Joined in 2023 
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I don’t think many people will have too much to complain about with the Tomahawk in terms of looks it’s quite an attractive board that will look good in any build, if it wasn’t for the placement of the LEDs the board does have instead integrating them as part of the rear IO shroud it would have scored higher that is one area that isn’t easily customised with lighting so the board would have been well served by having some there, we just don’t need LEDs near the DIMM slots anymore MSI because we have these doodads you might have heard of that have been around a while now called LED RAM coolers and these fancy things called LED memory modules. Set Core Power Free: Extended Heatsink Design, Core Boost, Digital PWM IC, 8+4 pin CPU power connectors, GameBoost, DDR4 Boost And as for the VRMs, this is a top priority for me but what I didn't realise was that some B550 boards rival this board on VRMs (B550 Aorus Master is actually better). As shift focus down to the bottom half of the board, we find M.2 storage, PCIe slots, and the audio bits. Starting on the left side, we spy the naked Realtek ALC40480 codec and a few yellow Nichicon audio caps. Also visible is the audio separation line that’s designed to minimize EMI for the other parts of the board. I’m happy to see MSI went with a newer audio codec versus saving a few pennies on the last-generation codec. Most users will be perfectly content with the audio on the X570S Tomahawk.
Next we have the AIDA64 results, nothing out of the ordinary here to talk about so let’s move straight on to the gaming benchmarks. Glad you like the review, I always appreciate other viewpoints I'm not one of these delicate flowers that gets all emotional but there were specific reasons for my conclusions beyond the details I went into so I'll list them now; The last test is just a formality at this point and sees the comparison against the Xonar DX, in terms of performance anomalies there are none and in fact the graph paints a picture of a more stable frame rate compared to the ALC1200 with less extreme low points. When talking about audio quality there could not be more of a difference the Xonar simply blows the ALC1200 away in every imaginable metric, depth is better, the audio has clarity, there is a hefty punch. It has life and soul. If wifi\LAN is an important factor for someone you sure as hell won't be using the on-board AX200 or Realtek 8125B you're going to be using something much higer end like a 10GbE PCIe LAN card, for all other uses 1GbE ethernet is still ample.
In the middle of the board, we spy two M.2 slots (under the heatsinks) and four PCIe slots. Starting with the latter, there are two full-size slots, with the primary (top) slot reinforced to prevent shearing from heavy graphics cards. These two slots both support PCIe 4.0 speeds, with the top running a full x16 and the bottom running up to x4 speeds. This configuration supports AMD 2-Way CrossfireX. The two x1 slots get their bandwidth from the chipset and run up to PCIe 3.0 x1. We don't plan to make a thorough review of every aspect of the Tomahawk (see a full list of specs here), we've already tested over a dozen AMD X570 motherboards, and our recommendations can be found in the corresponding buying guide. If you want to run your own RMAA tests using the same criteria I do you can do so by following these steps; AUDIO BOOST: Reward your ears with studio grade sound quality for the most immersive gaming experience The firmware has slipped with the Tomahawk it’s quite good but pretty much unchanged from 3 years ago and the X370 boards, the UEFI is still on the buggy side even as of UEFI 1.5, MSI seem to be on the slow side with updates as well to fix these issues and memory compatibility with slightly older CPUs is not of the same standard as what Asus and Gigabyte offer, you want to test as many different ICs as you can, testing as many different memory brands as you can does not equate to testing as many IC types as you can. Asus and Gigabyte have fewer memory kits on their 2000 series QVL lists for X570 but they have tested a wider variety of memory ICs which will always lead to better compatibility. MSI could probably just transplant all the 2000 series CPU memory support from something like the X470 Gaming Pro Carbon and be done with these issues. I really don’t understand why MSI keep forcing the graph on users to set fan profiles either and not allowing direct key-in method as an option which is just much faster and easier.
When compared to the Gaming Edge, the board the Tomahawk is replacing, we see a 48 degree drop in PCB temperature. It's also 15 degrees cooler than the TUF Gaming and 5 degrees cooler than the Aorus Elite which performs very well under this load. Taking a closer look at the Tomahawk itself nothing stands out as being a particular weakness but I am going to point out the awful placement of the fan headers, you have one 4 pin header either side of the DIMM banks and the rest are lazily shuffled along the bottom of the board in a “just let the user deal with it” manner. We collectively established many years ago MSI that a fan header mid board for rear intake or exhaust fans is important, as is having one in the general area of the SATA ports for a side or front fan. On the plus side, with a total of 6 fan headers at least you still have more than the meagre 4 Gigabyte give you with the similarly priced Aorus Elite. Seven USB ports really isn't enough and I'll give a basic example. Keyboard & mouse, thats 2 USB ports gone. Happen to have a mouse mat that has LED lighting? Another USB port gone. Got a webcam and microphone? Thats two more USB ports gone. If you also happen to have a thumb drive you leave in for firmware updates theres another USB port gone for that as well. Thats 6 out of 7 ports gone right away, add to that a lot of people also have multiple external drives and one or two remaining USB ports isn't enough, not at all. We'll forget about the type C as you can plug a phone in to charge other ways.
Benchmarks
Taking a look at the VRM and DIMM banks topology the Tomahawk appears to be a Daisy Chain, the VRMs are the one real highlight in this tear down consisting of Intersil ISL99360 BFRZ rated for 60A, the controller is the Intersil ISL69247 IRZ which is 8 phase configured for 6+2 and also used are the Intersil ISL6617 phase doublers. On the other end of the scale we have the On-Semi 4C024 rated for 78A and 4C029 rated for 46A. These are all good components there’s nothing to really turn your nose up at here. For comparison the X470 GPC I reviewed used the IR35201 configured for 5+2, On-Semi 4C024 and 4C029 as well as the IR3598 phase doublers so there is actually very little difference between the two boards here.
For load testing we're running the Blender Gooseberry workload for an hour on an open air test bench with no direct air flow. Normally we also test inside a PC case but for the X570 testing we skipped this step as the plan was to re-test over twenty X570 motherboards once the Ryzen 9 3950X was released. As it turned out, the 3950X was no more power demanding than the 3900X, so a re-test wasn't warranted.So the question becomes do you really want that 2.5G LAN and WIFI all things considered? I’m going to bet that at this level the large majority of you are going to answer “no” to that meaning MSI could have gone with something like the Realtek L8200A which is a perfectly acceptable option and ditched the WIFI entirely to allow for improvements in much more important areas, like with the audio. I am by no means an audiophile nor am I the type of person to go spending thousands on equipment for near imperceptible differences but like everybody I do expect the hardware to do the task it is meant for to an acceptable standard and in this regard the MSI attempt at audio is not even close to acceptable on the Noise test or the THD + Noise and IMD + Noise tests, these are differences that you can hear through speakers or headphones and we will get in to this shortly.
Lightning Fast Game experience: PCIe 4.0, Lightning Gen4 x4M.2 with M.2 Shield Frozr, StoreMI, AMD Turbo USB 3.2Gen 2 On further investigation neither Nahimic 2.5+ or Nahimic 3 will function on the X570 Tomahawk meaning MSI haven’t paid a license fee to Nahimic for the Tomahawk, if you are a gamer who bought the Tomahawk and expected the Nahimic suit to be included I’d imagine you are feeling pretty miffed right about now getting this confirmation, and with good reason considering the price of the Tomahawk and the already cut down audio implementation. Perhaps in-use testing rather than a pure hardware analysis will reveal something that is not yet apparent. Moving on to talk about the VRM configuration, the X570 Tomahawk uses the ISL69247 controller of which six signals are taken for the vcore portion of the VRM and then doubled using ISL6617 phase doublers. Those 12 phases then connect to the stars of the show, a dozen ISL99360 60A power stages. In the previous Gaming Edge WiFi, MSI used an Infineon IR35201 controller with four signals for the vcore VRM, each doubled using an IR3598 phase doubler. Just above the DRAM slots is the first (of six) 4-pin fan headers. The CPU_FAN1 header here automatically detects PWM/DC fans and outputs up to 2A/24W. The PUMP_FAN1 defaults to PWM mode and outputs up to 2A/24W, which is more than adequate for most pumps. Last, SYS_FAN1-4 defaults to DC mode and supports up to 1A/12W. All headers support both modes, with adjustments made in the BIOS. There are plenty of headers and enough output to run your cooling system.
MAG X570S TOMAHAWK MAX WIFI
Things like this is why I test with a slightly older CPU to see if the level of standards you would expect extend to the slightly older hardware as well because most people do incremental upgrades when the time is right, not all at once so it is very common to see a slightly older CPU on a up to date mainboard either because upgrades are being done incrementally or because a certain CPU was significantly cheaper than the newer ones while still offering a large portion of the performance the newer CPUs offer. For 4. (wifi) I'm sure it performs the same as any AX200 WiFi 6 adapter on the market which is why I reject your criticism of it. I never thought there would be a day when I would have to rate the accessories bundle below the automatic 5, but here we are, exclude what isn’t absolutely necessary, the WIFI antenna, driver DVD and manual and what are you left with? Two SATA cables, bloody two! Hands up who has more than two devices in their system that require the use of a SATA cable, I bet that’s 80% or more of you and exactly why MSI earns the dishonour of being the first to score below the automatically awarded 5 points for an “average” accessories bundle. You need to at least include enough SATA cables MSI to amount to half of the SATA ports on the board, that’s the rule for the accessories to be considered “average”. It is the lowest of bars, and you failed.
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