of the important features needed to run a top-spec gaming rig; only one of the two M.2 slots is covered by a heat sink, to be fair, Many high-performance SSD models nowadays ship with optional heatsinks.

There is no Wi-Fi, but there is an e-key slot for an optional card. There are seven fan headers around the board, two headers for USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, and one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C header.

RGB is minimal, with only a small PG logo on the chipset heatsink.

VRM is decent for a board in this class. While I wouldn't buy it to run a liquid nitrogen-cooled AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, a 10 phase 50A system is perfectly adequate for 99% of users, whether overclocked or not. A quick test with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X with PBO enabled, the peak VRM temperature was 53°C.

The heatsink is fairly basic, with no cooling capability in the two phases. The heatsinks are fairly basic and the two phases do not have cooling capabilities.

Rear I/O is reasonable for a board in this price range, with a free bracket for a Wi-Fi antenna, plus a PS/2 combo port, a CMOS clear button, and an HDMI 2.1 port for AMD's upcoming 5000 series APUs.

There is also a standard set of audio ports, including S/PDIF, but unfortunately they are driven by the outdated ALC897 codec; the ALC897 codec is obsolete as of 2021 and is not included on anything but cheap city boards. Networking is handled by a Killer E3100 2.5G controller. Pure Gigabit is rapidly disappearing; USB ports include eight Type-A and C USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, four Gen 1 ports, and two 2.0 ports. Overall, a good selection of ports.

As one would expect from a mature platform with years of design tweaks and BIOS microcode updates, the performance of the X570-based motherboards is within 1% to 2% of each other or within the margin of error.

The ASRock Riptide tends to be a bit slower for productivity-based tasks, but proves to be excellent under gaming loads; recent experience with ASRock boards has typically provided very good memory bandwidth, perhaps the last 0.1% of the BIOS polishing is probably still to come. Overall, there is very little to complain about and gamers will be very happy.

I didn't spend much time overclocking as that is not the focus of this board. OC options are very limited anyway; a quick test with PBO went well, but I thought the fan ramp curve was a bit aggressive. But nothing that can't be fixed with a little tweaking; if you can run DDR4-3600 RAM using XMP and Infinity Fabric 1:1, you can get all the performance of a board 2-3x the price.

There are two schools of thought in evaluating the X570S Riptide. It depends on what components are used. As mentioned earlier, if you have two PCIe 4.0 drives and want to get their full potential with or without other PCIe 4.0 expansion cards, then the X570 chipset is for you.

On the other hand, if you have only one drive and one PCIe 4.0 GPU, it is worth considering a B550 board, especially one with otherwise excellent features, such as ASRock's B550 PG Velocita.

Despite the apparent age of the chipset, X570S boards have viable upgrade paths. For example, the Ryzen 9 5950X and, more excitingly, if or when AMD releases a stacked cache model. Add to that the fact that PCIe 4.0 is becoming increasingly common, further strengthening the advantage the X570S Riptide has over its B550 competitors.

The X570S Riptide is a solid low-cost product at the heart of a top-spec PCIe 4.0 system. While it won't win the features battle with more expensive boards, it is highly recommended if you are looking for an affordable motherboard for a high-speed gaming system. The ASRock X570S PG Riptide is a strong budget contender for the best AMD motherboards, especially if you want something quiet and well-constructed, but without the extras that won't help your performance.