AMD’s new line of X570 motherboards have been on the market for over a month now, giving us and plenty of PC building enthusiasts plenty of time to pick some up and try them out in new builds. After a few weeks of use, most of the more obvious questions, like which boards are compatible with custom liquid cooling and how to update your BIOS to support the new Ryzen 3000 CPUs, and now, it’s time for the more complicated questions. One such question has been popping up more and more frequently on various online tech forums and subreddits—Which X570 motherboards support Nvidia NVLink and SLI?
CrossfireX support may be obvious, as this is an AMD chipset. Nvidia’s hardware solution for combining two graphics cards onto the same motherboard is common, too, but support for that feature on these new AMD boards is shrouded in a bit of mystery. Why? Who knows. We certainly don’t, but rather than attempt to understand the higher echelons of product marketing between two massive competitors in AMD and Nvidia, we just decided to answer the question itself. We’ve compiled a list of five great X570 motherboards that all support Nvidia’s NVLink and SLI features.
But first, let’s clear something up, because this has been asked by many Googlers over the last month, too.
All RTX 20-series GPUs use NVLink, all prior Nvidia cards use SLI
Yes, the latest Nvidia graphics cards, the RTX 20-series (complete with 2060, 2070, 2080, and 2080 Ti, as well as their new SUPER counterparts) all use the latest GPU-combining feature, Nvidia NVLink. All Nvidia cards prior to those, however, still use standard SLI. So if you’re looking up X570 motherboards that support SLI, but you keep coming up empty-handed, it may be because you’re actually looking for NVLink, not SLI. It all depends on the age and model of your GPU, though, so make sure you know which feature yours uses before scavenging Google or some other search engine for answers. NVLink is essentially just a snazzy new SLI.
That being said, if your motherboard has enough PCIe slots and supports SLI, you should be able to use NVLink. When you know that, your search becomes much easier. Because, from what we can tell, there’s only one X570 motherboard out there that directly says it supports NVLink. The truth is, however, that all of those that list SLI support among their specs most likely also support NVLink. We’ve compiled a list of the best of those motherboards that support both SLI and NVLink.
5 X570 motherboards that support Nvidia NVLink
ASRock X570 Taichi
The Taichi is a staple in the gaming motherboard space, always recognizable by its clockwork design and slick built-in RGBs. The Taichi is perhaps ASRock’s most popular board, with already 56 reviews on Newegg in the short time X570 boards have been available. It comes with three slots for M.2 SSDs, a technology that’s becoming more and more standard among PC building amateurs and enthusiasts alike, and a very sturdy and effective cooling system.
MSI X570 Godlike
The Godlike is MSI’s big-shot board. It’s their most expensive, top-tier board that can most accurately be described by the word “overkill.” It’s perfect for the PC building enthusiast that wants it all—tons of overclocking, a liquid nitrogen custom cooling system, and, in your case, SLI’d and souped up Nvidia GPUs. It has expansion PCI cards for 10G LAN and more M.2 slots, but chances are, if you’re using the SLI features to rig together two beefy GPUs, you might not have room to plug the expansion cards in. Still, they’re there, among the many impressive options on this board.
MSI MEG X570 ACE
The ACE is one step below the Godlike. It’s not quite as high-end, which is implied by its price being nearly half the Godlike, but it is still very impressive. It’s still made for enthusiasts, so if you’re in the market for liquid cooling and overclocking, it’s still a great bet. We recommend, however, sticking to water cooling rather than nitrogen. The ACE is still high-end, as marked by its posh gold trim and FROZR heatsink technology.
Gigabyte X570 AORUS Master
Gigabyte’s AORUS Master is regarded as one of the manufacturer’s best motherboards available, and for good reason. Its sharp design and powerful specs are built to impressive any PC builder, but without an immense price tag. Its cooling system is one of its best features, though, with fins-array heatsinks and a direct touch heatpipe, as well as triple thermal guards on each of the board’s PCIe slots.
ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero
Just as the Godlike is MSI’s flagship board, the Crosshair VIII Hero is ROG’s. ROG is ASUS’ gaming wing, and this is one of the best motherboards ROG has ever had on offer. It’s absolutely loaded with beautiful RGBs, as any high-end rig is as a work of art as it is built for demanding games. Its other features are just as impressive as the RGB setup, too, including WiFi 6, LANGuard ports, and its 5-Way Optimization feature, which allows you to tune your board to overclocking and cooling profiles.
