Review on X570 Phantom Gaming ITX TB3 Thunderbolt by Kevin Folsom

This is a great motherboard with great features, especially Thunderbolt 3. However, there are some issues, the heatsinks around the processor are so high that it limits your choices is with coolers. Depending on the selected case, the height of the CPU cooler in the SFF design is limited. The height of the heatsinks and fans on this motherboard further reduces this. I ordered an ID-Cooling IS-60 cooler which I had to return as the heatsinks on this motherboard are very tall. I would have gotten the Alpine son Blackridge instead, but would have run into the same problem. In the end I chose the Silverstone AR 11. It doesn't stand for heatsink at all and gets the job done. The second issue I have is that the SATA ports are right angled and are next to the power supply. my shop. I had to buy these low profile right angle SATA cables and then file them to fit. Depending on your case, this could be a deal breaker. I thought about returning it and getting a Gigabyte x570 instead, but settled on this case with Thunderbolt 3. I'm upgrading to 10GB at home, and OWC and Akitio both have a Thunderbolt 3 dock with a 10GB -Ethernet port. Some people don't like that this AMD board has mounts for an Intel CPU cooler, but I agree. No, I couldn't use the amazing cooler that came with the 370x, but it was still too big for my case. Intel offers a much wider range of Mini-ITX heatsinks and fans for its motherboards. If only Asrock didn't have such high mainboard heatsinks, there would be even more cooling options. If your case's power supply is close to the motherboard, it can block the SATA ports.