MSI ran out of patience and decided to show off some of their X570 motherboards ahead of Computex in a recent livestream, confirming a number of key aspects. That includes a semi-passive motherboard fan for cooling the chipset, which some enthusiasts are opposed to.
Marketing director Eric Van Beurden addressed the concern, stating the fans are definitely required: “…it’s much needed for this platform because there are a lot of speedy things inside, and we need to make sure you can use them. So that’s why we need proper cooling.”
The TDP of the X570 chipset is said to be at least 10 watts more than the previous generation. Beurden thinks the additional fan will be a non-issue because it’ll be drowned out by all of the other ones in a system: “…you will have a graphics card in there; your case will have fans. So one small fan, you probably won’t hear it.”
The question this leaves is whether or not these semi-passive cooling solutions are anything to worry about for most consumers, as most PC users will never utilize 100% of their motherboard’s chipset resources. It is possible that only edge case scenarios will produce enough heat to force the system’s chipset fans on, such as M.2 RAID scenarios and full utilization of all of a motherboard’s SATA ports. This is something that will be investigated when X570 launches.