Storage Configuration & Testing
For our testing, the operating system is always installed to a Samsung 970 EVO NVMe based SSD. A second, identical drive is employed for testing RAID0 performance on motherboards that support this functionality natively, without PCIe adapter kits. In cases where this is necessary, an alternative is used as the OS drive. It is either an Intel SSD 750 via U.2 to PCIe adapter or a SATA based Samsung 840 Pro.
Standard SATA III 6Gb/s drive tests were performed using Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX hard drives on all SATA headers. The SATA drives were used for testing in RAID 0 64k block size configurations on all applicable controllers when possible. While not necessarily ideal, AMD controllers can’t use smaller block sizes. For an apples to apples comparison, it is necessary to choose a common block size shared by both vendor’s controllers. Additionally, third party controllers from Marvell and Realtek should support this block size as well if necessary. All drive benchmarks were done using the freely available CrystalDiskMark program, run with both 50MB and 100MB sized test sets. NVMe drives use an additional 1000MB test set.
USB 2.0 Testing
To test the capabilities of the onboard USB 2.0 connections, we used a Sans Digital external eSATA / USB 2.0 drive enclosure, connected via the USB 2.0 port. Installed in the enclosure are dual Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX drives in a RAID0 configuration. In theory, this should always saturate the USB 2.0 connection an isolate the motherboard as the biggest variable in our USB 2.0 performance tests.
USB 3.x Testing
A Thermaltake BlacX 5G docking port which uses a USB 3.x connection with a SATA based Corsair Force GT SSD installed. While not the most modern drive, it is fast enough to test the USB connection.
Motherboard Storage Configuration
The storage configuration of the MSI MEG X570 Unify is very simple. For the most part, the chipset sets the configuration for a motherboard. Motherboard manufacturers do have some options for configuration, but usually, motherboard makers opt for what are believed to be the most popular options. For example, Motherboard manufacturers can split the x4 lanes for NVMe devices that go directly to the CPU into two x2 slots or they can turn these into SATA ports and never do. I have yet to see any motherboard configured with any of these options.
There are four SATA 6Gb/s ports supporting RAID levels 0, 1, and 10. Additionally, there are three M.2 slots located in the PCI-Express expansion slot area. The topmost slot supports devices upwards of 110mm in length while the others only support 80mm length and shorter drives.
USB storage is one area where motherboard makers tend to differ slightly from model to model. MSI chose to configure the USB ports in the following fashion:
AMD Chipset
- 3x USB 3.2 Gen2 (SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps) ports (2 Type-A ports on the back panel, 1 Type-C internal connector)
- 4x USB 3.2 Gen1 (SuperSpeed USB) ports through the internal USB 3.2 Gen1 connectors
- 6x USB 2.0 (High-speed USB) ports (2 Type-A ports on the back panel, 4 ports through the internal USB 2.0 connectors)
AMD Processor
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen2 (3rd Gen AMD Ryzen™) or USB 3.2 Gen1 (2nd Gen AMD Ryzen™/ Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics and 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Graphics) ports (1x Type-A & 1x Type-C) on the back panel
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen1 (SuperSpeed USB) Type-A ports on the back panel
The configuration allows for a fair amount of flexibility. The amount of headers and ports is adequate. I’d like to have seen a second USB 3.2 Type-C port, but realize that this isn’t going to happen at this price point in most cases.
Recent News
On Page 2, where you take a shot of the mobo layout – it appears you still have the protective sticker on the chipset HSF (“Play Hard, Stay Silent”). Was that intentional, or is that not a sticker and part of the intended aesthetic of the motherboard?
@Brian_B That is a sticker that is there that you need to take off before use.
And isn’t this one of the MSI boards reported to have poor overclocking because of the VRM configuration running hot?
Bloody buggy integration. It un-configured itself for no apparent reason. If I’ve fixed it, then this comment will show up both in the forums and on the article page. Not sure we can sync back the missing ones – sorry about that!
Ok, well if I pick one up or some other board I will post short review/tests here. Maybe late next month.
We’re looking at doing a couple of budget X570 boards up next, so that may be relevant to your interests. Depends what @Brent_Justice can drum up for Dan…
I thought it was a tie-in to that awful shark movie.
/s
Given the price point of motherboards like the Unify, that doesn’t really fit. If the "MEG" prefix was tied to motherboards like the GODLIKE exclusively, then you’d be right.
Actually.. in case you were serious and couldn’t google. It means MSI Enthusiast Gaming.
I’m thinking of going MSI for the next overhaul (R7 3700X).
Here would be my typical usage scenario:
– Use the AMD Wraith HSF
– No CPU OC’ing (primarily gaming, so I’m more focused on the GPU)
– All DIMM slots populated (4x8GB single rank modules)
– Single GPU, and nothing else populating any other expansion slots
Any thoughts on the MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus?
I have some thoughts……………..
-The Wraith is a bare bones, I don’t want to spend any money type of heat sink. If we were back in the old days when CPU clocks were fixed and it got the job done while making an awful racket (as stock coolers tend to do) you would be fine. That’s not how things work today. Clocks are variable and adjust based on thermals and other variables. If you use a low end cooler, your CPU will not boost as often or even clock as high as a better cooled CPU will. Getting a better quality air cooler will pay dividends in performance. Even on a "stock" CPU.
-Overclocking doesn’t matter in this context. There are only really two kinds of overclocks with Ryzen 3000 series CPU’s. Manual all core overclocks and per CCX complex overclocks. Since you’ve chosen a Ryzen 7 3700X, you are in luck in that you only have a single chiplet rather than two. One of these tends to be substantially worse than the other, limiting overclocking potential. You won’t be held back by one "****let" on a 3700X. You also won’t need quite as much in the way of power delivery to overclock. Even so, you will find that overclocking a single CCX probably won’t benefit you that much. Manual all core overclocking on a 3700X can be potentially useful as you have much lower boost clocks than you would on a 3900X or 3950X.
-This is a bad idea. Don’t do it. Stick with two DIMMs and two DIMMs only. Ryzen 3000 series CPU’s love higher memory clocks and tighter timings. You will not achieve this with four DIMMs. There is a point of diminishing returns after 3800MHz as Infinity Fabric clocks and memory clocks require a divider at that point. So, you don’t need ultra-expensive RAM, but going to four DIMMs means your limiting your RAM speed to DDR4 2933MHz or DDR4 2666MHz. Some people will achieve better, but you won’t be doing it on that board more than likely. While MSI’s do clock RAM fairly well, you need one of their better ones. I’ll get to that in just a moment.
-This is fine. No one uses SLI anymore. Not even me. And I’ve used SLI from the 6800 Ultra days all the way through the GTX 1080 Ti. I used AMD’s Crossfire whenever I went AMD during that time as well. If I thought for a second I could get some extra performance consistently out of a second RTX 2080 Ti, I’d have a second one and I’d be running SLI. So you are good on this front.
-To be blunt. MSI’s cheaper motherboards for X570 have VRM’s that run way too **** hot. To the tune of about 30-40c hotter than they should in some cases. MSI’s MEG X570 Gaming Ace and MEG X570 Unify are about as low as you really want to go if your going with MSI. Yes, that’s right. You need to be at about $300 or better with MSI or you aren’t getting what you are paying for. Hardware Unboxed did a good job of covering this. Eventually, MSI even admitted that the design of their lower end VRM’s were pretty bad.
In other words, I wouldn’t go with such a low end motherboard from MSI. If you are looking to spend less than $250 on a motherboard, stick with GIGABYTE or ASUS.
Much appreciated!
Edit: I bought one of these boards off Amazon to "fiddle" with. Won’t be here until June. I plan on possibly going to Zen 3 when those come out so due to the shortage now on boards I wanted to get one in hand.
Thanks once again.
Steve
I just fired it up and looked through the BIOS and did not find a single thing alluding to being able to configure RAID for the NVMe devices. It’s possible I didn’t look in the right place, so I can page @Dan_D to see if I’m looking in the wrong place.
Typically, you have to go into a higher price bracket to support NVMe RAID. Also, I have tested the feature on higher end MSI boards, so I am confident that the MSI X570 Unify does not support the feature.
https://1drv.ms/b/s!AhF0C_g0rDpxjX72o6P8tNwfCPtz?e=QPKL3U
I’m still evaluating boards. I was about set on the Unify, but now I’m considering the Asus Hero, Gigabyte Aorus , or ASRock Taichi as possible alternatives. Really liked the looks of the Unify, but a PC needs more than looks.
I just purchased this board. I was looking to get a X570 Tomahawk, but they are as expensive as the unify and the unify has a few more features. My main concern is that this board does not support M.2 NVMe. Your review says that two slots do support NVMe however, a article I just read said the Unify does not support NVMe. I scoured the MSI website and nowhere do I read about NVMe support. Where did you get your info? Thanks
Unless I misread your response…
I think you must have missed it.
Step 1. Go here: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MEG-X570-UNIFY
Step 2 read this:
View attachment 612
NVMe and RAID have nothing to do with each other. RAID support is a matter of enabling the feature via firmware. Nothing more. In any case, the specifications list RAID support, but not specifically for the M.2 slots. Typically RAID support is listed for the M.2 devices specifically when the support is there. I don’t have the motherboard in my possession anymore to check it but I could have missed it. MSI’s product page isn’t super clear on it.
Not to mention some motherboard companies are letting the windows raid mean raid support.
Problem here is that tonget raid support you would need all of your nvme ports in use passing through the raid controller logic. What happens on many of these boards is the first or first two nvme ports are direct to cpu. The rest are actually through the motherboard chipset. What you would need to have is a pcie nvme raid controller card in an x8 or x16 slot to actually get a solid raid controller. (With a couple gig of built in raid cache would help.)
It’s just the first M.2 slot that goes through the CPU. There are 4x PCIe Gen 4.0 lanes dedicated to storage off the CPU. It is possible to split these, but you end up with a configuration of 2x M.2 slots that only have 2x PCIe Gen 4.0 lanes each. They also have the option of using those lanes for SATA ports. I have yet to see a manufacturer offer anything but a single 4x PCIe lane M.2 solution with those lanes.
NVMe RAID implementations on motherboards simply use 8x PCIe lanes (which gives them 2x slots) off the PCH. There is no caching or anything like that. There is no dedicated ASIC for parity calculations which is ideal for RAID 5 and RAID 6 support.
Every motherboard I’ve ever worked with in the consumer market implements these things the same way. The only difference is between Intel vs. AMD. AMD implements one M.2 slot through the CPU and the rest through the PCH. Intel does all three through the PCH.