ASRock PG Z790 Riptide Review: Best Z790 board around $230

The latest board to land on our test bed from ASRock is the budget-oriented Phantom Gaming Z790 Riptide. Priced at $229 at the time of publication, it offers users a well-rounded solution at a price most bank accounts can handle. For the money, you get a predominantly black design that fits in with most build themes, with a bright RGB strip along the bottom M.2 socket. Hardware-wise, ASRock continues its trend of value for your dollar, including a PCIe 5.0-capable M.2 socket and integrated Wi-Fi 7, where others may not. In all, it’s a well-equipped and inexpensive Z790 motherboard.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find something better equipped for this price. Most Z790 boards around the $230-plus price point lack a PCIe 5.0-capable M.2, Wi-Fi 7, and at least some storage options. The Raptor Lake refresh boards by the other major board partners tend to be more expensive, with the only major difference being Wi-Fi 7 (and native 14th-gen support). Otherwise, their specs remain the same. Additionally, you get a quality last-gen audio codec, Killer-based 2.5 GbE, and, when setting the cooler to 360/420 AIO, a BIOS that lets your cooling be the limiting factor of performance. As you’ll see later, our board performed well in our testing, especially in the Procyon Office benchmarks.

Below, we’ll dig into the details of the board and see how it performed across all of the tests against a few other new Z790 motherboards. It has an excellent chance to make our best motherboard list for budget boards and is worth a look at versus more expensive options in the mid-range segment, considering the specs. Before we get into those details, we’ll start by listing the specifications from the ASRock website.

Specifications: ASRock PG Z790 Riptide

Inside the Box of the ASRock PG Z790 Riptide

Inside the box is a sparse set of accessories to help get your PC up and running without an extra trip to the store. You get SATA cables, a Wi-Fi antenna, a manual, a thermistor cable, and an ARGB splitter cable. You’ll need to find the drivers on the ASRock website, as a disk or USB stick isn’t included.

Design of the Z790 Riptide

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The Z790 Riptide echoes the other Phantom Gaming (PG) boards, working with an all-black look and a wavy pattern on the 8-layer PCB. Breaking up the monotony is the PG symbol on the left VRM heatsink, along with a circular blue-to-purple pattern. The heatsink reaches out over the rear IO bits, which makes for a clean look. The bottom portion of the board has multiple heatsinks covering all five M.2 sockets, and that same wavy pattern is visible, but in black. The top heatsink for the PCIe 5.0 socket uses a quick-release function - a nice value add.

Across the entire length of the bottom M.2 heatsink is a bright RGB LED strip that will illuminate the inside of your chassis. The colors are saturated, and by default, they are bright! Using ASRock's Polychrome application, you can adjust and control the integrated and any attached RGB devices. For a budget motherboard, it looks good, and you won’t mind showing it off inside the case. That said, if the Wi-Fi adapter were covered, it would clean up the look a bit.

Our board tour starts in the upper left corner, where we spy dual 8-pin EPS connectors (one required) to power the CPU. Below it are two heatsinks to cool the VRM. They are large and have enough surface area to keep the high-quality VRM below within specification.

In the socket area and just above the M.2 socket are the first (of six) 4-pin fan headers. Each header supports PWM and DC-controlled devices. CPU_FAN2/WP and CHA_FAN1-4 auto-detect if a 3-pin or 4-pin device is in use. For the others, you’ll have to set it manually. CPU_FAN2/WP and CHA_FAN1-4 output up to 2A/24 each, while the others are at 1a/12W. There are plenty of headers and enough power to go around.

Continuing right past the socket, we find four unreinforced DRAM slots with locking mechanisms on the top and bottom. ASRock lists support up to 192GB, accepting those 24/48GB kits with speeds up to DDR5-8000+(OC). Our base DDR5-6000 kit and the DDR5-7200 kit worked, but the DDR5-8000 kit did not want to play nice. It wasn’t on the Memory QVL list, though several other SKUs are.

Along the right edge, we fund another 4-pin fan header and a 4-LED Post Status Checker behind it. Unlike other boards with this tool, the Z790 Riptide uses four red LEDs, whereas others use unique colors. It’s also not labeled, so you’d have to look at the manual to determine which LED corresponds to what problem (CPU, Boot, DRAM, VGA). Next is the 24-pin ATX connector to power the board, the front panel USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) header, another 4-pin fan header, and finally, a 19-pin front panel USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) header for additional front USB connectivity.

The Power delivery of the Z790 Riptide consists of 18 phases in total, with 16 dedicated to the processor. Power heads from the 8-pin EPS connectors to a Renesas RAA229131 controller. It moves on to 16 90A Intersil ISL99390 SPS MOSFETs. This is one of the more robust VRMs in the $230 price range. The 1,440A available is more than enough to handle the flagship Intel i9-14900K, even overclocked.

On the bottom of the board, the left side hosts the audio solution. In this case, you can see a Realtek ALC1220 codec fully exposed and several yellow capacitors dedicated to audio. Most users will find the last-gen flagship perfectly acceptable, as you’ll rarely see the newer codec at this price.

In the middle of the board are three PCIe slots and FIVE M.2 sockets. Starting with the storage, all five sockets handle up to 80mm modules, with four running up to PCIe 4.0 x4 (64 Gbps) speeds, and one (the top socket) is a PCIe 5.0 x4 (128 Gbps) socket. Note that when the M.2_Gen5 (top socket) gets occupied, PCIE1 downgrades to x8 mode. I’d like to see a more significant heatsink on the PCIe 5.0 socket; otherwise, the configuration is fine. We jump over the chipset heatsink to the right edge and find six of the eight SATA ports. If you’d like to RAID your NVMe or SATA drives, both support RAID 0/1/5/10 modes. There are plenty of storage options between the five M.2 sockets and eight SATA ports.

Mixed in around the M.2 sockets are two full-length PCIe slots and one PCIe x1 slot. The top slot connects through the CPU and runs up to the full PCIe 5.0 x16 bandwidth. The middle slot connects through the chipset and runs up to PCIe 4.0 x4. Last, the open-ended (accepts larger than x1-size attachments) PCIe x1 slot connects through the CPU and runs PCIe 3.0 x1 speeds. If you want to try your luck at multi-GPU, the Riptide supports AMD Crossfire.

Across the bottom of the board are several exposed vertical headers. Here, you’ll find additional USB, system fan headers, SATA ports, and more. Below is a complete list from left to right.

• Front panel audio
• Clear CMOS jumper
• 2-pin Thermal sensor header
• Chassis fan header
• 5-pin Thunberbolt AIC header
• 4-pin and 3-pin RGB headers
• (2) USB 2.0 headers
• Chassis fan header
• (2) SATA ports (vertical)
• Front panel

The rear IO panel matches the black PG theme and, along with light gray labels, makes the ports easy to read. The Wi-Fi 7 antenna connections are on the left, plus HDMI and DisplayPort below. Next are six USB ports: two USB 2.0 (480 Mbps), five USB 3.2 Gen1 (5 Gbps) including a Type-C, and two USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) that are also the Lightning USB ports. Above them is the Killer E3100 2.5 GbE port. And last, on the right edge, is a 3-plug audio stack.

One other feature worth pointing out is the eDP connector on the back of the board. With this, users can connect an additional display, such as ASRock’s 13.3-inch Side Panel Kit. The IPS panel supports up to 1920x1080 resolution at 60 Hz and helps display system information or almost anything you like.

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