ASRock Unveils $1000 X570 Aqua Motherboard for Zen 2

ASRock showcased the company's premium X570 Aqua motherboard at Computex 2019. The motherboard has all the bells and whistles, but comes with a price tag estimated to be around $1,000.

The ASRock X570 Aqua is a limited edition X570 motherboard designed specifically for liquid cooling enthusiasts. ASRock will only be making 999 units; each motherboard carries a unique marking. The ASRock X570 Aqua possesses a black PCB that confines to the E-ATX form factor and is complemented by a white monoblock with RGB lighting. The coolant starts its path at the processor area then passes through the X570 chipset and then ends up at the power delivery subsystem before exiting. The power is delivered to the processor through one 8-pin EPS power connector and an optional 4-pin power connector.

Four DDR4 memory slots are present to accommodate dual-channel DDR4 memory kits. The motherboard supports DDR4 speeds up to 4,666 MHz and faster. Storage comes in form of eight SATA III ports and two M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 ports. The primary M.2 port supports both PCIe and SATA drives while the secondary M.2 port can only house PCIe drives.

ASRock equipped the X570 Aqua with three PCIe 4.0 x16 slots and three PCIe 4.0 x1 slots. The first two PCIe 4.0 x16 slots communicate directly with the processors while the remaining PCIe 4.0 x16 slot is electrically wired x4 to the X570 chipset. Therefore, the motherboard can support up to two Nvidia graphics cards in a SLI configuration or three AMD graphics cards in a CrossFire configuration.

Ryzen desktop processors don't come with integrated graphics, and it's improbable that someone would pay top dollar for a motherboard of this caliber to pair it with an Accelerated Processing Unit (APU). Nevertheless, ASRock endowed the X570 Aqua with an HDMI port anyway. Graphics inputs include one internal DisplayPort and one external DisplayPort. The motherboard also has two Thunderbolt 3 ports that support transfer speeds up to 40 Gbps. As for conventional USB ports, the ASRock X570 Aqua has six USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports at the rear panel. There are two USB 3.1 Gen 1 headers and two USB 2.0 headers located at different areas around the motherboard. ASRock even added a combo PS/2 port in case you still own an old-school PS/2 keyboard or mouse.

The ASRock X570 Aqua provides different methods to connect to the Internet. For starters, you can use the Gigabit Ethernet port, which is powered by the Intel i211-AT controller, or the 10 Gigabit Ethernet port coming from the Aquantia AQtion AQC107 controller. The motherboard employs the Intel's latest "Cyclone Peak" PHY for Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5 connectivity. In terms of audio, the ASRock X570 Aqua uses Realtek's ALC1220 codec and, thus, comes with support for 7.1-channel audio. It has five gold-plated analog audio jacks and an optical S/PDIF out connector at its rear panel.

ASRock didn't reveal the exact pricing for the X570 Aqua but word on the street is that it will probably cost $1,000 (~£790.96), if not more.