ASRock Z690 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 Review: Thunderbolt, but Limited Expandability

Firmware

ASRock’s BIOS on the Phantom Gaming boards maintain the same format as the last generation as well. It has a black background with white writing and red for highlights. An EZ Mode displays high-level information, including CPU clock speeds and temperatures, fan speeds, storage information, and more. Advanced Mode has several headers across the top that drop down additional options. The BIOS is easy to maneuver in and laid out logically. You’ll need to do a bit of digging for some options for overclocking, but overall, it’s a user-friendly BIOS with more options than most will ever use.

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Software

Unlike some other board partners, ASRock doesn’t combine most of its included utilities under a larger application. Instead, they are all standalone programs, but they do cover a wide gamut of functionality. From overclocking and monitoring (A-Tune) to audio (Nahimic), networking (Killer Dashboard) and RGB lighting (Polychrome), all of the applications worked without issue.

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Test System / Comparison Products

As of October 2021, we’ve updated our test system to Windows 11 64-bit OS with all updates applied. We kept the same Asus TUF RTX 3070 video card from our previous testing platforms but updated the driver to version 496.13. Additionally, our game selection was updated, as noted in the table below. We use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public unless otherwise noted. The hardware we used is as follows:

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Test System Components

Benchmark Settings

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