Realtek is typically associated with audio, multimedia, and networking controllers for budget PCs, but for several years, the company has been trying to enter the SSD controller market, challenging established players. At this year's Computex, Realtek announced that samples of its RTS5781DL controller with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface are now shipping to interested parties, so expect actual drives within the next year.

The Realtek RTS5781 is an NVMe 2.0-compliant DRAM-less SSD controller with a PCIe 5.0 x4 host interface designed for mainstream drives. The chip features four NAND channels supporting data transfer rates of 3600 MT/s and supports 4K LDPC error correction to ensure compatibility with contemporary 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND memory devices. The controller can deliver sequential read and write speeds of up to 10,000 MB/s, with random read and write performance rated at 1.4 million IOPS each. The controller fully supports TCG OPAL 2.0, Pyrite, and AES256 encryption to enable makers of actual drives to address applications with high-security concerns.

Considering the typical development cycle of SSDs, we would not expect products based on the RTS5781 chip to hit the market until well into the second half of 2026, yet the company optimistically expects them to arrive in the second quarter of next year.

Update 12:00 pm (ET) 5/29: A representative for Realtek reached out to us to clarify information about pricing and CAT5E cables used for demonstration. Apparently, the controllers will cost $15 initially, but the price will drop to $10 when quantities get higher. As for CAT5E cables, Realtek wanted to demonstrate that its hardware can work with some CAT5E cables. However, if it does not work in real-world cases, users will need to buy CAT6 cables.

Although there are many higher-end motherboards that feature 2.5GbE or even 5GbE network ports, only some of them feature a 10GbE network adapter due to cost concerns. However, this may change later this year as Realtek is prepping an inexpensive 10GbE controller that is aimed at motherboards. The controller is being showcased at Computex 2025.

The Realtek RTL8127 is a tiny — measuring 9mm x 9mm — network controller with a PCIe 4.0 x1 or PCIe 3.0 x2 interface that supports a wide range of Ethernet speeds, including 2.5 Gbps, 5 Gbps, and 10 Gbps. The RTL8127 controller consumes about 1.95W and supports modern standby modes, which is critical for laptops. The controller integrates hardware-level error correction (ECC) and cyclic redundancy check (CRC) features to ensure reliable connections and data integrity during transmission. Also, the unit features built-in self-loopback diagnostic functions for easier maintenance.

The 10GBase-T technology has been used primarily in servers and high-end workstations, but its adoption for more mainstream PCs has been slow, to put it mildly. Aquantia tried to popularize it for enthusiasts in the late 2010s, then it got acquired by Marvell in 2019, and while the company still sells the AQC107 silicon, it is quite expensive for motherboard integration, and add-on cards are, by definition, more expensive than integrated solutions.

Features of the RTL8127 make it ideal for a range of applications, including integration into motherboards, laptops, add-on Ethernet cards, and various customer premises equipment (CPE). Perhaps more importantly, Realtek plans to sell these chips for about $10, which will make its integration a much more appealing endeavor for motherboard makers.

“We are not selling for $10 in Q4, the current reference price varies for different customers: it would be around $15, some higher, some lower, depending on the quantity,” the representative said. “Since the quantities are not large, the $10 target might not happen this year, but it will happen when the quantity grows larger in the future.”

Even among those who follow the PC industry closely, few people know that in addition to various multimedia and network chips, Realtek also has SSD controllers in its product lineup. That's because for now the company's portfolio only includes modest entry-level RTS5766DL and RTS5772DL controllers. But at Computex 2024 the company introduced quite an amitious SSD roadmap that includes a very high-end RTS5783 controller with a PCIe Gen5 x4 interface.

The highlight of Realtek's roadmap is the RTS5782, a high-end controller set to significantly elevate the company's position in the market for SSD controllers. The RTS5782 features eight NAND channels supporting memory with a 3,600 MT/s interface speed, with support for 4K LDPC ECC mechanisms, and even an LPDDR4X cache. This controller aims for top-tier performance, with a sequential read speed of up to 14,000 MB/s, a sequential write speed of up to 12,000 MB/s, and 2.5 million 4K random read/write IOPS. Currently, the controller is in the planning stage, its release date remains undetermined.

Before the RTS5782 hits the market sometime in 2026 – 2027, the company will offer yet another PCIe Gen4 x4 controller and its first PCIe Gen5 x4 controller, both aimed at entry-level drives.

Realtek's RTS5776DL, a PCIe Gen4 x4 controller designed for lower-end SSDs, is in development now. This one will have four NAND channels and support 3D NAND with a 3,600 MT/s interface, achieving up to 7,400 MB/s sequential read/write speeds and up to 1.2 million 4K random read/write IOPS. Engineering samples are expected in Q4 2024.

Another upcoming model, the RTS5781DL, is a PCIe Gen5 x4 controller with four NAND channels, supporting 3,600 MT/s 3D NAND and 4K LPDC. It targets speeds up to 10,000 MB/s sequential read and up to 1.4 million 4K random read/write IOPS. Engineering samples are anticipated in Q1 2025.

Realtek's ambitious roadmap underscores its commitment to advancing from entry-level to high-end SSD controllers. The RTS5782 represents a key move towards high-performance SSDs, aiming to establish Realtek as a strong competitor in the high-end market. Unfortunately, we have no idea when the RTS5782 will hit the market and whether by that time PCIe Gen6 SSDs will have become available. 

The sanctions imposed following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine aimed to disrupt Russia's military capabilities by limiting its access to advanced chips are working, as Russian entities can no longer get chips directly from American, European, Japanese, and Taiwanese companies. Despite these efforts, Russia continues to obtain advanced processors mainly through indirect channels, primarily involving Chinese distributors, who now control 89% of the market, according to a report from the American Enterprise Institute. 

The sanctions have forced Russia to pay nearly double for semiconductors compared to pre-war prices due to the need to establish new, covert supply chains. The company paid $1,411 per kilogram of chips in 2021 and had to pay $2,730 per kilogram in 2023. Notably, about 89% of semiconductor products Russia acquired since the onset of the conflict have been sourced from China. Surprisingly, Russia even obtained some chipmaking equipment from South Korea and Taiwan.

Chinese distributors, essentially operating in a grey area of international laws, have continued to supply Russian buyers with Western-designed chips after all major companies and countries cut their ties with Russia (not that we were surprised). This process circumvents direct sales bans by routing the transactions through China, where enforcement of these sanctions is laxer, thus maintaining a steady flow of technology into Russia. Due to the U.S. sanctions, neither China nor Russia can lay their hands on advanced processors for AI and HPC, such as Nvidia's H100, at least in mass quantities. 

Additionally, Russia employs the so-called transshipment strategies involving other nations, such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, which act as intermediate points for high-tech deliveries, the report says. Entities in these countries receive the initial shipments and then forward them to Russia, effectively masking the ultimate destination and complicating the enforcement of export controls. Based on what we know, such tactics allowed access to chips used in military equipment and technology used by Russian consumers. 

Before the sanctions, Russia sourced its semiconductors through three major avenues: direct imports from Western companies, which includes both direct imports by companies like AMD and Intel as well as sales by major distributors, such as Ingram Micro; Russian-designed chips manufactured abroad, primarily by TSMC; and a small domestic production mainly serving the defense sector. Post-sanctions, direct imports have been severely restricted except for covert routes through countries like China and possible secret manufacturing agreements with Chinese contract makers of chips, such as SMIC and Hua Hong. 

Meanwhile, AEI claims that Russian domestic chip manufacturing remains way too outdated and is limited to serving the defense industry at best. Manufacturers like Angstrem and Micron are heavily reliant on outdated wafer fab tools produced in America and Europe, which is why they have struggled to increase production in the face of sanctions that cut off their access to essential foreign equipment and materials. However, Russia has managed to get some wafer fab tools from countries known to be U.S. allies. 

The report advocates for a new, multilateral export control regime that includes strengthened enforcement mechanisms and recommends involving all U.S. allies to ensure a more cohesive and effective approach to semiconductor export controls. Meanwhile, China is not exactly a U.S. ally but remains a major trade partner. 

Despite restrictions imposed on exports to Russia to prevent technology from fueling its war with Ukraine, Russia has imported over $1.7 billion worth of chips from American and European companies in the first nine months of 2023, reports Bloomberg citing classified customs data. Some chips were intended for client PCs; others could be used by Russia's secret services, and the remaining were dual-use chips that could be used for weapons in its war. Over half of the chips originated from U.S. and European tech giants, the report says.

Classified Russian customs service data seen by Bloomberg indicates that in the first nine months of 2023, over $1.7 billion worth of chips were imported to Russia. Of this amount, $1.2 billion worth of chips were made by a total of 20 companies, including producers from Europe and the U.S., leaving an estimated $500 million worth of chips likely accounted for by other, smaller manufacturers. While imports of chips to Russia reportedly declined in the fourth quarter, it is highly likely that the country still procured over $2 billion worth of various chips in 2023.

Notable brands involved included AMD (including Xilinx), Analog Devices, Intel (Altera), Infineon Technologies, Macom, Marvell, Microchip Semiconductor, NXP Semiconductors, STMicroelectronics, Realtek, and Texas Instruments. This significant influx of high-tech components came despite restrictions meant to limit Russia's military capabilities, raising questions about the efficiency of the sanctions and the complexities of global supply chains.

A large portion of these restricted chips reached Russia through re-exports from third countries, including China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. and EU have been actively trying to block these alternative supply routes, but so far, they have not been very successful. They are particularly focused on stopping the flow of dual-use and advanced goods that have been identified in Russian weapons used in Ukraine or are crucial for their production.

Major companies like AMD, Analog Devices, Intel, Infineon, Marvell, Microchip NXP, STM, and Texas Instruments told Bloomberg that they adhere to the sanctions. They indicated that they had ceased business operations in Russia following the outbreak of war and had implemented rigorous processes to ensure compliance. Additionally, they emphasized their commitment to preventing the illicit diversion of their products (i.e., they specifically prohibit their re-exports to Russia and Belarus), and said they were working closely with relevant authorities to monitor and control the distribution of their chips.

It should be noted that a significant portion of chip sales in the industry are handled by distributors who, in turn, have multiple resellers. The nature of this distribution chain means that manufacturers are not always able to track where their products end up after being sold to these companies, although certain specific military-use chips are subject to stricter tracking requirements.

The situation highlights the challenges faced by the U.S. and the European Union in trying to cut off the supply of advanced technology to Russia’s military. The sanctions were designed to hinder Russia's ability to produce military equipment, such as tanks and missiles. However, the continued import of these chips suggests that Russia has been able to sustain its production of military hardware, which undermines the intended impact of the sanctions.

Meanwhile, the European Union is working on developing a new sanctions package. Several member states are advocating for more stringent measures, especially targeting companies in third countries involved in the trade of these chips, as well as those originating within the EU itself.

 The MSI MAG B760M Mortar is a Micro ATX board that hails from the budget side of the tracks. People looking into the B760 chipset are limited in features compared to the more expensive Z790 platform with all the bells and whistles, but you can still put together a fast and functional system on a budget. You can’t overclock the processor with most B760 boards (you need a board with a BCLK generator), but you can with memory. Priced at $189.99, you get full 12th and 13th-generation Intel processor support, a PCIe 5.0 slot, two M.2 sockets, integrated Wi-Fi 6E and 2.5 GbE networking, and the budget Realtek audio codec all under $200.

The black-on-silver appearance is a nice contrast, if a bit mundane, but it is par for this type of motherboard. It lacks integrated RGB LEDs (Gigabyte and ASRock comparables do) but does have headers to add your own. While it may not look the part of a high-end motherboard, you get some good features, including one PCIe 5.0 x4 slot, capable power delivery, and a 20 Gbps Type-C port on the rear IO panel. It has what you need to get you up and running, but few extras.

Performance on our B760M Mortar is similar to the other B760-based boards we’ve looked at. Where some of the tested boards limit the power (and therefore performance), our MSI, surprisingly, doesn’t use the Intel limits. Instead, anyceiling is in place due to the board thermally throttling our processor as it runs too hot in some of the heavily multi-threaded and longer-running benchmarks. It does well in gaming and lightly threaded applications, though, with results around the average. If you intend to use this board with a flagship-class processor and push heavily threaded workloads, lowering the voltage is best to prevent the CPU from thermal throttling.

Below, we’ll dig into the details of the board and see whether the inexpensive price point makes a spot on our best motherboards list. Before we get into the details, here are the detailed specifications from the MSI website.

Specifications: MSI MAG B760M Mortar Wi-Fi

Inside the Box of the MSI MAG B760M Mortar Wi-Fi

Inside the packaging, MSI includes a couple of accessories to get you started. Since this is from the budget side, you only get the basics.

• Quick Install guide
• SATA Data Cable
• EZ M.2 clip, M.2 screw/standoff
• Wi-Fi antenna
• Cable stickers

Design of the B760M Mortar Wi-Fi

The all-black board with silver heatsinks is built on a 6-layer PCB. The silver heatsinks sport the military theme we’re used to seeing on the Mortar and Tomahawk lines. There’s some branding on the top VRM heatsink and the chipset; otherwise, it’s a simple design. You'll have to look elsewhere if you’re looking for integrated RGB lighting. However, it does have a couple of headers to add your own.

Focusing on the top half of our board, we run into the large VRM heatsink that reaches over and covers the unsightly IO bits. The heatsink is grooved with MSI branding and other black and gray design elements, just like the other heatsinks on the board. Between the VRM heatsink are two 8-pin EPS connectors (one required) to power the CPU.

To the right of the socket area, we run into four DRAM slots with a single locking mechanism on top. MSI lists support up to DDR5-7000+(OC) with one DPC (DIMM Per Channel) and about par for the platform. Our DDR5-6000 kit (2x16GB) worked without issue in our testing. The Teamgroup DDR5-7200 kit didn’t want to work, but it’s over what the board says it can do, so that was to be expected. Stick to RAM under the listed spec to ensure compatibility.

Just above the socket on the left is the first 3-pin ARGB header. A second ARGB header and a 4-pin RGB header are on the board's bottom edge. You control the attached RGB devices through the MSI Center Utility and the Mystic Light applet, which worked well in our limited fiddling.

Above the DRAM slots in the right corner are two 4-pin fan headers (six total). Each header supports PWM and DC-type fans/pumps. The CPU_FAN1 and SYS_FAN1-4 headers output up to 2A/24W while the PUMP_FAN1 3A/36W. You can easily piggyback a couple of fans on these headers if needed; just be sure not to overload them. Fan control is handled through the BIOS and also worked well using the preset curves or a custom setting.

Continuing down the edge, the next feature is the EZ-Debug LEDs, where four LEDs (labeled CPU, DRAM, Boot, and VFA) light up during the POST process. If there’s an issue, the LED for the problematic section remains lit, giving you a general idea of where the issue is. Below is a 24-pin ATX header to power the board, a front panel USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-C port, and a front panel USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) header.

Power delivery on the B760M Mortar can handle our flagship-class processor at stock speeds (remember, this platform doesn’t overclock the processor) without issue. From the 8-pin EPS connector(s), power moves to a Renesas RAA229132 PWM controller and then onto 12x 75A Renesas RAA220075R0 DrMOS MOSFETs dedicated to Vcore. The 900A available to the processor isn’t a lot, but still enough for our Intel Core i9-13900K.

On the bottom half of the board, starting on the left side, we see the budget Realtek ALC897 codec along with the familiar audio separation line (separates the audio from the rest of the board) and a few dedicated audio caps. Audiophiles will certainly be left wanting better, but many users will find the integrated solution sufficient. If not, there are spare PCIe slots to add your sound card.

Speaking of slots, the B760M comes with two full-length slots and one x1 slot. The top slot is reinforced, attaches through the CPU, and runs up to PCIe 5.0 x16 speeds. The bottom full-length slot connects through the chipset and runs at PCIe 4.0 x4. The small middle slot also connects via the chipset but runs at PCIe 3.0 x1 speeds.

Mixed in among the slots are the two M.2 sockets. The top socket, M.2_1, located under a thin heatsink, connects through the processor and runs at PCIe 4.0 x4 (64 Gbps) speeds. The second socket, M.2_2 (no heatsink), connects through the chipset and runs at PCIe 4.0 x4 speeds. M.2_2 supports PCIe and SATA-based modules, a nice value-add for users at this price point. Not everyone can afford smoking fast, more expensive, PCIe-based M.2 modules. Both sockets handle up to 80 mm devices. Last, we run into two (of four) SATA3 6 Gbps ports along the right edge. If you want to RAID these, the board supports RAID0/1/5/10 modes through the SATA ports (not listed for M.2).

Across the bottom are several exposed headers. You’ll find additional USB ports, RGB headers, and power/reset buttons. Below is a complete list from left to right.

• Front panel audio
• 3-pin RGB header
• (2) System Fan headers
• Thunderbolt header
• 4-pin ARGB header
• (2) USB 2.0 headers
• (2) SATA3 6 Gbps ports
• TPM header
• System panel

On the preinstalled rear IO, the B760M Ace uses a gray background with black labels on all of the ports. You’ll find the MSI MAG branding back here; otherwise, ports and labels dominate the real estate. There are eight USB ports in total: one 20 Gbps Type-C, three USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) ports, and four USB 2.0 (480 Mbps) ports. Video outputs consist of DisplayPort and HDMI ports. The 2.5 GbE port and Wi-Fi antenna connections also take up space along with the 5-plug analog plus SPDIF audio stack.

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Firmware

MSI’s BIOS for the B760M is the same as other Z790 boards we’ve seen before, except it doesn't allow you to overclock the processor. The menus reside on the sides and information up top, a unique look compared to others. For our B760M Mortar, it still has a black background with red highlights and is easy to read. It also has an informative Easy Mode that displays various information about the system and allows for some changes (boot order and XMP enable). Though different than other UEFIs, it is easy to get around; everything has a place, and many frequently used options are readily available, not buried within sub-menus.

Software

MSI has a single utility, MSI Center, that covers quite a bit of functionality. From hardware monitoring to RGB control with Mystic Light, there are many applets within the software and a one-stop shop to download all of their utilities. I wish there were some overclocking options for boards that support it, however. But for those looking to use the Gamebar feature, Super Charger, or any other utilities, you'll find them in the software.

Test System / Comparison Products

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. We also updated our games to include F1 22 and kept Far Cry 6. We use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public unless otherwise noted. The hardware we used is as follows:

EVGA supplied our Supernova 850W P6 power supply (appropriately sized and more efficient than the 1.2KW monster we used previously) for our test systems, and G.Skill sent us a DDR5-5600 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK) memory kit for testing. 

Benchmark Settings

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Our standard benchmarks and power tests are performed using the CPU’s stock frequencies (including any default boost/turbo), with all power-saving features enabled. We set optimized defaults in the BIOS and the memory by enabling the XMP profile. For this baseline testing, the Windows power scheme is set to Balanced (default) so the PC idles appropriately.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Synthetics provide a great way to determine how a board runs, as identical settings should produce similar performance results. Turbo boost wattage and advanced memory timings are places where motherboard makers can still optimize for stability or performance, though, and those settings can impact some testing.

Across our synthetic benchmarks, the B760M Mortar results were hit-or-miss due to the processor thermal throttling. While the power delivery can handle our i9-13900K, running without power limits (default ‘water cooling' setting in the MSI BIOS) makes our processor bang off the limiter, causing slowdowns in heavily threaded applications. A simple negative offset can lower power and allow a CPU like this to stretch its legs. In the end, it was average to slightly below average, but some tests took a significant hit.

Timed Applications

In our timed applications, the B760M Mortar didn’t fare well. It was slower than average in Corona and LAME tests and is currently the slowest result in both Handbrake tests. Again, if you plan to install a high-end processor, you’ll need to get a beefy cooler and tweak the voltage lower to get the most out of it in this type of work.

3D Games and 3DMark

Starting with the launch of Zen 4, we’ve updated one of our games, F1 21 to F1 22, while keeping Far Cry 6. We run the games at 1920x1080 resolution using the Ultra preset (details listed above). As the resolution goes up, the CPU tends to have less impact. The goal with these settings is to determine if there are differences in performance at the most commonly used (and CPU/system bound) resolution with settings most people use or strive for (Ultra). We expect the difference between boards in these tests to be minor, with most falling within the margin of error. We’ve also added a minimum FPS value, which can affect your gameplay and immersion experience.

The B760M Mortar is a competent gaming board. The 3DMark results were average, while the gaming tests showed it could keep up with much more expensive options. There’s nothing to worry about with gaming performance in our tested titles.

Overclocking

The B760 chipset for Intel doesn’t allow users to overclock the processor (although there are rare exceptions), but you can overclock the memory.

Our DDR5-5600 kit worked without issue during the stress testing and benchmarking, as did the faster DDR5-6000 kit we use to push things a bit. Users buying motherboards at this price point aren’t generally buying ultra-fast and expensive RAM in the first place, so we’re quite happy with our results, even at ‘only’ DDR5-6000.

Power Consumption / VRM Temperatures

We used AIDA64’s System Stability Test with Stress CPU, FPU, Cache and Memory enabled for power testing, using the peak power consumption value. The wattage reading is from the wall via a Kill-A-Watt meter to capture the entire PC (minus the monitor). The only variable that changes is the motherboard; all other parts remain the same. Note we moved to using only the stock power use/VRM temperature charts, as this section aims to ensure the power delivery can handle the chip even when overclocked. Since we’re using less power to get more clocks, those datasets are more novel than useful. We’re also temperature limited on the processor, so adding more power isn’t possible without increased throttling. 

Idle power consumption on the budget B760M was 62 watts, while the load power use peaked at 365W watts. Power use from this board was the least (by average) so far.

VRM temperatures peaked low at just under 50 degrees Celsius. These are so low because the CPU almost immediately starts to throttle because of the high temperatures in the stress test. After an initial several seconds pass, the board slowly lowers power down to prevent thermal throttling of the processor. While the 75A DrMOS MOSFETs aren’t something to brag about, they’ll still handle a high-power processor at stock speeds as this board allows.

Bottom Line

MSI’s MAG B760M Mortar Wi-Fi is an inexpensive option that supports even the flagship-class 12th and 13th-generation Intel processors. For under $190, you get a PCIe 5.0 slot for graphics, two M.2 sockets (both PCIe 4.0, one of which supports SATA-based models), a budget audio solution, and even a fast USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) Type-C port on the rear IO. For a budget option, it looks good and has most of what users want in the budget space. Performance was fine in gaming and lightly threaded work, but once pressed, our i9-13900K thermally throttled at default settings.

There is plenty of competition. The least expensive of the bunch, the ASRock B760M PG Riptide ($146.99) we looked at recently, was solid and included integrated RGBs, but missing a PCIe 5.0 slot. Gigabyte’s B760M Aorus Elite AX ($169.99) sets itself apart in looks and mixes in with the other competitors hardware-wise. Last is Asus' TUF Gaming B760M-Plus Wi-Fi D4, that’s priced like our MSI ($189.99). The only thing the Asus has going for it is the lower entry price for DDR4 compared to these DDR5 models (Asus doesn’t have a B760M DDR5 option that I’ve seen).

Ultimately, the MSI MAG B760M Mortar Wi-Fi is the best option among these similar boards. It’s the only one board with a PCIe 5.0 slot with a 20 Gbps USB Type-C port on the rear IO. Power delivery can handle our flagship processor; however, if you plan a high-power processor and push all cores and threads for general use, you’ll want to lower the voltage and/or use top-notch cooling to get the most out of the board. Less expensive options are available, but you’d also lose some features making that move down. If you’re in the market for an inexpensive motherboard for the latest and greatest Intel has to offer and want 20 Gbps ports  and a PCIe 5.0 slot, the B650M Mortar is the option in the sub-$200 market.

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The ASRock B760M PG Riptide is a Micro ATX motherboard that supports the latest Intel 12th and 13th Gen Intel processors. Priced at just over $145, it offers a simple black-on-black appearance, with a blue strip on the VRM and a few RGB LEDs hidden under the right side of the board. You get two M.2 sockets and four SATA ports for storage, Realtek 2.5 GbE networking (Wi-Fi not included), memory support listed up to DDR5-7200+(OC), and a budget Realtek audio codec. Ultimately, it’s a full-featured option in the budget Micro ATX space.

The PG Riptide stacks up well against the competition on the hardware front. At this price and with this budget chipset, there’s not much that can go on these boards except for the basics, as the platform limits the potential for high-speed interfaces. 

To keep the price point low, ASRock uses 12-phase VRMs for Vcore, and instead of using more modern (and costly) SPS MOSFETs, we see an old-school configuration using Hi and Low side ICs instead of combined as we’re used to on more expensive models. This isn’t ideal for high-end processors, but it did allow our Intel Core i9-13900K to run the Intel’s defaults, boosting up to 255W for a short time, then limiting itself to 125W and lower clocks. You won’t find PCIe 5.0 x4 slots, a high-end audio solution, or even 20 Gbps Type-C ports at this bargain basement price, but you can run the latest and greatest processors for the platform and DDR5 memory.

Performance-wise, The B760M PG Riptide is all over the map, as it follows Intel’s specifications. You get a full 255W for the processor, and then it ramps down off the turbo boost, limiting it to 125W. For a motherboard of this class, that’s to be expected, especially due to the paltry VRMs powering the processor. It competes with high-end boards in single-threaded applications or in shorter-running, heavily threaded applications. Gaming performance was above average, and Intel’s limits aren’t getting in the way of gaming. If you plan to drop in a high-end processor and utilize all the cores and threads, you’ll find a ceiling on performance compared to other boards that bypass Intel’s specs. 

Below, we’ll dig into the details of the board and see if the PG Riptide finds its way onto our Best Motherboards list. Before we get into our testing and board details, though, we’ll start by listing the specifications from ASRock.

Specifications: ASRock B760M PG Riptide

Inside the Box of the ASRock B760M PG Riptide

Inside the retail box, above the motherboard, is a small handful of accessories. ASRock includes a manual, postcard, two SATA cables, screws for the M.2 sockets(2), and a case sticker. There isn’t much here, though the basics are covered.

Design of the B760M PG Riptide

The B760M PG Riptide comes with a matte-black PCB with black slots, sockets, and heatsinks. The only color is a blue/purple strip with some branding on the left VRM heatsink. The board and heatsink have some lines stenciled on, but it's tough to see the design as they are barely lighter than the board itself. If you’re looking for RGB lighting, the Riptide has you covered with two zones with three LEDs each on the right edge, at the top and bottom. The RGBs are bright and the color is saturated, which makes for a nice glow from below the board, lighting up the inside of your chassis. Overall, it’s a good-looking motherboard for the price, but certainly not a showpiece.

In the upper left corner of our budget board, the first thing we see is the 8-pin (required) and 4-pin (optional) EPS connections to power the processor. Next, we get a closer look at the VRM heatsinks. The left heatsink is the larger of the two, reaching out over the rear IO area and covering some of those unsightly Rear IO bits. On top, the Riptide PG Series branding, in that deep blue/purple color, matches the PCB’s design/patterns.

Moving past the socket area, we find four DRAM slots with locking mechanisms on both sides. ASRock lists support up to DDR5-7200, but as always, your mileage may vary depending on the kit used. Your best chance of success in these fast kits is to stick with the QVL list.

Just past the DRAM slots in the upper-right corner are the first two (of four) 4-pin fan/pump headers. Each header supports PWM and DC-controlled devices. The CPU fan (CPU_FAN1) supports up to 1A/12W and the rest of the headers support 2A/24W. I’d like to see another fan header or two, but you can piggyback a couple of fans on the headers. Just be sure not to overload them as it could damage your board.

Next, we run into two (of four) RGB headers. In this case, there are two 3-pin ARGB headers with an additional ARGB header and a single 4-pin RGB header along the bottom edge. The Polychrome application controls the RGBs and worked well in our limited use syncing with the other products.

Continuing down the right edge, we run into the 24-pin ATX connector to power the board, a front panel USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) connector, and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-C header for the front panel.

Power delivery on our PG Riptide is configured as 14 total phases, with 12 dedicated to Vcore, just like the PG Sonic we recently reviewed (and its twin, the Steel Legend). Power comes from the 8-pin EPS connector and heads down to the Richtek RT3628AE 9-channel PWM controller. Next are the 12 VRMs dedicated to Vcore set up using a Teamed configuration. The VRMs don’t utilize the newer MOSFETs that combine Hi and Low sides, so each phase has two ICs. There isn’t a lot of power available, but it handled our Intel Core i9-13900K following the Intel specs. Not sure I’d let the system run without these limits for long, however. At least not without active cooling on the power delivery.

On the bottom of the board, on the left side, we see the Realtek ALC897 audio codec, four capacitors dedicated to audio, and a visible audio separation line designed to minimize EMI. This isn’t the newest or best audio solution. However, many those prioritizing price over fancy features should find the output sufficient.

In the middle of the board, we see a full-length PCIe slot and an open-ended x1 slot. The top primary slot uses reinforcement to protect against shearing from heavy graphics cards. This slot connects through the CPU and runs at PCIe 4.0 x16, while the bottom x1 slot sources its lanes through the chipset and runs at PCIe 4.0 x1. Just below the top slot is a Key-e M.2 socket that supports 2230 Wi-Fi/BT PCIe modules using the Intel CNVio/CNVio2 protocols. Our board doesn’t come with one, but you can purchase one separately for $25 or less and easily add it if needed.

Moving on to storage, our board has two M.2 sockets. The top socket (M2_1), under the heatsink, connects through the CPU with PCIe 4.0 x4 (64 Gbps) bandwidth. The other socket (M2_2) on the right edge does not have a heatsink and runs up to the same speed. Each supports up to 80mm devices. Four SATA3 6 Gbps ports round out the storage options, with two located on the right edge and two on the bottom. If you’d like to use RAID, you can do so on the SATA ports (RAID0/1/5/10), but RAID support for the M.2 sockets isn’t listed.

Across the bottom of the board are several exposed headers. You’ll find the usual, including additional USB ports, RGB headers, and power/reset buttons. Below is a complete list from left to right.

• Front panel audio
• 4-pin RGB header
• 3-pin ARGB header
• Clear CMOS jumper
• (2) System Fan headers
• Speaker header
• USB 2.0 header
• TPM header
• (2) SATA3 6 Gbps ports
• System panel header

The rear IO plate on the B760M PG Riptide comes preinstalled to the motherboard, which is a nice touch at this price. It sports a black theme with white labels along with Phantom Gaming branding. There’s a total of eight USB ports scattered across the rear IO. You get one USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-C port, three USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) ports, and four USB 2.0 (480 Mbps) ports. For video, the PG Riptide has HDMI and DisplayPorts for those using the integrated graphics on the processor. Last up are the 2.5 GbE port, a PS/2 port for the keyboard and mouse, and three 1/8-inch outputs that comprise the audio stack.

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Firmware

ASRock’s firmware for B760 keeps the same general format as we saw in the Z790 model. The major changes are the updated options/functions for Raptor Lake CPUs. The PG Riptide sports the black and red color scheme of the Phantom Gaming brand. Like the other boards, you start in Easy Mode, which is mostly informative but lets you change a few options (XMP, profiles, boot order, Fan-Tastic Tuning, etc.). Advanced mode displays headings across the top with details below. Here you can tweak everything that can be tweaked, as ASRock includes every option you can think of. Overclocking is easy, with most options on the same page, although some power options are in a different section. It’s a logical layout. The movement is smooth, and it’s easy to read. No complaints from us about the ASRock firmware.

Software

For software, ASRock provides several different options. It has the App Shop to install drivers and software, the Nahimic 3 audio control panel, and the A-Tune application that overclocks your system (if applicable), controls fans, and more. There’s even a pop-up to install drivers when you first boot the system. ASRock’s software provides everything users need to manage and tweak their system.

Test System / Comparison Products

We’ve updated our test system to 64-bit Windows 11, with all updates applied. We kept the same Asus TUF RTX 3070 video card from our previous testing platforms but updated the driver. Additionally, we updated to F1 22 in our games suite and kept Far Cry 6. We use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public unless otherwise noted. The hardware we used is as follows:

EVGA supplied our Supernova 850W P6 power supply (appropriately sized and more efficient than the 1.2KW monster we used previously) for our test systems, and G.Skill sent us a DDR5-5600 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK) memory kit for testing. 

Benchmark Settings

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Benchmark Results

Our standard benchmarks and power tests are performed using the CPU’s stock frequencies (including any default boost/turbo), with all power-saving features enabled. We set optimized defaults in the BIOS and the memory by enabling the XMP profile. The Windows power scheme is set to Balanced (default) for this baseline testing, so the PC idles appropriately.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Synthetics provide a great way to determine how a board runs, as identical settings should produce similar performance results. Turbo boost wattage and advanced memory timings are places where motherboard makers can still optimize for stability or performance, though, and those settings can impact some testing.

Looking at our synthetic benchmark results, the PG Riptide was all over the place with average to above-average results in the Procyon Suite (including Photo/Video editing) and gaming, to some of the slower we’ve seen in 7-Zip, Cinebench, POV-Ray and Blender. It performs this way as our board follows the Intel boost specs out of the box, whereas others tend to have more headroom. You can get more performance by increasing the PL1 value (and overclocking via BCLK).

Time Applications

All of our timed applications are some of the slowest we’ve recorded (again due to following Intel boost specs). Only the PG Sonic we looked at recently was slower in these tests.

3D Games and 3DMark

Starting with the launch of AMD’s Ryzen 7000 platform, we’ve updated one of our games, F1 21 to F1 22, while keeping Far Cry 6. We run the games at 1920x1080 resolution using the Ultra preset (details listed above). As the resolution goes up, the CPU tends to have less impact. The goal with these settings is to determine if there are differences in performance at the most commonly used (and CPU/system bound) resolution with settings most people use or strive for (Ultra). We expect the difference between boards in these tests to be minor, with most falling within the margin of error differences. We’ve also added a minimum FPS value, which can affect your gameplay and immersion experience.

On the other hand, Gaming results were average to above average among our tested samples. 3DMark results were average, while the actual game tests were some of the fastest results so far. It may be slow with heavy CPU use and productivity-type tasks, but it’s a more than competent gamer with these titles.

Overclocking

While the B760 chipset for Intel doesn’t generally allow users to overclock the processor this board does have a BCLK generator, and we got our system to 5.6 GHz and 4.4GHz (P and E cores, respectively), setting the BCLK to 102. We set the voltage to 1.35V, unlocked the power limit, and off we went. Since we used much less power in this manual configuration, the system handled it well, including the power delivery. Unlock the power limit and let it run by default. You’ll get all kinds of thermal throttling of the processor and, eventually, the power delivery, as it’s incapable of sustaining that much power without active cooling.

The board had no issues running the two RAM kits we tested at speeds up to DDR5-6000. ASRock lists support up to DDR5-7200, but we used our DDR5-6000 for overclocked testing as most users buying a budget board won’t reach for the faster options. The kit passed our stress test without flinching. Your mileage may vary as reaching these speeds depends on the memory kit. Stick with the QVL list for the best chance of achieving the highest supported speeds.

Power Consumption / VRM Temperatures

We used AIDA64’s System Stability Test with Stress CPU, FPU, Cache and Memory enabled for power testing, using the peak power consumption value. The wattage reading is from the wall via a Kill-A-Watt meter to capture the entire PC (minus the monitor). The only variable that changes is the motherboard; all other parts remain the same. Please note we moved to use only the stock power use/VRM temperature charts, as this section aims to ensure the power delivery can handle the chip even when overclocked. Since we’re using less power to get more clocks, those datasets are more novel than useful. We’re also temperature limited on the processor, so adding more power isn’t possible without increased throttling. 

Idle power consumption on our B760M PG Riptide peaked around 60W at the desktop, which is one of the lower values we’ve recorded. Peak power reached 390W, or around the average for the chip/platform in our testing. After the Intel turbo kicks in and reduces the clocks/voltage, power peaks around 220W with the CPU locked to 125W.

VRM temperatures on the PG Riptide, like the Sonic board, don’t have a chance to heat up much, considering the low 125W limit imposed under a minute into testing. The board wants to get hot fast when running the PL2 limit of 253W. Temperatures during our testing were fine, but the power delivery heats up if you manually raise that PL1 limit and leave the Vcore alone. If you push a high-end processor in this board, you can lower the Vcore to help with thermal throttling and performance issues.

 Bottom Line

If you’re in the market for an inexpensive motherboard and don’t need all the bells and whistles the new chips and platform offer, like PCIe 5.0 capability, a B760 board is the way to go. The B760M PG Riptide has everything you need for a smart mainstream system. There are two M.2 sockets and four SATA ports, 2.5 Gb networking (available Key-E M.2 socket for an adapter), a budget audio codec, and power delivery capable of handling our 13900K. It also looks good for such a cheap board and includes RGB LEDs. Performance out of the box is limited to Intel’s spec, so it can limit long-running and heavily multi-threaded activities. You can make some manual changes, such as adding more PL1 power and lowering the Vcore, bringing it back up to par. In short, this is a well-rounded, fair-priced option among its peers, but make sure you understand how you use your system to get the most out of it.

Regarding the competition, Gigabyte has a B760M Aorus Elite AX ($169.99), while Asus has a Prime B760M-A board for $153.99. Gigabyte’s standout feature is the 20 Gbps Type-C port and the contrasting black and grey appearance (also with integrated RGB lighting). Meanwhile, the Asus doesn’t have much, if anything, over either of these boards (and doesn’t have integrated RGBs). MSI’s Pro B760M-A Wi-Fi DDR4 ($169.99) is the most expensive. However, it supports DDR4, so the overall cost to get into the platform is less as DDR4 is still cheaper to buy. It also has integrated Wi-Fi, while that costs extra on the other boards.

Ultimately, The ASRock B760M PG Riptide is easy on the wallet, handsomely featured, and looks good for the price. You don’t get PCIe 5.0 hardware or faster than 10 Gbps USB ports native to the platform, but neither does the competition (MSI has 20 Gbps Type-C, but no PCIe 5.0). A great selling point for this board for overclockers is the integrated BCLK generator, which allows for additional headroom so you can overclock the locked chips. So long as your new system doesn’t require ultra-fast USB ports, or PCIe 5.0 anything, the PG Riptide is the pick of the litter, and it costs around $20 less than its direct competitors.

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The ASRock Z790 Livemixer is a uniquely styled motherboard that hails from the affordable side of ASRock’s product stack – and Z790 boards in general. This SKU is truly new and unique, not based on another board with just a different aesthetic. Sitting above the Pro RS and below the Steel Legend, the $252.99 Livemixer offers a blend of features designed for content creators, including a PCIe 5.0 M.2 socket and card slots, a slew of available USB connectivity, and a VRM capable of powering the flagship Intel CPUs – at least in stock configuration. But the real reason to get this board is for the appearance, as it doesn’t look like anything else I’ve seen over the past 10-plus years. It does remind me of DFI Lanparty boards, though. 

ASRock’s Z790 lineup (at the time of this writing) consists of 13 different motherboards. There you’ll find all the standard sizes and wide-ranging prices, with familiar names like the Taichi, Steel Legend, Riptide, Pro, and our LiveMixer SKU. Prices range from $499.99 (Taichi Carrara) to the ASRock Z790M PG Lightning/D4 at $179.99. There are plenty of options in the existing lineup, although we’re still waiting to see a water-cooled Aqua down the road.

Regarding performance, the Livemixer was average to below average across most of our tests. In part, it performed this way due to heavy thermal throttling at its default settings. We tried setting the BIOS to the 240/280mm cooling option while using our 360mm AIO and still saw significant throttling. You'll have to use a negative voltage offset to get the most out of this board, to prevent the throttling we experienced during testing. That said, most tests were just slightly slower than average, and nothing was significantly out of line, even if this was the slowest tested board in a couple of benchmarks.

Below, we’ll dig into the details of the board and see whether it deserves a spot on our Best Motherboards list. Before we get into our testing and board details, though, we’ll start by listing the specifications from ASRock’s website. 

Specifications: ASRock Z790 Livemixer

Inside the Box of the ASRock Z790 Livemixer

Inside the retail packaging, below the motherboard, are a couple of accessories – literally a couple. You get two SATA cables and five screws for the M.2 sockets (along with a manual).

Design of the ASRock Z790 Livemixer

ASRock’s Z790 Livemixer sits on a black PCB with white and purple paint splatters, along with purple heatsinks and shrouds that yield a unique appearance, or at least color scheme, for motherboards. There’s Livemixer branding written in a graffiti-type font along the bottom of the board and again on the large VRM heatsinks. The purple theme isn’t as neutral as some other boards with a more basic black color scheme, so make sure this is what you want inside your chassis.

If you’re into RGB lighting, the Livemixer has four RGB LEDs on the backside of the board, by the SATA ports, which give off a bright glow that shines inside your chassis. You control the RGBs with ASRock’s Polychrome RGB application. If these adornments aren’t enough, you can add more RGB lighting through the 4-pin or 3-pin RGB headers.

Starting in the upper-left corner of the board, we get a better look at the large, purple-and-white VRM heatsink and the graffiti-style appearance. The VRM heatsinks have a lot of mass and a fair amount of surface area, so they should do a decent job on the MOSFETs below, but we’ll see how well that pans out in or testing below. Just above the left VRM heatsink are two 8-pin EPS connectors (one required) to power the CPU.

Moving past the clean socket area, we run into four unreinforced DRAM slots with locking mechanisms on both sides. ASRock lists support of up to 128GB at speeds listed to DDR5-7200+(OC). Of course, your mileage will vary, but we did not run into any issues with our basic DDR5-5600 kit or our middle-of-the-road DDR5-6000 kit.

In the upper-right corner (just to the left of the DRAM slots) are the first four (of seven) 4-pin fan headers. The CPU_FAN1 header supports up to 1A/12W, while the CPU_FAN2/EP and CHA_FAN1-5/WP headers all support up to 2A/24W. CPU_FAN2/WP and CHA_FAN1-5/WP can auto-detect if a 3-pin or 4-pin fan is in use, while you’ll have to manually set the others. There are enough headers and power output to support your fans and custom watercooling pumps. Control over these devices is handled through the BIOS or ASRock’s A-Tune software.

Looking down the right edge, we run into the 24-pin ATX power connector for the board, the USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) Type-C front panel header, and a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) header.

The power delivery on our Livemixer consists of 16 total phases, with 14 dedicated to Vcore. Power comes from the 8-pin EPS connector(s) onto the Renesas RAA229131 20-phase PWM controller. From there, it heads to the 14x 60A Intersil ISL99360 SPS MOSFETs. While the 840A available for the processor is less than we’ve seen in our previously reviewed boards on this platform, it shouldn’t get in the way of stock or most overclocked operations with the flagship Intel i9-13900K (although thermal throttling does).

On the bottom of the board, starting on the left side, we spy the dated Realtek ALC897 audio codec. There’s an audio separation line, but you can forget about third-party DACs and Amps at this price point. The ALC897 is a budget codec, so discerning listeners, even content creators this is intended for, might be disappointed and want to use a superior external audio solution.

For those who want to use Wi-Fi, the M.2 Key-E Wi-Fi socket for CNVio/CNVIo2-based devices (sold separately) is located just to the left of the PCIe slots. Just above that is a unique connection called Embedded DisplayPort (eDP). As the name implies, the eDP connector is for an LCD monitor that supports eDP. This connector supports eDP 1.4 and a maximum resolution of FHD (1080p) at 60 Hz. ASRock’s 13.3-inch side panel kit is the perfect accessory for this connector.

In the middle of the board are four PCIe slots, three full-length with the top/primary slot reinforced. That top slot supports PCIe 5.0 x16 speeds from the CPU (assuming nothing populates the M2_1 socket, otherwise, it drops back to PCIe 5.0 x8). The other two full-length slots get their bandwidth from the chipset and run at a maximum of PCIe 4.0 x4. The x1 slot in the middle also sources lanes from the chipset and runs at PCIe 3.0 x1 speeds.

Scattered among the PCIe slots are five total M.2 sockets. The top socket connects through the CPU and runs up to PCIe 5.0 x4 (128 Gbps) speeds, supporting up to 80mm modules. The PCIE1 slot drops back to PCIe 5.0 x8 speeds when this socket is in use. Three of the four other sockets (M2_2/3/4/5) all source their PCIe 4.0 x4 (64 Gbps) lanes through the chipset and support up to 80mm devices. All but one M.2 socket has a heatsink to keep the devices below from getting too warm.

Interestingly, ASRock states that M2_1 and M2_2 cannot be populated simultaneously. The only reason I can think of offhand to do this is to give the user the option to run the full PCIe 5.0 x16 speeds on the primary slot. According to the company’s chipset diagram from the Livemixer webpage, the 4.0 socket (M2_2) has its own line to the CPU, while the PCIe 5.0 M.2 socket shares bandwidth with the PCIe slot. In short, you can only run four of the five M.2 sockets concurrently, which should be enough for most people.

A second USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) connector and the four SATA ports are on the right edge of the board. The SATA ports support RAID0/1/5/10, while the M.2 sockets support RAID0/1/5 modes.

Across the bottom of the board are several exposed headers. You’ll find the usual, including additional USB ports, RGB headers, and power/reset buttons. Below is a complete list from left to right.

• Front panel audio
• 5-pin Thunderbolt AIC connector
• 3-pin RGB header
• 4-pin ARGB header
• (2) System Fan headers
• (2) USB 2.0 headers
• Clear CMOS jumper
• TPM header
• Speaker header
• Dr. Debug display
• System panel header

The rear IO plate on the Z790 Livemixer comes preinstalled to the motherboard. It sports a black and purple background against white writing and the Livemixer graffiti-like branding. Content creators tend to use many USB ports, and the Livemixer is here to help. There’s a total of 14 USB ports scattered across the rear IO. You get two USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-C ports and two 10 Gbps Type-A ports. There are four more 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) ports and six USB 2.0 (480 Gbps) ports. Additionally, the board has dedicated Lighting gaming USB ports that use a separate controller for a more stable USB signal and less latency, according to ASRock. On the video side, the Livemixer has HDMI and DisplayPort ports for thoughts with non-KS chips wh don’t want to use a graphics card. Last is the 2.5 GbE and the two-plug plus SPDIF output that make up the audio stack.

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Firmware

ASRock’s firmware for Z790 keeps the same general format as we saw in the Z690 model. The major changes are the updated options/functions for Raptor Lake CPUs. The Livemixer’s background is just as unique as the board, sporting the purple and blue theme against light grey/white labels. You start in Easy Mode, which is mostly informative but lets you change a few options (XMP, profiles, boot order, Fan-Tastic Tuning, etc.).

Advanced mode displays headings across the top with details below. Here you can tweak everything that can be tweaked, as ASRock includes basically every option you can think of. Overclocking is easy, with most options on the same page, although some power options are in a different section. It’s a logical layout. The movement is smooth, and it’s easy to read. No complaints from us about the ASRock firmware.

Software

For software, ASRock provides several different options. It has the App Shop to install drivers and software, the Nahimic 3 audio control panel, and the A-Tune application that overclocks your system, controls fans, and more. There’s even a pop-up to install drivers when you first boot the system. ASRock’s software provides everything a user needs to manage and tweak their system.

Test System / Comparison Products

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. We also updated to F1 22 for our games and kept Far Cry 6. We use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public unless otherwise noted. The hardware we used is as follows: 

EVGA supplied our Supernova 850W P6 power supply (appropriately sized and more efficient than the 1.2KW monster we used previously) for our test systems, and G.Skill sent us a DDR5-5600 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK) memory kit for testing.

Benchmark Settings

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Benchmark Results and Final Analysis

Our standard benchmarks and power tests are performed using the CPU’s stock frequencies (including any default boost/turbo), with all power-saving features enabled. We set optimized defaults in the BIOS and the memory by enabling the XMP profile. For this baseline testing, the Windows power scheme is set to Balanced (default) so the PC idles appropriately.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Synthetics provide a great way to determine how a board runs, as identical settings should produce similar performance results. Turbo boost wattage and advanced memory timings are places where motherboard makers can still optimize for either stability or performance, though, and those settings can impact some testing.

In our synthetic benchmarks, the Z790 Livemixer had average to below average results across the board. Anything that’s a longer-running, multi-threaded benchmark tends to take a hit more than any lightly threaded or single-threaded apps. Even with the BIOS set at the 240/280mm AIO setting (less than our cooling solution, a 360mm AIO), it still thermally throttled the CPU more than other boards.

Timed Applications

Starting with Handbrake, the Livemixer was the second slowest result, behind only the fully unlocked Taichi that thermally throttled the CPU even more. Here again, and like its Taichi sibling, with long-running heavy applications, the voltage used out of the box, despite our robust cooling solution puts a ceiling on performance. LAME encoding was also the slowest of the bunch, but not by much.

3D Games and 3DMark

Starting with the launch of AMD’s Ryzen 7000 platform, we’ve updated one of our games, F1 21 to F1 22, while keeping Far Cry 6. We run the games at 1920x1080 resolution using the Ultra preset (details listed above). As the resolution goes up, the CPU tends to have less impact. The goal with these settings is to determine if there are differences in performance at the most commonly used (and CPU/system bound) resolution with settings most people use or strive for (Ultra). We expect the difference between boards in these tests to be minor, with most falling within the margin of error differences. We’ve also added a minimum FPS value, which can affect your gameplay and immersion experience.

Overall, the Z790 Livemixer is a competent gamer. The 3DMark scores mix it up with the other boards, and the game tests are also up there, especially in F1 22. The Livemixer was a couple of frames per second behind the others in Far Cry 6, but that’s still minimal. According to our tests, you wouldn’t notice the difference between this or any other board we’ve tested when gaming.

Overclocking

When overclocking, we aim to increase the power and add stress to the VRMs. We do so by increasing the clock speed and voltage until we’re at the thermal threshold for the processor during stress testing. However, where these CPUs are allowed to run with ‘boost’ speeds, those speeds are closer to the limit than ever before. 

With our Core i9-13900K, the approach was a bit different. To overclock our chip, we had to lower the voltage from what was recorded during stress tests. We increased the clock speeds of the “P” and “E” cores by 100 MHz and 200 MHz, respectively, over the turbo boost and limited by our cooling. We ended up with  5.6 GHz P core and 4.5 GHz E core clocks using about 1.34V (from DMM). Temperatures peak just under the throttling point with this configuration. And as we’ve noted elsewhere, this is the intended performance for Intel’s flagship CPU.

Overclocking on the Z790 Livemixer was a pain. With most boards, it’s easy to dial in the known voltage value for the clock speeds and go. But with this board, over the course of 2 hours (and a borked OS in the process), I could not get the system to pass a 30-minute stability test. Either the thermal throttling was too much, or the voltage wasn’t enough and it would reboot. You may have better luck with a lesser K-SKU i7 or i5 processor, which is honestly more this board’s speed.

On the memory side, we dropped our Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 kit in the system, enabled XMP, and tested it without issue, as expected.

Power Consumption / VRM Temperatures

We used AIDA64’s System Stability Test with Stress CPU, FPU, Cache and Memory enabled for power testing, using the peak power consumption value. The wattage reading is from the wall via a Kill-A-Watt meter to capture the entire PC (minus the monitor). The only variable that changes is the motherboard; all other parts remain the same. Please note we moved to use only the stock power use/VRM temperature charts, as the goal of this section is to ensure the power delivery can handle the chip even when overclocked. Since we’re using less power to get more clocks, those datasets are more novel than useful. We’re also temperature limited on the processor, so adding more power isn’t possible without increased throttling. 

Idle power consumption on our Z790 Livestream/i9-13900K combo peaked at fairly low 54 watts at the desktop. Load power peaked at only 325W at the wall, the lowest we’ve recorded with an i9-13900K.

VRM temperatures on the Livemixer ran warm, but well within specification during our stress test. The system peaked at just under 60 degrees Celsius while using stock settings in the stress test. The VRM cooling solution works well on the 60A SPS MOSFETs.

Bottom Line

The ASRock Z790 Livemixer is one of the most unique motherboard designs we’ve seen. The purple graffiti theme and the bright RGB LEDs stand out among modern-day peers. And the board isn’t all about looks. The Livemixer is well-appointed, with the only major thing missing being integrated Wi-Fi. Still, it has five total (though four useable concurrently) M.2 sockets (one PCIe 5.0 x4), a whopping 14 USB ports on the rear IO to connect all your streaming peripherals, and a reasonable price for the platform at $252.99.

The board is not without its drawbacks, however. The audio codec is dated and hails from the budget side of the tracks. Although many will find this one acceptable, for a board designed for content creators, I would like to see a better codec used, such as one from the ALC1200 family (or newer) like some of the competition uses. I would also like to see EZ M.2 latches (both here and across all boards), but that’s a minor complaint. Performance was, at best, average, but many of the heavily multi-threaded and longer-running tests were slower due to the processor thermally throttling more than other boards. The gaming performance was spot on, though. So long as you don’t plan to run heavily multi-threaded operations, or you use something less thermally demanding than our Core i9, you’ll get all the performance you paid for with this board. 

There’s some stiff competition around this $250 price point. MSI’s Pro Z790-A Wi-Fi is $269.99, the Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite AX is $259.99, and the Asus Prime is the least-expensive at $249.99. All those boards include Wi-Fi, which ASRock’s board lacks. If you need better audio, the MSI sports the latest generation codec (Realtek ALC4080). All of these are viable options in the space and, depending on your needs, may be better options.

The Z790 Livemixer, with its unique appearance, is a solid option to build your Raptor Lake-based system on. It has the most USB ports on the rear IO we’ve seen in a while, which is great for those who need lots of external connectivity, including the intended market, content creators and gamers. If you’re in the market for a mid-range board and like the unique look of the Livemixer, it’s a decent and visually unique option. However, other boards around the same price have a less polarizing appearance, better audio, and integrated Wi-Fi.

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AMD and ATI Technologies ULC have filed a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission (USITC) that Realtek Semiconductor and TCL Industries Holdings have violated five patents, triggering a USITC investigation of the claims.

The USITC announced that it would investigate certain graphics systems, components thereof, and digital televisions with components from Taiwan-based Realtek and the China/Hong Kong-based TCL Industries Holdings (and its subsidiaries). The allegedly patent-infringing products are all imported into the US for sale, bringing them under the remit of the USITC.

AMD and ATI filed the complaint on May 5, 2022, seeking an exclusion order and cease and desist orders for the sale of the products. The USITC announced the investigation on July 1. AMD and ATI Technologies ULC of Canada, which AMD purchased back in 2006, claims Mediatek and TCL Industries violated five patents covering various graphics technologies. 

The ATI patents include texture decompression techniques, a graphics processing architecture with a unified shader, and a multi-threaded graphics processing system (patents 7,742,053 claims 1-9, 8,760,454 claims 2-11, and 11,184,628 claims 7-12). The AMD patents cover a method and system for synchronizing thread wavefront data and events, and a patent covering a processing unit that enables asynchronous task dispatch (patents 8,468,547 claims 16-21, and 8,854,381 claims 15-20). 

The investigation brings back memories of another USITC investigation triggered by AMD and ATI back in 2017. That investigation centered on patent infringements by LG, Vizio, Mediatek, and Sigma Designs, most of whom settled with AMD. However, AMD eventually sued Mediatek for violating several of its patents. 

AMD and ATI's complaint claims that Realtek and TCL Holdings violated section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930. The first step of the 'Section 337 Investigation' is for the Chief Administrative Law Judge of the USITC to designate a presiding Administrative Law Judge to oversee an evidentiary hearing to determine if there has been a violation of Section 337. The USITC will give a target date for the completion of the investigation within 45 days.  

If Realtek and TCL are found to be in violation of AMD/ATI's patents, we can expect them to end up paying licensing fees for using the tech — that is if the case follows the traditional trajectory, of course. We've reached out for comment from the companies involved and will update as necessary. 

NZXT has readied its new N5 and N7 series motherboards featuring Intel's Z690 chipset. The company admits the N5 and N7 series Z690 motherboards represent a "long awaited update," for Intel's 12th gen Core Alder Lake processors. This handsome duo is very welcome: Alder Lake chips are still very strongly ranked among the best CPUs for gaming in 2022, and Intel's 13th gen Core Raptor Lake processors should also fit Z690 motherboards.

The NZXT N5 Z690 and N7 Z690 are very similar, but the latter is a rung above the former with features such as a stronger power phase design, better audio, and a super clean look with the PCB largely covered by matte white or matte black finished metal armor. For a clearer comparison between the NZXT N5 Z690 and N7 Z690, check out the specs:

NZXT is sticking with DDR4 for its Z690 motherboards. This is a pragmatic choice, and you can read an in-depth analysis of DDR4 vs DDR5 in our Intel Alder Lake RAM guide.

The first difference highlighted in the specs table concerns the power design. With more power phases and premium 2oz copper PCB, the N7 should be better for CPU overclocking, providing greater stability at higher clock speeds.

Next up, the configuration of storage expansion options varies between the two motherboards. The cheaper NZXT N5 Z690 benefits from an extra M.2 storage slot that supports both PCIe 4.0 x4 and SATA drives. The N7 Z690 strikes back with more powerful Wi-Fi, more/faster USB ports, and an upgraded on-board audio solution. The audio differences will be important to those who aren't going to fit a PCIe sound card or use an external sound card.

NZXT also wants to highlight the built-in RGB headers and control options offered on both these motherboards. They both support four RGB lighting channels and seven fan channels configurable through NZXT CAM.

The new NZXT N5 and N7 Z690 series motherboards are available now, direct from the maker, in black or white finishes. The N5 costs $239.99 and the N7 costs $299.99.

If you're looking for a motherboard and NZXT's new boards don't appeal to you, take a look at our Best Motherboards 2022 for Gaming, by Socket and Chipset.

According to a report by TechPowerUp, Biostar has announced a brand new motherboard at Computex, the X670E Valkyrie. This new model is one of Biostar's first motherboards equipped with the new AM5 socket from AMD and features AMD's flagship X670E chipset for the next generation of Ryzen 7000 processors and associated motherboards, which enables PCIe 5.0 support for graphics and storage solutions.

If history repeats itself, this new motherboard will be Biostar's flagship for the AMD 600 series platform; The Valkyrie name has represented Biostar's flagship motherboards for many years, including Intel versions such as the Z690 Valkyrie.

Aesthetically, the X670E Valkyrie has taken a large departure from its predecessors and forgone the inclusion of a double-winged logo, which was a staple in previous designs. Instead, Biostar has opted for a more simplistic design featuring no logos whatsoever and has taken to an angular line aesthetic approach featuring black, grey, silver, purple and yellow accents.

We don't have full details about the board's power delivery design but expect it to have a seriously overbuilt VRM system, which was also the case with the Z690 Valkyrie. What we do know are some key specifications, including DDR5 memory support with DIMMs featuring speeds up to 5600 MT/s.

For PCie connectivity, the Valkyrie features dual PCIe 5.0 x16 slots and a single PCIe 4.0 x16 slot. M.2 storage includes a whopping four M.2 slots for SSDs and a fifth M.2 slot for a single Wi-Fi- module. Biostar doesn't say what PCIe generation each slot supports, but we do know that AMD's X670E chipset requirements necessitate one of these M.2 storage slots being Gen 5 supported, at the very least, while the rest are probably running on Gen 4 connectivity.

For I/O, there is a single DisplayPort and single HDMI connector for video outputs -- this will be necessary since all Ryzen 7000 chips will come with RDNA2 integrated graphics. For storage, the board supports an additional six SATA3 ports for 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch hard drives and SSDs.

USB ports consist of two USB 3.2 Gen 2X2 20Gbps ports. We're still waiting to h ear on the rest. Audio consists of a Realtek codec of some sort, and ethernet is running on a 2.5G NIC of unknown origin.

We should know more soon enough, once Biostar releases an official product page to the public.

The Asus Pro H610T D4-CSM motherboard is set for release in the US on Friday. This H610-based motherboard mixes a desktop Alder Lake socket (LGA1700) with twin compact SO-DIMM slots and is powered by an external 19V DC power brick via a barrel jack on the rear I/O panel. By all accounts, it might be a good choice for a compact build or an AiO upgrade.

Asus ITX motherboards typically feature a chipset + 'I' suffix, but this one is a 'T' as it is classified as a Mini ITX Thin design. To keep any system you build using this motherboard suitably thin, definitely opt for a low-profile CPU cooler. Like in a laptop, the SO-DIMM slots are populated by adding the memory modules at an angle and clicking them into place as you lay them down flat. Thus you can add up to the max 64GB of DDR4-3200 memory without any vertical protrusions. There are no expansion slots to populate with add-in-cards. Asus says this ITX board is the standard 6.7-inches (17cm) square but doesn't provide any info about the height.

This is an Alder Lake board with a six-phase digital VRM, and you are limited to desktop processors with a max TDP of 65W, which seems sensible given the design and envisioned purpose by Asus.

We have mentioned the processor, memory, and (lack of) expansion slots, and as a diminutive motherboard, there aren't many other onboard expansion options. The Asus Pro H610T ITX only offers two SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports and one M.2 slot (type 2260/2280, supporting PCIe 4.0 x4 & SATA modes). However, the back panel is a bit better, with its two USB 3.2 Gen2 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, DisplayPort, HDMI port, 1Gb Ethernet jack, twin audio jacks, and the 19V barrel jack. You also have headers to attach up to seven other USB ports, two of which can be USB 3.2 Gen1.

Another feature we haven't mentioned above but is worthy of note is the onboard Realtek 7.1 Surround Sound High Definition Audio CODEC. Furthermore, an extra M.2 2230 slot is available, which could be useful for something like a Wi-Fi module.

Lastly, some of the specs of this motherboard suggest it was developed from a design often used for AiO systems or can be used to upgrade some AiOs using standard parts. There are several AiO system-related and flat panel-related headers on this motherboard, as well as an LVDS header which is an option used to connect laptop or AiO displays.

On its product page, Asus talks about how the Pro H610T ITX motherboard is good for businesses with its security, management and serviceability features.

US online retailer Newegg currently has these motherboards up for pre-order, priced at $112.99.

Expansive carrier boards for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 certainly aren’t unheard of, but the $99 Interceptor Carrier Board from Axzez, with five SATA ports and four gigabit Ethernet sockets (as reported by CNX Software) certainly stands out.

The Interceptor carrier board is designed to be the center of your NAS. Those five SATA ports are connected via a JMicron JMB585 PCIe to SATA controller to a single 5Gbps PCIe interface, which may create a bottleneck, while the network ports connect to a Realtek RTL8367RB switch. This looks like a board custom-made for a home-made NAS or managed switch, and the only thing it lacks is USB 3 support, as both the Type-A ports built into the board, and the extra two nine-pin headers, are USB 2. Video is taken care of by a pair of full-size HDMI ports capable of 4K 60Hz output. Missing from the board is the ubiquitous 40 pin GPIO. While not strictly necessary for the intended market, it would've been nice to have some basic GPIO options.

A Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye image is available from the company’s website which contains all the necessary drivers, and there's a forum for asking questions on. Pre-orders are currently being taken for the board, which is being offered at $99, to ship in February.

When you have the mindshare of Raspberry Pi in the single-board computer (SBC) arena, you have a big target painted on your back. According to CNX Software, another Raspberry Pi alternative, the KIWI310, is on the way from Axiomtek and it brings some interesting features to the table.

The board itself measures 85 x 56 mm and forgoes the Arm-powered SoCs found in the vast family of Raspberry Pi products. Instead, it’s powered by a dual-core Intel Celeron N3350 processor. For those unfamiliar, the Celeron N3350 is based on Intel’s low-power 14nm Apollo Lake architecture and has a TDP of 6 watts. The processor has a base frequency of 1.10 GHz and can burst up to 2.4 GHz.

You can configure the KIWI310 with up to 8GB LPDDR4 memory and up to 64MB onboard eMMC storage. Regarding connectivity, Axiomtek outfitted the SBC with two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, USB-C (with Power Delivery), a micro HDMI 2.0 port (4K60 output) and Gigabit Ethernet (Realtek RTL8111). Other connectors include a 40-pin GPIO header and a standard M.2 Key E 2230 supporting PCIe and USB 2.0 interfaces.

Where things get interesting is with a couple of optional features. For starters, buyers can opt for a 220 mAh lithium-ion battery and the SBC supports 5G connectivity. In the accompanying video, we spied that Axiomtek is using a Waveshare 5G HAT. The video also confirms that the KIWI310 ships with a heatsink in the box. 

The KIWI310 supports Android, Linux and Windows operating systems. However, keep in mind that the SBC doesn’t have onboard TPM so it is not officially supported by Windows 11. However, there are ways to bypass Windows 11's TPM, RAM and CPU requirements.

Unfortunately, pricing and availability haven’t been revealed at this time for the Axiomtek KIWI310, but we’ll update this piece once that information is provided.

ASRock recently revealed its Z690 motherboards for the latest 12th Generation Alder Lake processors from Intel. As spotted by hardware detective momomo_us, ASRock cooperated with Razer on the Z690 Taichi Razer Edition, which was missing from the motherboard vendor's announced lineup.

Ther Z690 Taichi Razer Edition marks the third time that ASRock and Razer have gotten together. The two companies previously worked on the B550 Taichi Razer Edition and X570 Taichi Razer Edition, so it was only fitting to give the Z690 Taichi the same attention. On a hardware level, the Z690 Taichi Razer Edition should be identical to the vanilla Z690 Taichi. The difference resides in the Razer Chroma-inspired aesthetics. It's easy to see that ASRock has revamped the passive heatsinks on the motherboard to blend into Razer's ecosystem. Obviously, the Z690 Taichi Razer Edition comes with full Razer Chroma support right out of the box.

Assuming that there are no surprises under the hood, the Z690 Taichi Razer Edition should sport the same 20-phase power delivery subsystem on an eight-layer PCB with 105A SPS (smart power stages) and premium 90A power chokes. In addition, the motherboard comes with two 8-pin EPS power connectors to ensure your Alder Lake chip gets enough juice during your overclocking journey. In terms of memory support, the motherboard has four DDR5 memory slots, offering support for DDR5-6400+ memory modules, XMP 3.0 and up to 128GB of memory.

The Z690 Taichi Razer Edition has plenty of storage options. You get six standard SATA III ports and three M.2 2280 slots where two are PCIe 4.0 x4 and the remaining one conforming to SATA III speeds. RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 and RAID 10 are supported on the SATA ports, while only RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 5 are doable on the M.2 slots.

As for expansion slots, the motherboard features three PCIe 5.0 x16 expansion slots and one PCIe 3.0 x1 expansion slot. Due to the bandwidth limitation on Alder Lake processors, the PCIe 16 slots function differently, depending on how many PCIe devices you have on the motherboard. For example, the primary expansion slot runs at PCIe 5.0 x16 with a single graphics card, while two will drop both expansion slots to PCIe 5.0 x8. With a third device installed, the expansion slots operate at PCIe 5.0 x8, PCIe 5.0 x8 and PCIe 4.0 x4.

The Z690 Taichi Razer Edition has one HDMI 2.1 port and two Intel Thunderbolt 4 ports if you plan to use Alder Lake's iGPU. Gigabit Ethernet support comes from Intel's I219V controller, while 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet is possible thanks to Killer's E3100G. If you prefer wireless, the motherboard also offers Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth connectivity.

The audio codec on the Z690 Taichi Razer Edition is based on Realtek's ALC1220 solution and boasts 7.1-channel HD audio. The audio system also leverages an ESS Sabre ES9218 DAC and gold-plated audio jacks. In addition, there are five 3.5mm audio connectors with LED lighting and one optical S/PDIF output.

The motherboard isn't short on connectivity, either. The rear panel has two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, four USB 4.0 Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports and four USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports. Additional USB ports are available through the internal headers, including two USB 2.0 headers, one USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A connector, two USB 3.1 Gen 1 headers and a front-panel USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C header.

Scan, a retailer in the U.K., has listed the Z690 Taichi Razer Edition for £559.99 (~$766.359). For comparison, the shop has the regular Z690 Taichi up for £539.99 (~$738.98); therefore, the Razer Edition seems to carry a slight 3.7% premium.

Asus today announced its new ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme motherboard for AMD Ryzen owners. The passively-cooled X570 motherboard arrives to round off ROG's extensive X570 portfolio and compete with today's best motherboards. 

Doing justice to its name, the ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme is an E-ATX motherboard with a power delivery subsystem that conforms to a 18+2 design. Asus equipped the ROG Crosshair VII Extreme with 90A power stages, microfine alloy chokes and 10K Japanese-made, black, metallic capacitors to supply overclockers with a clean power delivery. Two 8-pin EPS power connectors feed the processor with what it needs. Although the ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme doesn't carry the X570S moniker, the motherboard does flaunt passive chipset cooling, similar to the ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero.

The motherboard comes with four DDR4 RAM slots, meaning you can endow the motherboard with 128GB of memory. At the time of writing, Asus hasn't listed the maximum supported memory speed. However, we expect the ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme to support up to DDR4-5100 when paired with a Ryzen 5000 processor.

The ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme provides six standard SATA III ports and up to five M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 slots. Of course, you'll need to have a Ryzen 5000 or Ryzen 3000 to take advantage of the standard; otherwise, the M.2 slots will default back to PCIe 3.0 x4. Three of the M.2 slots are connected directly to the processor, while the other two M.2 slots are linked to the X570 chipset through Asus' ROG DIMM.2 expansion card for M.2 SSDs.

On the expansion side, the motherboard offers two PCIe 4.0 x16 slots and a single PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. The latter is tied to the X570 chipset. In terms of internet connectivity, the ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme delivers 10 Gigabit Ethernet through Marvell's AQtion AQC113CS controller and 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet via Intel's I225-V controller. There's also 2x2 Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 for those who dislike cables.

We spotted eight USB Type-A ports on the ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme's rear panel. The product page isn't complete yet, so we're unsure of their speeds. What's evident is the inclusion of two Intel Thunderbolt 4 ports with support for DisplayPort 1.4 and Thunderbolt video outputs and two DisplayPort-In connections.

The motherboard's audio system is based around Realtek's ALC4082 audio codec with Asus' SupremeFX treatment. Being a premium motherboard, Asus also included ESS Sabre's 9018Q2C DAC/AMP chip.

The ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme is the flagship X570 for Asus' ROG family so it comes with all the bells and whistles, such as a 2-inch OLED display, M.2 latch mechanism for SSDs, graphics card holder - just to mention some.

Asus hasn't revealed the price or release date for the ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme yet.

MSI has launched a trio of H510 mini-ITX motherboards (via momomo_us) to house Intel's latest Rocket Lake and Comet Lake processors. While the motherboards are oriented towards business users, they offer the a rich feature set for the average person as well.

The H510TI-S01, H510TI-S03 and H510TI-S05 carry the LGA1200 socket and are based on Intel's H510 chipset. Unlike your standard mini-ITX offering, MSI's motherboards don't require a 24-pin power connector. They function on a DC-in connector and a standard 4-pin power connector. 

According to MSI, the motherboards support Rocket Lake-S chips up to the Core i9 tier, although the company didn't specify the TDP envelope. The CPU compatibility list wasn't available at the time of the article. However, logic suggests that the H510TI-S01, H510TI-S03 and H510TI-S05 may not support the more power hungry chips due to the modest power layout and power delivery subsystem.

The H510TI-S01, H510TI-S03 and H510TI-S05 are equipped with two DDR4 SO-DIMM memory slots. There is native support for up to 64GB of memory, but frequency varies, depending on the processor. Comet Lake is limited to DDR4-2933 speeds, while Rocket Lake can leverage DDR4-3200 memory modules.

Regardless of the model, you get two conventional SATA III ports and M.2 2280 slot that confirms to the PCIe 3.0 x4 specification for storage. There is no PCIe expansion slot on either of the motherboards. This means that your processor's iGPU will have to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to graphical workloads. This is also where the motherboards start to differentiate themselves from each other. The H510TI-S01 and H510TI-S03 only supply a HDMI 2.0b port and LVDS output, while the H510TI-S05 offers an additional DisplayPort 1.4 output.

MSI equipped the H510TI-S01 with four USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports and five USB 2.0 ports, all based on the H510 chipset. The H510TI-S03, on the other hand, arrives with two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports and five USB 2.0 ports from the H510 chipset and two extra USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports from a third-party ASMedia ASM3142 controller. The H510TI-S05 mirrors the H510TI-S03 but provide a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port via an internal header and switches the ASMedia ASM3142 controller for the ASM1074. The motherboards also sports two USB 2.0 headers for four supplementary USB 2.0 ports.

The motherboards' other attributes are the same. Each model utilizes Realtek's ALC897 codec for audio and RTL8111H LAN controller for a Gigabit Ethernet connection. One M.2 E-key slot is available to add a wireless module.

MSI hasn't revealed the availability or pricing for the H510TI-S01, H510TI-S03 and H510TI-S05.

It seems that Realtek has joined the long list of supply chain bottlenecks. DigiTimes today reported that the company is struggling to meet demand for the various chips manufacturers use in their notebooks, automobiles and other kinds of devices.

In the story, DigiTimes remarked that Realtek has extended their delivery lead times to 32 weeks as the capacity of the foundries is currently tight and there are shortfalls in the supply of the necessary raw materials.

Those chips are found in a wide variety of products. The audio+LAN chips are used in notebooks, for example, and the xDSL chips are being used in "smart city projects" by Samsung. But the shortage of networking equipment might be most worrisome.

Realtek is reportedly falling short of demand for wired networking (Ethernet chips and switches) and wireless communication chips such as Bluetooth. There are alternative solutions, of course, but Realtek is said to supply 70% of the audio+LAN chips used in the global notebook market. Manufacturers can't just find alternative suppliers for all those notebooks—especially during a global chip shortage.

All of this means that Realtek's problems are in many ways the rest of the world's problems. DigiTimes said the company's supply issues have caused production delays for notebook makers, the automotive industry and other sectors.

DigiTimes reports that Dell, HP, and other notebook manufacturers have raised concerns with Realtek, exerting pressure to ship more chips to meet the demand. But with supply issues extending even to Apple, the world's most valuable company, the relaying of concerns seems unlikely to solve the issue.

Those companies will just have to wait for Realtek's chips. Many will also be looking for improved supplies of other chips, display panels, display drivers, and many other components besides. Just don't expect those shortages to be addressed overnight.

Asus just announced the ProART B550-Creator, the first AM4 motherboard to come with Thunderbolt 4 support. The motherboard will be available next month with a price tag of $299.

Like its other ProART motherboards, the ProART B550-Creator arrives with a minimalistic design that features a black exterior accented by gold accents. The motherboard employs a powerful 12+2-phase power delivery subsystem that's cooled by a pair of thick heatsinks. The motherboard feeds the processor with a combination of a 8-pin EPS and 4-pin ATX power connectors. On the memory side, the ProART B550-Creator is equipped with four DDR4 memory slots and accommodates up to 128GB of memory. However, Asus didn't specify up to what memory frequencies are supported.

Storage-wise, the ProART B550-Creator offers four normal SATA III connectors for conventional hard drives and SSDs. There are also a pair of M.2 ports for high-speed storage. Logically, the primary M.2 port adheres to the PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, however, the nature of the secondary M.2 port is uncertain. The ProART B550-Creator's M.2 ports utilize Asus' new M.2 latch mounting system that facilitates SSD installation.

The ProART B550-Creator provides three PCIe x16 and two PCIe x1 expansion slots. Since the motherboard's product page isn't available, the speed of the expansion slots are unknown.

Being a motherboard tailored to professionals and creative artists, the ProART B550-Creator naturally has the latest in connectivity. The motherboard flaunts two Thunderbolt 4 ports as well as dual 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The rear panel also shows a pair of USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, a combo PS/2 connector, a DisplayPort In connector and a standard HDMI port.

The ProART B550-Creator's audio system is based on Realtek's ALC1220A audio codec. The codec itself is isolated from the other components of the motherboard. The system also includes audio-grade capacitors and an integrated amplifier. The motherboard supplies five 3.5mm audio jacks and one SPDIF-Out connector for connecting your audio devices.

Bleu Jour, the French PC manufacturing company, announced two CPU options for their small, cube-shaped mini PC known as the Kubb Graphite edition. According to a report from TechRadar, it will offer both an Intel and Ryzen option for the CPU.

This announcement comes from the IFA 2020 tech expo in Berlin. It measures in at 4.7" x 4.7" x 4.7" (12cm x 12cm x 12cm) forming a cube shape with notably sharp edges and corners.

One version of this new mini PC will offer an embedded Ryzen R1606G chip, while the other comes with a V1605B. However, the two share comparable specs with similar options to upgrade. The base model comes with 8 GB of LPDDR4 that can be upgraded to 32 GB. Both support Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth and include a Realtek Gigabit Ethernet adapter.

The new PC includes a wide selection of colors and more for the outer shell. Buyers can choose from options like graphite and quartz or even indulge in sleek options like the mirror shell. There are some basic colors to choose from, including things like "passion red," fuschia, chocolate, and champagne.

The price you pay will vary depending on the hardware you choose to upgrade. The most basic V1605B model with Linux Mint costs around $803.84 (€679). Adding additional shells and choose the Windows 10 OS option will increase the final price. If you want to check out this minimal mini PC rig, head over to the Bleu Jour website.

First, there was a mortar, bazooka and tomahawk in MSI's MAG (MSI Arsenal Gaming) lineup. Now, there's a torpedo. Continuing its love of military-theme model names, MSI recently announced the MAG B460 Torpedo motherboard for Intel 10th Generation Comet Lake-S processors.

Conforming to the typical ATX form factor, the MAG B460 Torpedo will debut with a 13-phase power delivery subsystem and a single 8-pin EPS power connector to supply juice to your best CPU. The presence of four DDR4 RAM slots means the motherboard can accommodate up to 128GB of DDR4-2933 memory.

The MAG B460 Torpedo's storage options consist of six SATA III ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays and two M.2 slots. Both M.2 slots leverage a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, but there are some limitation. For starters, the primary M.2 slot is the only one that can house M.2 SSDs up to 110mm in length. The secondary M.2 slot is compatible with drives up to 80mm. 

Additionally, Intel Optane drives are only supported on the secondary M.2 slot.

Expansion possibilites aren't too shabby on the MAG B460 Torpedo. MSI equipped the mothjerboard with two PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. The first PCIe 3.0 slot runs at x16, of course, and is directly linked to the Comet Lake-S processor. The second PCIe 3.0 slot, however, is confined to x4 because it's powered by the B460 chipset.

If you're keen on using the integrated graphics from your Comet Lake-S chip, the MAG B460 Torpedo provides one HDMI port and one DisplayPort output for your displays. The first supports resolutions up to 4096 x 2190 at 30 Hz refresh rates and the latter does 4096 x 2304 at 60 Hz.

The MAG B460 Torpedo comes with a single 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port, which is possible thanks to the Realtek RTL8125B controller. The rear panel features a combo PS/2 port, two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, as well as five 3.5mm audio jacks and an optical S/PDIF out. 

Further expanding the port selection are one USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C , one USB 3.2 Gen 1 and two USB 2.0 headers. 

MSI didn't reveal the pricing for the MAG B460 Torpedo. However, CompSource has the motherboard up for $116.25, making the MAG B460 Torpedo just a bit cheaper than the MAG B460 Tomahawk that retails for $139.99.

MSI’s B550I Gaming Edge Wi-Fi is a Mini ITX motherboard based around the mid-range B550 chipset. Priced at $199.99, it’s a motherboard with capable (but not the best) VRMs, multiple M.2 slots, integrated Wi-Fi, four SATA ports, and six USB ports on the rear IO. Read on as we dig down into performance and features to flesh out the differences between this and other B550 Mini-ITX size boards and see if it’s a worthy option in this compact-mid-range field.

MSI’s B550 product stack currently consists of 12 boards, ranging from the Pro B550M Pro-VDH Wi-Fi  ($109.99), several MAG and MPG class boards including the popular B550 Tomahawk ($179.99), and the flagship B550 Gaming Carbon Wi-Fi ($219.99). MSI’s lineup has something for just about every AMD Ryzen system builder, including Micro ATX- and Mini ITX-size motherboards.

In our testing, the B550I Gaming Edge Wi-Fi performed well in the majority of benchmarks, matching the other B550 boards we’ve tested so far, generally landing within a standard margin of error. The board handled stock operations without issue, boosting our Ryzen 9 3900X to 4.6 GHz and 4.3 GHz (two core/all core boost), respectively. Overclocking was also successful in running the CPU at 4.3 GHz. Read on to find detailed specifications and performance results. 

MSI MPG B550I Gaming Edge Wi-Fi Specifications

Features

 Starting with the accessories, our B550I Gaming Edge Wi-Fi includes the expected basics (though not much else), which is typical of today’s motherboards at this price point. 

• Driver DVD
• Quick Install guide
• User Manual
• Two SATA cables
• Wi-Fi antenna
• Case badge
• Two M.2 Screws

MSI went with a less-is-more look with this board. The 8-layer PCB is all black, as are the VRM and chipset heatsinks. The VRM heatsink extends out over the rear IO area, covering all the bits below. Stenciled in grey on top of the heatsink is the MSI name, along with the company’s iconic gaming dragon. The chipset/M.2 heatsink includes a tiny fan, which was inaudible during testing. Outside of that, the DIMM slots and all other connectors are black.

The B550I Gaming Edge Wi-Fi doesn’t include RGB lighting onboard, but does have a 3-pin header for those who cannot live without it and will bring their own. Overall, it's a stealthy black board that will fit in with most build themes.

Since this is a compact Mini ITX board, we’ll start the tour at the top and go around clockwise, covering all the details. In the top-left corner is a single 8-pin EPS connector that sends power to the VRMs. To the right of it, above the mounting bracket, is a set of four debug LEDs. The debug LEDs will turn on and off during the POST process. If there is a problem with any of the four areas (CPU, DRAM, VGA or Boot), that LED will stay lit, informing the user where the POST is hung up. The debug LED is a valuable tool to have for troubleshooting, especially without the 2-character debug display often found on larger boards. 

The far-right edge sports the two single-sided latching DIMMs slots that are capable of supporting 64GB of RAM with speeds listed up to DDR4 4600+. To the right are two (of three) 4-pin fan headers. The CPU and Pump headers output 2A/24W and 3A/36W respectively, which should easily support a couple of fans and most pumps. Below these headers is the 24-pin ATX connector, while below that are four vertically oriented SATA ports (which support RAID0, 1, and 10). Just underneath those ports is a front-panel USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C header and a USB 3.2 Gen 1 header.

On the bottom portion of the board, we see a few headers along with a single full-length PCIe 4.0 (x16) slot. The headers in this area are for the front panel (audio and buttons) and additional USB 2.0 ports. Hidden under the chipset heatsink and fan is the first M.2 socket. This socket supports both PCIe- and SATA-based modules, up to 80mm. The second M.2 socket hides on the backside of the motherboard. The M.2 slots support RAID0 and RAID1 on NVMe drives.

Also in this area is the Realtek ALC1200 codec, along with a couple of capacitors (yellow) dedicated to the audio. While this isn’t the premium ALC1220 or 1220-VB codec, most users will be satisfied with the sound, regardless. 

MSI implemented a 10-phase (8+2, Vcore + SOC) VRM with a Monolithic Power Systems MP2855GUT controller. Details are scarce on this controller, but since we don’t see doublers for Vcore, that leads us to believe it has nine discrete channels. The digital PWM controller then feeds eight 60A MP86936 MOSFETs for Vcore. While this isn’t the most robust power delivery on the Mini-ITX B550 boards, it handled our Ryzen 9 3900X without issue at stock and while overclocked, without burning up or causing other issues.

Flipping the board around to the rear IO, we first see an integrated IO plate, six USB ports (USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A/C, 2x USB 3.2 Gen1, and 2x USB 2.0), 5-plug analog plus SPDIF outputs for the audio and a BIOS Flashback button. There is a single HDMI output for video, as well as the ethernet port and 

Software

MSI doesn’t offer an excessive amount of software, but it covers all the bases. The utility section of MSI’s support page for this board includes an MSI-skinned version of CPUz, Realtek Audio control and Dragon Center. Dragon Center (DC) is a one-stop-shop to monitor the system, control any RGB lighting (Mystic Light), LAN, and gaming highlights. DC is relatively comprehensive, though it is missing software-based overclocking and fan controls.

MSI Dragon Center

Nahimic

Firmware

To give you a taste of the Firmware, we’ve gathered screenshots showing a majority of the BIOS screens. MSI’s layout is informative and straightforward to use in EZ Mode or Advanced, with the latter separated into the more familiar sections on the main page. When overclocking, you’ll find the most frequently used options on the initial BIOS screen in the OC section. Overall, the MSI BIOS is easy to navigate and read, with plenty of options to tweak your system.

Test System and Comparison Products

Our test system uses Windows 10 64-bit OS (1909) with all threat mitigations applied. The motherboard BIOS used is the latest non-beta available to the public unless otherwise noted. The hardware used is as follows: 

For this review, we’ll be comparing the MSI MPG B550I Gaming Edge Wi-Fi ($199.99) against the full-size B550 motherboards we’ve tested, the MAG B550 Tomahawk ($179.99), Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master ($279.99) and the Asus ROG Strix B550-F Gaming Wi-Fi ($209.99). As soon as we can get other Mini-ITX size boards from the B550 family, we’ll have better direct comparisons. 

Benchmark Settings 

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Our standard benchmarks and power tests are performed using the CPU’s stock frequencies (including stock Thermal Velocity Boost), with all power-saving features enabled. Optimized defaults get set in the BIOS and the memory uses its XMP profiles. For this baseline testing, we set Windows to High Performance, except for power testing that uses the Balanced plan for the PC to reach an idle state.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Synthetic benchmarks are a great tool to figure out if a board is running out of spec, as identical settings should produce similar performance results. Advanced memory timings are the one place where motherboard makers can still optimize for either stability or performance, though, and those settings can impact some testing.

In our synthetic benchmarks, the B550I Gaming Edge Wi-Fi’s results were right in line with the other, ATX B550 motherboards we’ve tested. We haven’t seen a lot of deviation in most of these tests, except perhaps with the PCMark suite which can be a bit temperamental at times.

Timed Applications

In our timed application tests, LAME and Handbrake, the Gaming Edge Wi-Fi’s times we spot on against the other B550 motherboards.

3D Games and 3DMark

We’ve recently updated our game tests to The Division 2 and Forza Horizon 4. The games are run at 1920x1080 resolution using the Ultra preset. As the resolution goes up, the CPU tends to have less of an impact and most games at this resolution in the first place. The goal with these settings is to determine if there are differences in performance at the most commonly used resolution with settings most people use or at least strive for.

During our gaming and 3DMark tests, MSI’s Mini ITX board kept up with all other B550-based products without issue. 3DMark Fire Strike, Time Spy, and our two games continue to show very little difference with all boards, within a small margin-of-error range.

Power Consumption and VRM Temperatures

For power testing, we use AIDA64’s System Stability Test with Stress CPU, FPU and Cache enabled, using the peak power consumption value. The wattage reading comes from the wall via a Kill-A-Watt meter to capture the entire ecosystem. The only variable that changes is the motherboard; all other parts are the same.

When our system was at idle (using the AMD Balanced power plan in Windows), the Gaming Edge Wi-Fi pulled 47W from the wall, a value tied for the lowest idle wattage we’ve seen so far. After applying the AIDA64 stress test load, power use peaked at 216W from the wall, leaning towards the higher end of consumption.

Our B550 Gaming Edge Wi-Fi and its 8-phase (Vcore) 60A VRMs handled both stock and overclocked testing without issue. During the stock runs, the hottest point on the VRM peaked just under 50 degrees Celsius (Hwinfo didn’t display a MOS sensor). After overclocking to 4.3 GHz and 1.35V, temperatures increased a few degrees and peaked at 56 degrees Celsius, well within the operational parameters of the MOSFETs. 

Note that the dip on the chart around the 18-minute mark was from the chassis fan falling on the VRMs for a brief time, not any throttling.

Overclocking

There are several ways to overclock on AMD platforms, depending on your goals. If your focus is single-threaded performance, it’s best to tweak PBO and let the motherboard and CPU figure it out under the parameters entered. If you are looking for better multi-core/thread performance, you will overclock all cores to the same speed. Part of our goal is to test the capability of the motherboard, so we chose the more power-hungry option, 4.3 GHz and 1.35V for an all core/thread overclock. The Gaming Edge Wi-Fi handled our 12c/24t Ryzen 9 3900X overclock without issue. Vdroop was mitigated well by the default setting (auto); no other tweaks were necessary. We simply set the voltage to a static 1.35V and 43x CPU multiplier, then off we went to stability testing.

Final Thoughts

MSI’s B550I Gaming Edge Wi-Fi ($199.99) proved to be a competent performer in our stock benchmarks, as well as the overclocking we put it through. The power delivery, while not the most robust, handled our 12c/24t Ryzen 9 3900X with poise. Features-wise, the tiny board managed to stuff two M.2 slots, four SATA ports and a fair amount of USB ports on the rear IO (and headers). About the only thing missing is lighting. You’ll have to bring your own RGB via a header on the board.

At this price and form-factor, the B550I Gaming Edge’s direct competitors are the Gigabyte B550I Aorus Pro AX ($179.99), ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ax ($199.99) and the Asus ROG Strix B550-I Gaming ($229.99). The most significant difference between these boards outside of price is the VRM capability (the other boards have better power delivery), audio (not that many would notice a difference), officially supported memory speeds and aesthetics/integrated RGB lighting (ASRock and Gigabyte integrate the LEDs).

Without getting our hands on the other Mini ITX size boards (yet), it’s tough to declare an outright winner among these diminutive B550 based motherboards. For just under $200, the MSI B550I Gaming Edge Wi-Fi showed that it is more than capable of handling our Ryzen 9 3900X, even when overclocked. Suppose you are looking for a Mini ITX size motherboard and want to save some money by going to B550 chipset. In that case, the MSI MPG B550I Gaming Edge Wi-Fi is a viable option to build your system around, though if you crave that RGB lighting and better power delivery, there are other options available. Some are even priced less.

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We recently reviewed high-end Intel Z490 motherboards from most of the major partners and found overbuilt VRMs and feature lists long enough to compete with the longest of the Harry Potter series. At the time, we missed out on the ASRock Z490 Aqua as the board they sent initially was pre-production. Fast forward to today and we have the proper version ready for a deep dive.

The Z490 Aqua, like the other flagship Z490 boards, is quite impressive. For $1105.99 (yes, you read that right), the Aqua's claim to fame is the integrated water block designed to cool the CPU and VRMs. The only other Z490 motherboard like this is the Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Extreme Waterforce ($1299.99). Outside of the monoblock, the Aqua implements a robust 16-phase 90A VRM, integrated Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C ports, premium Realtek audio and a fancy, informative OLED display. Overall, it is a well-rounded and well-built motherboard, but it’s going to cost you.

Performance-wise, the Z490 Aqua was comparable to all the other boards we’ve tested so far that haven't been locked down to intel specifications (namely Biostar’s boards). The only outliers were in PCMark10 Application Start-up test and the Cinebench and POV-Ray single thread, where the ASRock was the slowest (though not by much). Outside of those, the rest of the testing, including gaming performance, was in line with the competition. In the end, you wouldn’t know the difference between these boards in performance without seeing the benchmark numbers, which is what we have come to expect.

Along with the features mentioned earlier, the Aqua also comes with an Aquantia 10 Gigabit ethernet port, Intel Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax, three M.2 sockets (all with heatsinks), eight SATA ports and enough fan and pump headers to run a custom water loop from. Below is a complete list of specifications from ASRock.

ASRock Z490 Aqua Specifications  

Features

As you’d expect given the price, the Z490 Aqua includes quite a bit of accessories that all sit in boxes below the motherboard. You’ll find the usual parts including SATA cables, Wi-Fi antenna, screws, etc. On top of this, also included are several fittings designed for hard tubing, which is a great value add. That said, I question why the company chose hard tube fittings over soft, as I imagine most users are still building custom loops with soft tubing, which is easier to build with. Below is a list of everything included in the box along with the motherboard. 

• Quick Installation Guide, Support CD
• (4) SATA Data Cables
• ASRock SLI_HB_Bridge_2S Card
• ASRock WiFi 2.4/5 GHz Antenna
• Thermal Compound
• (5) Spare Thermal Pads
• (4) Spare Screws for MOS and Chokes
• (4) Spare Screws for CPU Sockets
• (6) Spare Screws for M.2 Heatsinks
• (2) 90° Tubing Elbow Fittings
• (6) G1/4" to 14mm Tube Fittings
• 2 x G1/4" Plugs
• 2 x G1/4" to 14mm 90° Rotary Fittings
• 1 x Ball Valve
• 8 x Rubber Cushions for CPU Socket (2 sets)
• 3 x Screws for M.2 Sockets
• 2 x Standoffs for M.2 Sockets

The Z490 Aqua’s appearance has the look of an $1100 plus motherboard, with the majority of its black PCB covered by a silver aluminum shrouds/heatsinks and the massive water block that cools the CPU and VRMs. The EATX size board has a unique design aesthetic, with a notch cut out around the SATA ports (presumably for easier cable routing).The top right corner is cut off/flat, as well. Only the Z490 Apex from Asus and Z490 FTW/Dark have used similar designs. 

RGB lighting elements are integrated into IO cover, monoblock, as well as on top of the chipset heatsink. Unlike with some motherboard-based RGB, the colors here are saturated and very bright, especially on the CPU block where light shines through the water and off the reflective coating inside.

Above the rear IO is a shroud that contains a black-and-white OLED screen that displays information covering CPU voltage, temperature, fan speed, system status and POST details. The content on the OLED is also customizable through the BIOS. Overall, the Z490 Aqua is a good-looking board and with that water block, also one of the heaviest I’ve had my hands on.

Starting on the top half of the board, two-thirds of this area is covered by the rear IO shroud and the monoblock. Wedged between the block and shroud are two 8-pin EPS plugs (one is required). The block itself takes in water directly on top of the CPU, sending it around the block in a clockwise motion to the outlet on top. We didn’t measure flow rates, but it doesn’t look to be restrictive. 

To the right of the monoblock are four single-side locking DIMM slots capable of supporting up to 128GB of RAM and speeds up to 4700+(OC). I’m surprised to see the board without reinforcement on the DRAM slots, but it is consistent styling. Just above the DRAM slots are the first two (of eight) fan headers, the CPU fan connector and CPU/WP connector, the latter able to output 3A/36W.

Just to the right of the DIMM slots in the upper-right corner is the first two (of four) RGB headers, a three-pin addressable and 4-pin RGB. Also located in this area are the power and reset buttons as well as the safe boot and retry buttons, which are helpful when overclocking and trying to dial in your settings. Sliding further down the right edge are the 24-pin ATX for motherboard power and two more 4-pin fan headers (2A/24W capable). Just below these is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C header and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 headers.

Power delivery on the Aqua is, as expected, overbuilt. The 16-phase VRM uses a 12-phase (X+Y+Z=12) Intersil ISL69296 controller that manages the Vcore phases. Power is sent to ISL6617A phase doublers, then on to fourteen 90A ISL99390 MOSFETs. This configuration allows for a whopping 1260A just for the CPU. Overclocking using ambient or even extreme cooling methods will not be a problem with this setup. We didn’t have any issues with our Core i9-10900K running at 5.2 GHz with all cores and threads.

The bottom half of the board is mostly covered in the silver aluminum shrouds, which double as heatsinks for the three M.2 sockets surrounding the PCIe slots. On the far left, mostly hidden outside of the audio caps (yellow Nichicon, red WIMA), is the Realtek ALC1220 premium codec. Also hidden is an ESS9218 Sabre DAC that supports higher-impedance headphones, up to 600 Ohms. The premium codec and audio bits should be satisfactory for most users.

In the middle are several PCIe slots and between them, the M.2 sockets. Starting with the PCIe slots, there are a total of three full-length slots, all of which are reinforced. The top two slots are fed from the CPU, while the bottom is sourced from the chipset. The slots breakdown to x16/x0/x4, x8/x8/x4 and support AMD QuadFireX, 3/2-Way CrossFireX, and Nvidia SLI (including Quadro cards). In addition to the full-length slots are two x1 slots that are also fed from the chipset. Be aware that if you use a two-slot or larger graphics card, one or both of these slots are covered and cannot be used.

The ASRock Z490 Aqua has three M.2 sockets, all of which have heatsinks for keeping warm-running NVMe M.2 modules cool. The top two slots support up to 80mm devices with the top (M2_1) supporting PCIe devices only while M2_2 (middle socket) supports both SATA and PCIe. The bottom slot supports up to 110mm drives and SATA/PCIe devices.

There will be a fair amount of lane sharing going on with this motherboard. The M2_1 shares lanes with SATA ports 0/1. If either is in use, the other will be disabled. M2_2 and SATA ports 4/5 also share lanes. If either is in use the other will also be disabled. M2_2 shares lanes with PCIe 5 and SATA 3. If either of those is in use, the others will be disabled. That said, there’s enough storage options here for most builders. Even with all three M.2 sockets populated, you will still have three functional SATA ports available. 

On the far right, we see that unique ‘notch’ with the eight horizontal-facing SATA ports. Six of these SATA ports are sourced from the chipset and support RAID0, 1, 5 and 10, while the other two exist thanks to an ASMedia ASM1061 controller. With all of the lane sharing going on due to the three M.2 sockets, the third-party ports are a welcome sight, unaffected by any M.2 devices.

Across the bottom edge of the board are several headers covering a variety of functions. Below is a list in order from left to right. 

• Front panel audio
• UART header 
• 3-pin aRGB header
• 4-pin RGB header
• (2) System fan headers
• Dr. Debug LED
• System Panel headers

The rear IO area consists of 10 total USB ports, including the Thunderbolt 3 Type-C ports. The Thunderbolt ports run at 40 Gb/s in Thunderbolt mode or 10 Gb/s for USB 3.2. In addition to those, the Aqua includes another USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port for a total of three Type-C ports -- the most we’ve seen in quite a while. As far as Type-A ports, the Aqua includes three USB 3.2 Gen 2 and four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports. You likely won’t run out of USB ports on this motherboard.

For video, the board includes an HDMI port as well as two Mini DisplayPort inputs for use with the Thunderbolt ports. On the left side is the clear CMOS and BIOS FlashBack button, along with the Wi-Fi antenna connections. We also see a standard 5-plug analog and SPDIF outputs for audio (curiously located in the middle of the rear IO) and two Ethernet ports for the Realtek 2.5 GbE and Aquantia 10 GbE.

Software

On the software side, ASRock includes programs for a variety of applications including RGB lighting control, overclocking and an App Shop designed to download and update your applications and drivers. ASRock doesn’t have a single program to house all of these applications, so you will have to download them separately. Below we’ve captured several screenshots of the App Shop, Polychrome Sync, A-Tune, and the Nahimic 3 audio program.

Firmware

To give you a sense of the Firmware, we’ve gathered screenshots showing a majority of the BIOS screens.

ASRock’s BIOS is one of the more user-friendly and good-looking UEFIs out of the major brands. Using a black background with white writing and sky-blue highlights, it’s easy to read. The Taichi’s gear/clockwork theme also finds its way in here.

At first boot, you’re greeted by Easy Mode, a more information-based page than tweaking, though you can adjust some things (XMP profiles, canned fan settings, etc). Going into the Advanced Mode, we see several headings across the top. The BIOS is deep and includes a lot of functionality, with the most frequently used items easily accessible and not buried within sub-menus.

Test System and Comparison Products 

Our test system uses Windows 10 64-bit OS (1909) with all threat mitigations applied. The motherboard BIOS used is the latest non-beta available to the public, unless otherwise noted. The hardware used is as follows: 

For this review, we’ll be directly comparing the ASRock Z490 Aqua ($1,105.99) to the other flagship Z490 boards we’ve tested, Asus’ ROG Maximus XII Extreme ($849.99), the MSI MEG Z490 Godlike ($749.99), and Gigabyte’s Z490 Aorus Extreme ($799.99). 

Benchmark Settings

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All standard benchmarks and power tests are performed using the CPU’s stock frequencies (including stock Thermal Velocity Boost), with all power-saving features enabled. Optimized defaults are set in the BIOS and the memory is set using the XMP profiles. For this baseline testing, Windows is set to High Performance, except for during power testing, where we switch to Balanced so the PC idles properly.

**The red bar represents the board we are reviewing, not the fastest/slowest result for a given chart.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Synthetics are a great tool to figure out if a board is running out of spec, as identical settings should produce extremely similar performance results. Advanced memory timings are the one place where motherboard makers can still optimize for either stability or performance though, and those settings can impact some testing.

The flagship ASRock Z490 Aqua performed well in most tests, though it was one of the worst in PCMark10 application startup as well as Cinebench and POV-Ray single thread. Outside of those, the Aqua performed where expected in the synthetic benchmarks.

Timed Applications 

The timed applications show slightly different results. In the LAME testing, the 12.7s time ties for the slowest result, while both Handbrake tests were right around the other results.

3D Games and 3DMark 

We’ve recently updated our game tests to more The Division 2 and Forza Horizon 4. The games are run at 1920x1080 resolution using the Ultra preset. As the resolution goes up, the CPU tends to have less of an impact on most games. The goal with these settings is to determine if there are differences in performance at the most commonly used resolution with settings most people use or at least strive for.

Our gaming and 3DMark results showed similar performance to all of the other Z490 motherboards we’ve tested. There are no concerns from the results here.

Power Consumption / VRM Temperatures 

If this is the front time you’ve seen power use for Core i9-10900K, it may be a bit shocking. With loads reaching almost 200W at stock speeds (because most boards allow for a higher draw than intel’s spec), many users will be hard-pressed to keep these cool and get the most out of the chip. For power testing, we used AIDA64’s System Stability Test with Stress CPU, FPU and Cache enabled using peak power consumption value within the first minute. The wattage reading is taken from the wall via a Kill-A-Watt meter to capture the entire ecosystem (minus the monitor). The only variable that changes in these reviews is the motherboard; all other parts are the same (except for the Aqua and its custom cooling requirement).

The ASRock Z490 Aqua used the most power at idle, 69W at the wall, compared to all the other Z490 boards we’ve tested so far. Part of the reason is due to the pump we’re using, along with the fans that use more power than those found on the Corsair H150i Pro we normally use. Load wattage was also on the higher side, peaking at 273W during our test. This averages out to 171W, putting it on the higher side of power use as configured, but you likely won’t notice on your power bill.

As expected, the VRMs on this board ran cool at stock speeds, never even reaching 40 degrees Celsius on our sensor (they peaked around 43 degrees Celsius according to HWMonitor using the hottest value). The Asus and Aorus flagship boards (ROG Maximus Extreme and Aorus Extreme) were both well over 40 degrees, approaching 50 degrees. Our cooling loop for the Aqua consists of a single EKWB 3x120mm Coolstream SE radiator, along with a couple of mid-range fans set on high. 

Overclocking the CPU to 5.2 GHz @ 1.35V with all cores and threads showed a slight increase in temperatures, up to about 45 degrees Celsius, nearly 10C less than the other boards. Where our Corsair H150i Pro AIO could barely keep up with just the CPU, the custom loop managed to keep things under control with both the VRM and CPU. I have to admit going into this test I was unsure how it would work out. With a longer test, perhaps temperatures would rise a couple of degrees, but this board will still run cooler than the air-cooled motherboards. The big question is if that is worth the $1,100-plus board price.

Overclocking

As we’ve seen with all previous Z490 reviews, the Aqua was able to run our Core i9-10900K CPU at 5.2 GHz and 1.35V, while also keeping the CPU around 90 degrees Celsius. The 90A MOSFETs will handle anything you can throw at them in both ambient and sub-ambient cooling situations. Water cooling the VRMs allowed them to run over 10 degrees Celsius cooler than the other boards, so we did see tangible results for the money. We had to raise LLC a bit to compensate for vdroop, but this is typical of most boards on this platform.

On the memory side of things, we installed our DDR4 4000 kit, set XMP, and away we went. Like many other motherboards, the Aqua also set VccSA and VccIO much higher than needed, around 1.35V and 1.25V respectively. Motherboards do this to favor stability, but many set them way too high. We ended up at 1.2V for VccSA and 1.1V for VccIO for stability, which is a lot lower and ran a bit cooler.

Final Analysis

The ASRock Z490 Aqua performed well in our testing suite, trading punches with all of the other Z490 boards we’ve tested. Where the Aqua excelled is its ability to keep the VRMs and CPU cool under its massive monoblock. To that end, the overbuilt 16-phase VRM was at least 10 degrees Celsius cooler than the air-cooled counterparts. The big question is if the integrated block is worth the $1105.99 price tag. 

The Z490 Aqua includes other features found on flagship-class motherboards, including the large OLED screen, premium audio codec/DAC, Aquantia 10 GbE, Wi-Fi 6 AX201, and the incredibly robust power delivery. That, said for the price tag, I would like to see onboard water temperature and flow sensors like all of the other flagship Z490 boards reviewed previously. For a motherboard that has no other option but to use watercooling, it feels like a glaring omission. For those planning on buying this motherboard and using hard tubing, the included fittings are welcomed and will save you some money. If you plan on soft tubing, you’ll still have to buy the fittings and the included fittings will just look pretty in the box.

As for competition, the Aqua’s direct competitor is the Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Extreme Waterforce that also includes the monoblock cooling, but it costs even more at $1299.99. Hopefully we’ll be able to review this board down the road. Outside of that, the Asus ROG Maximus Formula ($499.99) offers a hybrid cooling option that will cool the VRMs with air or water (not the CPU, note) and with that, a much lower price. You can also look at companies like EKWB who make monoblocks for a few motherboards but, typically, this is limited to just a few boards and doesn’t look nearly as good as those designed from the vendor.

In the end, ASRock’s Z490 Aqua is a good-looking board with all of its aluminum heatsinks, shrouds, and monoblocks covering the majority of the PCB. The RGB LEDs shine brightly through the block and can brighten up a room. Hardware-wise, it has one of the most capable VRMs, and outside of missing some water cooling headers, is very handsomely appointed. If you want to build a system based on a motherboard that has an integrated water block that cools both the CPU and VRMs, this is the least-expensive option of the two Z490 models, and is a viable option to build a high-end custom water-cooled system.

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It seems like an unusual time to release a B450 motherboard, but Biostar has done just that and launched the B450NH for AMD's chips. The motherboard accommodates Ryzen processors from Summit Ridge to Matisse and Ryzen APUs from Bristol Ridge through Picasso.

The B450NH, which is based on the B450 chipset, comes in a mini-ITX form factor with two DDR4 memory slots. The motherboard supports memory speeds up to DDR4-4000 and capacities up to 64GB. Surprisingly, the B450NH plays nice with both non-ECC and ECC memory modules.

Biostar equips the B450NH with four SATA III connectors that support RAID 0, 1 and 10 arrays. However, you only receive one M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slot for ultra-fast SSDs up to a maximum length of 80mm. There is a small catch though. Older APUs, such as Bristol Ridge and Raven Ridge processors only support SATA-based M.2 drives.

Biostar's B450NH incorporates two Realtek products. The RTL8111H Ethernet controller provides a single Gigabit Ethernet port for Internet connectivity. The ALC887 audio codec, on the other hand, handles the audio responsibilities. The motherboard comes with three 3.5mm audio jacks for your audio devices.

The motherboard has a HDMI port and D-Sub port, but you'll need to pair it with a Ryzen APU to make use of them since Ryzen processors lack integrated graphics. The rear panel also houses a PS/2 combo port, four USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports and two USB 2.0 ports. For added connectivity, Biostar has placed a USB 2.0 header and USB 3.2 Gen 1 header on the B450NH with each header capable of delivering up to two corresponding ports.

Biostar didn't reveal the pricing or availability for the B450NH.

Adata’s latest SSD, the Falcon, has flown into our lab in hopes of perching itself on our Best SSDs list. Adata’s Falcon sports multi-gigabyte per second performance and AES 256-bit encryption support for added security, but it also has stunningly good looks that are sure to complement the aesthetic of most builds. However, Adata’s Falcon isn’t the most responsive SSD available, largely because it lacks a DRAM buffer.

Adata’s Falcon is a compact M.2 NVMe SSD that the company claims is ideal for tasks like video editing, industrial drawing, and programming. Flaunting sequential performance figures of up to 3.1/1.5 GBps of sequential read/write throughput, as well as random performance of up to 180,000 read/write IOPS, it sure seems to fit the part performance-wise. But what really boosts potential prosumer adoption its hardware-based AES 256-bit encryption support. Adata’s Falcon can not only serve up data quickly, but it can also do so while keeping it secure.

Specifications

Adata’s Falcon is available in capacities that span from 256GB up to 2TB and is priced very competitively, especially the higher-capacity models that land as low as ~$0.12 per gigabyte for the 1TB and 2TB models. The Falcon uses Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) ECC and comes with endurance ratings that are competitive with many high-end SSDs, like the WD Black SN750 and Samsung 970 EVO Plus, but it still trails some SSDs that come with Phison SSD controllers. The 1TB Falcon is rated to endure up to 600 TB of writes within its 5-year warranty.

Software and Accessories

Adata provides both an SSD Toolbox and cloning software. The SSD Toolbox allows you to monitor, diagnose, and update the firmware of your SSD as well as ‘optimize’ some system configuration settings. Acronis True Image OEM enables you to clone your data to your new SSD and also create system images for backup purposes.

A Closer Look

The Falcon looks like a piece of jewelry more than an SSD. Normally, the heat spreader on an SSD is more rugged and industrial than flashy, but the Falcon’s gold-finished aluminum alloy heat spreader and black PCB pair up nicely for an absolutely stunning look.

Realtek’s RTS5762DL, an 8-channel DRAMless PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3 SSD controller, powers the drive. The chip leverages dual ARM CPUs, and it’s package dimensions are much smaller than the RTS5762 we tested on Adata’s XPG Spectrix S40G. Its overall size is comparable to Phison’s newly-shrunk E12S 8-channel NVMe 1.3 SSD controller, a clue that suggests that it is manufactured on a 12nm process node, too.

This RTS5762DL allows for manufacturers to mount up to four NAND packages on the same side of the PCB as the controller, enabling the Flacon to maintain a slim single-sided M.2 2280 form factor even at the 2TB capacity point. Our 1TB sample interfaces with sixteen of Micron’s third-generation 96L (B27B) TLC 512Gb NAND dies at bus speeds of 533-667 MT/s. Adata sets aside 7% of the NAND for overprovisioning.

While the RTS5762DL lacks DRAM for buffering flash translation layer (FTL) data, it uses NVMe’s Host Memory Buffer (HMB) feature so that the controller can use a few MB of the host system’s DRAM instead. While this presents a slight latency penalty due to the latency associated with communicating through the PCIe bus to the DRAM and back, overall performance is typically better than a DRAMless SSD without the tech. The drive also supports securing erasing via the Format NVM command, TRIM, and S.M.A.R.T. data reporting with a working temperature sensor.

Comparison Products

We put Adata’s Falcon against some of the best SSDs on the market, including Seagate’s FireCuda 520 with its PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. Our other comparables all feature a PCIe 3.0 x4 link, except for the SATA Crucial MX500 SSD and WD Black, a 7,200-RPM HDD. Samsung’s 970 EVO Plus, Adata’s XPG SX8200 Pro, WD’s Black SN750, and Seagate’s FireCuda 510 represent top-end competition, while the WD Blue SN550 is one of the best performing DRAMless SSDs we’ve tested. We also threw in the Adata XPG Spectrix S40G that flaunts a DRAM-based variant of the Falcon’s controller with last-gen 64L TLC and tasteful RGB lighting.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Stormbringer free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

Adata’s Falcon loads up game scenes fairly rapidly compared to a standard HDD and even manages to outpace the Adata XPG Spectrix S40G. However, it’s DRAMless architecture doesn’t make for the most responsive gaming experience. The Falcon trails most competitors by a second or two and falls into eighth place.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom blocks of data. Our 50GB data set includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos. Our 100GB includes 22,579 files with 50GB of them being large movies. We copy the data sets to new folders and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly written 6.5GB zip file and 15GB movie file.

Adata’s Falcon scored fifth place in our 50GB and 100GB file transfer tests. Overall, it outperformed the DRAM-based S40G by a significant margin as well as the FireCuda 510 and WD’s Blue SN550. The Falcon’s read performance wasn’t quite as fast as some of the high-end options, though.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Tests

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The quick benchmark is more relatable to those who use their PCs for leisure or basic office work, while the full benchmark relates more to power users.

The Falcon was the least responsive of the group except for the Crucial MX500, the plain old SATA SSD, and the HDD. Although Adata’s XPG Spectrix S40G outpaced the DRAMless Falcon by just a hair, to put things into perspective, it still hangs close to the WD Black SN750. Moving onto the Full System benchmark, Adata’s Falcon surpassed the Spectrix S40G yet again. Overall, the Falcon is closer to the WD Black than the S40G.

Trace Testing – SPECworkstation 3

Like PCMark 10, SPECworkstation 3 is a trace-based benchmark, but it is designed to push the system harder by measuring workstation performance in professional applications.

Adata’s Falcon needs some more tuning for demanding workflows. Adata’s Falcon outperformed the Spectrix S40G in SPECworkstation’s storage benchmark, but that isn’t enough for it to beat the WD Blue SN550. With performance that is roughly twice as fast as the Falcon’s, WD’s Blue SN550 proves again why it is the best DRAMless SSD available.

Synthetics - ATTO

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

We tested Adata’s Falcon at a queue depth (QD) of 1, representing most day to day file access at various block sizes. Read performance is pretty good, though it lags behind more powerful DRAM-based SSDs with smaller files. Write performance is sluggish, but aligns with the 1.5 GBps specification rating.

Synthetic Testing - iometer

iometer is an advanced and highly configurable storage benchmarking tool that vendors often use to measure the performance of their devices.

Adata’s Falcon doesn’t soar above most 8-channel NVMe SSDs with peak sequential performance measuring 3,255/1,630 MBps read/write, and unfortunately, the Falcon’s random performance is also amongst the least responsive.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSD makers implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.  

Adata’s Flacon has a massive dynamic SLC write cache that spans one third the available capacity. From empty, the Falcon wrote 365GB of data at a rate of 1.57 GBps before performance degraded. Once the SLC write cache filled, write speeds averaged a fairly consistent 225 MBps, which is a dramatic improvement in performance over the S40G’s after cache write speed. The Falcon recovered roughly 25GB of cache space back per minute, so it’s SLC write cache recovers quickly.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

When possible, we also log the temperature of the drive via the S.M.A.R.T. data to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Bear in mind that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

While Adata’s Falcon isn’t a record-breaker when it comes to our performance testing, it pulls off some decent efficiency numbers despite its lack of performance-boosting DRAM. At 190 MBps per watt, it scores fifth place on the efficiency chart, roughly tying the Samsung 970 EVO Plus. Even with four extra NAND channels, Adata’s Falcon only consumes an extra 0.4W on average over the WD Blue SN550. Unfortunately, this drive consumes a lot of power at idle with both ASPM enabled and disabled, while Silicon Motion and Phison powered SSDs only consume milliwatts.

The Falcon will typically handle anything workload you throw at it without breaking a sweat. We copied 250GB to the Falcon with no airflow directed at the SSD. The controller’s temperature peaked at 73 degrees Celsius during the transfer, and we didn’t see any performance throttling. A minute after the transfer completed, background tasks heated the controller up even more, though, and we measured a peak of 79 degrees Celsius.

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Like the last Realtek-powered SSD we reviewed, the Adata XPG Spectrix S40G, the components at the heart of Adata’s Falcon make for an interesting mix of performance and endurance that lands somewhere between the entry-level and mainstream. Dishing out sequential performance of up to 3.1/1.5 GBps read/write, Realtek’s RTS5762DL 8-channel architecture, and Micron’s latest 96-Layer TLC flash, Adata’s Falcon soars well above its slower entry-level competition. And, with a large dynamic SLC write cache that spans one-third of the Falcon’s available capacity, it can handle most file transfers you throw its way at its rated speeds.

But other things matter just as much, if not more, than peak performance. While Adata’s Falcon proved quite capable under most sequential workloads, its DRAMless design isn’t the most responsive under random workloads and hindered it a bit during application benchmarks. Also, writing to the SSD after the SLC write cache fills can be quite slow.

Host memory buffer (HMB) tech, which uses system memory instead of memory on the SSDs, can only help so much with a DRAMless architecture, which is why WD opted to go without the feature on their DRAMless Blue SN550. Using controller SRAM instead, WD’s 1TB Blue SN550 offers faster responsiveness in day-to-day use. It’s even solid when we hammer it with heavy application workloads, handling them with very consistent performance for $10 less than the Falcon at the time of publishing.  But it doesn’t look nearly as sleek, nor does it come in a larger 2TB capacity to compete with the Falcon on the high-end.

On the higher end of the market, Adata’s XPG SX8200 Pro is very tough competition for the Falcon, though. With a Silicon Motion SM2262EN 8-channel NVMe controller clocked at 650MHz, onboard DRAM and Micron’s 64L TLC NAND flash, it is one of the fastest SSDs on the market. In our benchmarking, it dished out performance figures that exceed the Falcon’s for only $10 more at the 1TB capacity and $20 more at 2TB. And, although the black finish isn’t as glamorous as the Falcon’s golden finish, it comes with a heat spreader to keep it cool, too.

Adata markets the Falcon as a more of an industrial/prosumer device and has even gone as far as to include AES 256-bit encryption support, but the flashy gold heat spreader looks better suited for a sleek custom-built system rather than a boring business workstation. Adata’s Falcon is a perfect fit for those on a budget with motherboards without M.2 heatsinks, The drive also comes in a single-sided form factor, even at the 2TB capacity, so the Falcon should fit into almost any laptop and keep cool, too.

If you are in the market for a new NVMe SSD and are on a tighter budget, the Adata Falcon isn’t without its faults, but it will deliver fairly good performance, and look good doing it. Not to mention, Adata’s Falcon endurance ratings match it as well as more costly competitors such as Samsung’s 970 EVO Plus and WD Black NVMe SSDs, while also being backed by a five-year warranty. Be sure to give Adata’s Falcon your consideration.

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ECS (via Hermitage Akihabara) has cooked up the H410H6-TI2 motherboard for PC builders that want to build an AIO or slim system with Intel's 10th Generation Comet Lake-S processors.

ECS advertises the H410H6-TI2 as a thin Mini-ITX motherboard with the LGA1200 CPU socket. The motherboard still measures 170 x 170mm but comes with the novelty of having a thinner body. Thin Mini-ITX motherboards can be up to 40% slimmer than your typical Mini-ITX offering. 

The H410H6-TI2 draws power through a 19V DC-in jack at the motherboard's rear panel, eradicating the need for a power supply in the system. However, there are some limitations here. Due to the lack of proper power connectors and modest power delivery subsystem, the H410H6-TI2 can only house Comet Lake-S CPUs with a TDP (thermal design power) up to 65W.

But motherboard vendors have to make a lot of compromises to keep the thickness down on thin Mini-ITX boards. There are no heatsinks or power connectors, and the standard DDR4 RAM slots are usually replaced with SO-DIMM variants.

The two SO-DIMM DDR4 memory slots on the ECS H410H6-TI2 accept DDR4-2933 modules with a capacity up to 32GB. Storage is a bit limited too, as the motherboard only supplies two SATA III ports that are connected with the H410 chipset. However, there's one M.2 slot for an M.2 2280 SATA-or PCIe-based SSD and an additional M.2 slot for a M.2 2230 wireless card.

ECS' new motherboard features the Realtek ALC662 audio codec and has two 3.5mm audio jacks. There's one Gigabit Ethernet port available powered by the Realtek RTL8111H controller.

Display outputs on the H410H6-TI2 come in form of a HDMI port and a D-Sub port. The rear panel also exposes two USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports and two USB 2.0 ports. Should you need more USB ports, the motherboard offers one USB 3.1 Gen 1 header and one USB 2.0 header for expansion.

The ECS H410H6-TI2 has yet to hit the hardware shelves, so pricing is currently unknown.

We’ve looked at a few upper mid-range Intel Z490 boards recently -- with the Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Master being our favorite of that group if you’re willing to spend close to $400. But it’s time to look at something more affordable, specifically the $249 MSRP Biostar Z490GTA EVO. At this price point, the GTA EVO includes 16-phase VRMs, Memory support up to DDR4 4400+(OC), dual M.2 slots, and an older Realtek audio codec.

Biostar’s Z490 product stack consists of three boards. The Z490GTA EVO sits at the top, followed by the Z490GTA ($209.99), and the Mini-ITX Z490GTN ($199.99). Biostar motherboards are not known for competing in the high-end space, and their SKUs for Z490 continue that trend. We won’t find a lot of the premium features seen on the higher-priced boards here, but you’re also not going to pay the premium price either. 

In our testing, the Z490GTA EVO performed well -- at stock speeds in the shorter tests. I’ve called out stock performance specifically due to how the board works. Out of the box, the EVO conforms to Intel specifications for the most part. While the PL limits are set high/not default, current limits are just barely over the stock Intel value and are not adjustable. What then happens when you try to overclock is the board runs into Current/EDP limits (according to Intel XTU) and tends to throttle the CPU back. That’s not ideal in a Z490 motherboard designed to overclock. The BIOS will likely need an update to get past this shortcoming.

Additional features on the board include Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 support (although the required Key-e card to enable the feature is not included), six SATA3 6Gbps ports, USB 3.2 Gen2 (10 Gbps) Type-C port, Realtek ALC 1150 audio and more. Below is a complete list of specifications from Biostar.

Specifications

Features

Biostar includes the very basics to get started and nothing more with this board. Here’s a list of what ships in the box, along with the board. 

• Usual manual
• Driver CD
• Four SATA cables

Taking the board out of the box, we see the black and grey theme with heatsinks covering a long vertical strip of VRMs around the socket area, as well as the chipset and two M.2 slots. Two sets of grey stripes (probably racing stripes, since this from the Racing line) are stenciled on the PCB running through the VRM and chipset area, while the second runs from the bottom of the board through the audio section. The only RGB element is a frosted strip located on the IO cover. Overall, the board looks good and is theme agnostic, though some may not like the stenciled patterns. 

On the top half of the board, we get a closer look at the shroud covering the IO, VRM heatsinks, DIMM slots, and more. The shroud on the left is made of plastic and partially covers the left VRM bank. Across the top are two 8-pin EPS connectors (one required), two 4-pin PWM/DC fan headers (of five total) along with three RGB headers, two 3-pin 5V and one 4-pin 12V. One thing I do like about the layout of the board is that all the RGB headers are in one location while fan headers are in two. Typicall, we see RGBs split up and fans in more than two locations. This configuration will help with wire management in most cases.

The four DIMM slots use latches on both sides to hold up to 128GB of RAM, with supported speeds listed up to DDR4 4400+(OC). To the right of these slots and below the RGB headers are three buttons: Power, Clear CMOS and Reset. Below them are the 24-pin ATX connector and a front-panel USB 3.2 Gen1 header.

The power delivery on the Biostar Z490GTA Evo is listed as 16-phase in a 14+2 configuration. Controlling the phases are ON Semiconductor parts. The PWM controller is a Hybrid digital NCP81286, with NCP81162 phase doublers (8) and 40A NTMFS4C029 MOSFETs. 40A MOSFETs are the lowest we’ve seen so far, and they don’t serve the board well. At stock speeds with our Core i9-10900K, the VRM’s ran hot, so be sure to have good case airflow if you opt for this board.

Moving down to the bottom half of the board, the audio section located on the left side is mostly hidden below a shroud. Beneath it is the Realtek ALC1150 codec, along with some Nichicon audio caps peeking through. Although the audio codec is a bit old, likely a cost-saving measure, it should still be fine for most users.

To the right of the audio bits are a total of five PCIe slots. The two full-length slots are protected by Biostar’s Iron slot protection, designed to reinforce the PCIe slots to handle heavier graphics cards. Both slots are fed from the CPU and work in a x16/x0 or x8/x8 configuration. In addition to the full-length slots are three x1 slots, all fed from the chipset.

To the right of the chipset heatsink, there isn’t much going on. Here we find six SATA3/6 Gbps ports, while below that are the two BIOS chips and BIOS switch. 

Along the bottom edge is a strip of headers and buttons covering audio, fan headers, and more. Below is a complete list from left to right.

• Front panel audio
• (3) System fan headers
• CMOS jumper
• Debug LED
• COM header
• (2) USB 2.0 headers
• Thunderbolt header
• System Panel header

The rear IO on this mid-range motherboard is packed with connectivity, including 10 USB ports. The back Type-C and a single Type-A port are both USB 3.2 Gen2 (10 Gbps), along with eight 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports.

Located next to the audio stack and above a set of USB ports is the 1 GBE LAN. Video output is handled by an HDMI port while audio uses the typical five analog plugs and single SPDIF. Also included are integrated Wi-Fi antenna headers that will attach to a Key-E Wi-Fi module (not included). Last but not least, a legacy PS/2 port rounds out the rear connectivity. 

Software

Biostar includes applications designed for a variety of functions, including RGB lighting control, system monitoring, overclocking and more. Below, we have captured several screenshots of the Racing GT utility.

Firmware

To give you a sensse of the Firmware, we’ve gathered screenshots showing a majority of the BIOS screens.

Biostar’s BIOS certainly gets the job done, but I can’t say it is one of the more refined out there. My biggest complaint is that it doesn’t display current/actual voltage readings next to the option in Tweaker. You need to go into hardware monitoring in order to see what your voltage is set at. Another quibble is the Performance Level (PL) adjustments are listed in milliwatts instead of watts. So in order to set the PL1/PL2 limits to 300W, you need to input 300,000. Outside of that, the BIOS functions well but is a bit less refined than most others.

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Our test system uses Windows 10 64-bit OS (1909) with all threat mitigations applied. The motherboard BIOS used is the latest non-beta available to the public, unless otherwise noted. The hardware used is as follows: 

Test System Components

For this review, we’ll be directly comparing the Biostar Z490GTA EVO ($249.99) to the ASRock Z490 PG Velocita ($259.99). In addition, we’ve included the other Z490 motherboards we’ve tested so far, Gigabyte’s Z490 Aorus Master ($389.99), the ASRock Z490 Taichi ($369.99) and the MSI MEG Z490 Ace ($399.99). We’ll add more boards for direct comparison boards as they arrive. 

Benchmark Settings 

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All standard benchmarks and power tests are performed using the CPU’s stock frequencies (including stock Thermal Velocity Boost), with all power-saving features enabled. Optimized defaults are set in the BIOS and the memory is set using the XMP profiles. For this baseline testing, Windows is set to High Performance, except for during power testing, where we switch to Balanced so the PC idles properly.

Synthetic Benchmarks 

Synthetics are a great tool to figure out if a board is running out of spec, as identical settings should produce extremely similar performance results. Advanced memory timings are the one place where motherboard makers can still optimize for either stability or performance though, and those settings can impact some testing.

In our synthetic benchmarks, The Biostar Z490GTA EVO was hit or miss depending on the benchmark. For example, it was the slowest overall in 7-Zip, but the fastest in the PCMark 10 suite. According to Intel XTU, our board occasionally triggered a Current/EDP limit which lowered clocks, sometimes blipping down to 800 MHz (this was seen more so when trying to overclock), which is not ideal. Nothing else was out of the ordinary, with memory bandwidth and latency in line with the rest.

Timed Applications 

Our timed applications show the Z490GTA EVO was slower in most tests. In both HandBrake tests, this board was 11% slower, again seeing the result of more strict adherence to the Intel limits.

3D Games and 3DMark 

We’ve recently updated our game tests to more The Division 2 and Forza Horizon 4. The games are run at 1920x1080 resolution using the Ultra preset. As the resolution goes up, the CPU tends to have less of an impact on most games. The goal with these settings is to determine if there are differences in performance at the most commonly used resolution with settings most people use or at least strive for.

In both 3DMark tests and the games, the Z490GTA EVO performed just as well as the other boards, within a general margin of error. Nothing out of the ordinary here!

Power Consumption / VRM Temperatures 

The first glimpse of power use for this platform and the Core i9-10900K may be a bit shocking to some, with loads reaching almost 200W at stock speeds (because most boards allow for a higher draw than intel spec), many users will be hard-pressed to keep these cool and get the most out of the chip. For power testing, we used AIDA64’s System Stability Test with Stress CPU, FPU and Cache enabled using peak power consumption value. The wattage reading is taken from the wall via a Kill-A-Watt meter to capture the entire ecosystem. The only variable that changes in these reviews is the motherboard; all other parts are the same.

The Biostar Z490GTA EVO test system idled at 48W (the lowest so far) while peaking at 311W under load (actual load wattage for the CPU peaked at 238W, according to HWInfo64). Once the Intel parameters kicked in, temperatures dropped and so did power, down to 124W (TDP).

VRM temperatures when running stock speeds were the highest we’ve seen among the five boards tested so far. According to our thermocouples (we couldn’t definitively find the VRM temperatures in HWInfo), temperatures reached almost 80 degrees Celsius during the test period. The 40A power bits seem to be working hard to deliver power to the CPU in stock form and we were not able to gather overclocked readings due to current limits getting in the way. 

Overclocking

From our other Z490 motherboard reviews, we know the CPU sample lets us run up to 5.2 GHz at ~1.35V while keeping the CPU somewhere around 90 degrees Celsius. But, with the current state of this motherboard, we weren’t able to overclock without running into current limits that throttled the CPU and seemingly shut the board down. We even tried 1.3V and 5 GHz, which still ended up throttling during stress testing. Any time the CPU reached 230W in Intel XTU, the application displayed Current/EDP throttling, causing the clock speeds to vary.

Biostar responded to the stress-testing/overclocking/throttling concerns stating the “maximum full-core overclock speed of the i9-10900K in Z490GTA Evo is 5 GHz”. In other words, overclocking doesn’t seem possible without throttling on this motherboard. That’s not a good thing for Z490, the only current Intel chipset that can overclock in the first place.

Memory testing didn’t exactly go well either. Although the DDR4 3600 sticks worked without issue, we were not able to get our GSkill DDR4 4000 sticks stable on this board. We tried XMP settings and manually adjusting voltage -- up to 1.3V on both VCCSA and VCCIO and 1.4V to the DRAM itself -- to no avail. Failing miserably, we reached out to Biostar for help. They claim to have achieved settings of 1.2V VCCSA and 1.3V VCCIO running DDR 4000 along with slightly increased DRAM voltage, but this did not work for us. The good news is that we know those speeds are possible, but not with our RAM kit at this time.

Final Thoughts 

Biostar’s Z490GTA EVO is priced at $239.99 which places it squarely in the mid-range segment of Z490 motherboards. We compared it directly to the ASRock Z490 PG Velocita ($259.99) and it competes with similarly priced boards like the Asus ROG Strix Z490-A Gaming ($249.99), Gigabyte Aorus Pro AX ($269.99) and MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon WIFI ($269.99). 

For the most part, the difference between them outside of aesthetics and pricing is that these other boards all include 2.5 GbE LAN as well as more-capable power delivery. Some, like the MSI board, even include USB 3.2 Gen2 (20 Gbps) ports. Most of those boards cost a bit more, but they also include more and faster connectivity and better features.

Compared to Z390 based Biostar boards, we did see an improvement in looks as well as better power delivery to support 10th generation Intel CPUs. The 40A MOSFETs ran the hottest during testing by quite a bit, though they are working within specification. Biostar’s choice to group together like items such as the RGB headers and fan headers (2 locations) should help with wire management. But comparing it directly to the ASRock Z490 PG Velocita we reviewed at just $10 more, the ASRock board has more two SATA ports and one more M.2 slot, better power delivery, a faster LAN port and is able to overclock our flagship CPU.

In the end, the Biostar Z490GTA EVO board is good for stock operation for an i9-10900K but nothing more. For as little as $10 more, there are better options. A BIOS update enabling users to raise the current limit would be a big improvement, but the price still seems a bit high for the features on offer with this board.

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ASRock has widened the company's Jupiter series of mini-PCs with a new offering that the company hasn't announced yet. The Jupiter H410 (via @momomo_us) aims to be a resting place for the latest 35W and 65W 10th Generation Comet Lake-S processors from Intel.

While the Jupiter 410 has completely new internals, the mini-PC utilizes the same recycled case as its predecessors. It still features a proprietary cooling system that's integrated into the case. The Jupiter 410 checks in with dimensions of 178 x 178 x 34mm with a customized motherboard that measures 170 x 170mm. The only catch is that motherboard is based on the H410 chipset and only supports Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 and Core i9 Comet Lake-S processors up to 65W. The Jupiter 410 comes in 35W or 65W presentations according to the TDP of the processor that you plan to use. The 35W model features a 65W power adapter, while the 65W model employs a 90W power adapter.

Don't let the 1-liter size fool though. The Jupiter H410 provides all the necessary features to help you build a high-performance system. The motherboard packs two SO-DIMM DDR4 memory slots so you can have up to 64GB of DDR4-2933 memory in the tiny system. Storage options are a bit limited, but you still get one SATA III port and one M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slot for M.2 drives up to 80mm.

The front side of the Jupiter H410 houses two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C ports and two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports. Four more USB 2.0 Type-A ports are located at the back. In terms of audio, the Jupiter H410 incorporates the Realtek ALC233 audio codec. The mini-PC comes with a single 2W speaker, but also supplies three 3.5mm outputs for headphone, microphone or speaker out.

The rear panel also holds the Gigabit Ethernet port, which is based on the Realtek RTL8111H controller, and the connectors for antennas from the Intel AC-3168 or AX200 wireless interfaces.

The Jupiter H410 has three display connectors, but you can only use up to two of them simultaneously. The HDMI port supports resolutions up to 4K at 30 Hz and the DisplayPort output does 4K at 60 Hz. A D-sub port is also available for connecting older monitors. The Jupiter H410 has zero spacing for discrete graphics cards so Comet Lake's integrated UHD Graphics 630 solution will handle all graphical workloads.

The pricing and availability the Jupiter H410 aren't available at this time.

If you haven't heard of the gaming brand SuperO, we wouldn't blame you. Supermicro's gaming division isn't very well-known in the Western market. Nevertheless, SuperO's latest motherboard is pretty interesting. The Supermicro SuperO 9Z490-PGW is a high-end board with a total of four PCIe 3.0 slots, as spotted by Hermitage Akihabara. It is built on the new Z490 chipset with an LGA1200 socket, and, thus, for use with Intel's upcoming Comet Lake-S CPUs.

Typically, the Z490 platform doesn't support this many PCIe 3.0 slots. There are some boards that have this many slots, but few of them actually have all 16 lanes accessible on each slot. Supermicro's trick is to use a PLX lane switch chip, which essentially splits the PCIe lanes from the processor into multiple lanes. This overcomes lane restrictions put in place by graphics cards. Bandwidth per card is still limited.

Next to that unique feature, the board comes with all the standard goodies you would expect on a Z490 motherboard, including Intel i219V Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 5.0, 802.11ax WiFi, four DDR4 RAM slots, dual M.2 slots and "enterprise quality" VRM circuitry. Iteven comes with 10 Gigabit AQC107 Ethernet built by Aquantia. A Realtek ALC1220 chip on a dedicated portion of the board handles audio. 

Intriguingly, despite its high-end positioning, it appears that the SuperMicro C9Z490-PGW doesn't come with RGB lighting. This paired with the PLX chip tells us that despite being labeled as a "gaming" motherboard, the new SuperO Z490 board is fit for a professional audience too. 

There's no word on pricing yet. However, PLX chips have become quite expensive in recent years, so don't expect this board to come cheap.

While Intel has forced consumers to upgrade their motherboard with every new wave of CPUs since Skylake, Colorful apparently has a more cost-effective solution. Hardware leaker @momomo_us recently discovered that Colorful's H310M-E V20 accepts four generations of Intel Core chips, spanning from Skylake to Coffee Lake Refresh.

The H310M-E V20 comes in a compact, micro-ATX form factor and, of course, features a LGA1151 CPU socket. Colorful only lists compatibility for Coffee Lake and Coffee Lake Refresh processors, but the the CPU-Z screenshots below show the H310M-E V20 working with with previous Kaby Lake and Skylake processors as well. This would make the H310M-E V20 the jack of all trades in the H310 motherboard world.

With the ample processor support aside, the H310M-E V20 isn't the best motherboard you can buy when it comes to specs and is everything you'd expect from your typical budget H310 offering. The board only has two DDR4 RAM slots and supports DDR4-2666 memory modules. The motherboard lacks an M.2 port, and you're restricted to four SATA III connectors for your hard drives and SSDs.

The expansion slot configuration on the H310M-E V20 is as basic as it gets. The motherboard supplies one PCIe 3.0 x16 slot and one PCIe 2.0 x1 slot for housing graphics cards and other expansion cards.

The H310M-E V20 utilizes two third-party controllers. Thanks to the Realtek RTL8111H controller, the motherboard has a Gigabit Ethernet port. Additionally, the Realtek ALC662 audio codec provides a 6-channel audio experience through three 3.5mm audio jacks.

Connectivity options on the rear panel come down to two PS/2 ports, one HDMI port, one VGA port, two USB 3.0 ports and two USB 2.0 ports. Fortunately, the motherboard has one USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0 header, meaning you can have up to four more USB ports for connecting peripherals.

The H310M-E V20 is currently listed on Amazon for $82.89. 

Like its bigger brother the KC2000, Kingston's new A2000 uses a Silicon Motion controller and Micron’s 96L TLC flash. However, the SSDs' controller limits performance to about 2.2/2.0 GBps read/write, which results in lower pricing. The drive still performs well, has a long warranty, and also features heavy-duty hardware encryption options that also offset the more conservative performance specifications.

The combination of features makes Kingston’s A2000 a formidable entry-level M.2 NVMe SSD. With a four-channel Silicon Motion SM2263EN PCIe NVMe controller and Micron’s latest 96L TLC powering it, it has got a lot of fight in it. Need to load up your favorite games fast? Easy. Want to host multiple virtual machines? Not a problem. Edit high bit-rate video? It should be a piece of cake with the A2000.

The A2000 is also a great pick if you have sensitive data and want to upgrade your business laptop. The self-encrypting drive supports 256-bit XTS-AES hardware-based encryption at the controller level, so you can password-protect your data with no performance loss. And, with TCG Opal 2.0 support, you can manage the security with Symantec, McAfee, WinMagic, and other business-class security software. As a byproduct of its eDrive support, it also supports BitLocker.

Specifications

Kingston’s A2000 is available in mainstream capacities that stretch from 250GB up to 1TB. MSRPs come in at $39.99, $59.99, and $99.99, respectfully. If you need a larger drive, you should look into the KC2000 as an alternative. 

Kingston rates the A2000 for up to 2.2/2.0 GBps of read/write throughput, and it can dish out 250,000 / 220,000 of random read/write IOPS, too. It comes with high-end endurance ratings that match both the Samsung 970 EVO Plus and WD Black SN750. And, like them, it comes with a 5-year warranty.

Feature-wise, other than the AES 256-bit encryption, the drive has a pseudo-SLC write cache that absorbs inbound writes. It supports TRIM, S.M.A.R.T. data reporting, and you can secure erase it (Format NVM) to ensure your data is completely gone when you sell it, or to restore performance if the drive gets into a degraded state.

Software and Accessories

Except for a serial key for Acronis True Image HD, Kingston doesn’t include any accessories in the package. You can use True Image to easily migrate your existing data from your old drive to your new one. Kingston's SSD Manager toolbox also comes with your purchase. It allows you to manage the security features, adjust overprovisioning, update firmware, secure erase, or just monitor your drive.

A Closer Look

Kingston’s A2000 is an M.2 2280, single-sided form factor SSD. This makes upgrading almost any M.2-based system an easy task without any clearance issues.

Unlike classier M.2 drives, the A2000 lacks a black PCB. Instead, it is a dull blue. Like the KC2000, the white sticker over top of the drive detracts even more from the aesthetics, as it is just plain ugly.

However, the underlying components are anything but. Kingston outfitted the A2000 with Silicon Motion’s SM2263EN, a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3 controller, and the company paired it with four packages of Micron’s 96L TLC flash. The SM2263EN supports a DRAM cache for more consistent performance over its DRAMless counterpart (SM2263XT). Kingston slapped on one of its own branded DDR4 NAND ICs for the task.

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Comparison Products

We included the Intel SSD 660p (SM2263EN + Micron 64L QLC), Mushkin Helix-L (SM2253XT + Micron 64L TLC), Adata XPG SX6000 Pro (Realtek RTS5763DL + Micron 64L TLC), and Crucial’s SATA MX500 (SM2258 + Micron 64L TLC) in our test pool. Additionally, we included the Mushkin Pilot-E (SM2262EN + Micron 64L TLC) and Corsair Force MP510 (Phison E12 + Kioxia 64L TLC) as more costly alternatives. We also threw in a 6TB WD Black, a 7200-RPM HDD, for good measure. 

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

The Final Fantasy XIV StormBlood benchmark is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

The Kingston A2000 delivers leading-edge game load performance. With a total load time of 18.80 seconds, Kingston’s A2000 took first place, leading even the Mushkin Pilot-E.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom 50GB block of data. Our data set includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos. We copy the files to a new folder and then follow up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5 GB file.

During our file transfer tests, the A2000 delivered similar performance to other entry-level NVMe SSDs. It averaged 501 MBps when copying the 50GB test folder, outperforming the HDD by five times. It also read back the 6.5GB file at 1.5 GBps, ranking fourth overall in read performance.     

Trace Testing – PCMark 8 Storage Test 2.0

PCMark 8 is a trace-based benchmark that uses Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft, and Battlefield 3 to measure the performance of storage devices in real-world scenarios.

Kingston’s A2000 did amazingly well in PCMark 8. With a score of 5,103 points and an average bandwidth of 708 MBps, it scores second place, landing ever-so-slightly behind the Corsair Force MP510. 

Trace Testing – SPECworkstation 3

Like PCMark 8, SPECworkstation 3 is a trace-based benchmark, but it is designed to push the system harder by measuring workstation performance in professional applications. The full suite consists of more than 30 workloads, but we've opted to only run the storage benchmark which uses only 15 of them and categorizes the results into 5 market segments for scoring: Media & Entertainment, Product Development, Life Sciences, Energy, and General Operations.

The Kingston A2000 completed the benchmark in just over 40 minutes and placed third overall. It scored more closely to the Pilot-E and Force MP510 than its entry-level competitors.  The drive certainly stands out if you're looking for consistent performance.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes. We tested at the default queue depth value of 4.

ATTO reaffirms the A2000’s official sequential performance specifications. The drive hit 2,200 MBps read, and actually broke the spec for write performance with a peak of 2,200 MBps.

Synthetic Testing - iometer

iometer is an advanced and highly configurable storage benchmarking tool that vendors often use to measure the performance of their devices.

Kingston’s A2000 peaked at 2,281/2,212 MBps in sequential read/write throughput. Random performance at QD (queue depth) 1-4 was also very responsive. Surprisingly, the DRAMless Mushkin Helix-L is a bit more responsive and was able to deliver slightly faster synthetic read results. The A2000’s random performance peaked at 184,000/267,000 read/write IOPS.

Sustained Sequential Write Performance

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSD makers implement a pseudo-SLC cache buffer, which is a fast area of SLC-programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the pSLC cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the pSLC buffer and performance after the buffer is saturated.

As mentioned, the Kingston A2000 features a pSLC write cache. The drive can absorb about 165GB of writes before performance degrades from 2,200 MBps down to roughly 490 MBps.

It is also worth noting the very consistent write pattern after write performance degrades. This is significantly better than the performance the DRAMless Mushkin Helix-L. The A2000 also wrote significantly more data during the test, too.

Power Consumption

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is a very important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a new drive for your laptop. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

The A2000 ranks in the middle of the pack when it comes to efficiency during the file transfer workload. The A2000's onboard DRAM causes the A2000 to have higher power consumption than the Helix-L, hence the lower efficiency score even though both averaged similar speeds.

When at idle, the A2000 consumed just 12mW when ASPM is enabled, and a little over 600mW when we disabled the feature. So, it is still a good upgrade choice for your next laptop or efficient small form factor PC. 

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The A2000's AES 256-bit hardware encryption helps keep your data secure and safe from prying eyes. Not only is the drive secure, but it is also impressively fast. 

Opting for Silicon Motion’s SM2263EN and pairing it with Micron’s 96L TLC proved to be a wise decision for Kingston. Time and time again, the A2000 delivered speeds that were significantly better than an HDD, and some of its SSD competitors, too. 

Compared to the WD Black HDD, the A2000 scored an average bandwidth that was 47 times greater in PCMark 8, 13 times higher in SPECworkstation 3, and was five to seven times faster during file transfers. If you aren’t been convinced yet, these scores should provide enough reason to upgrade to an A2000 or similar if you haven’t done so already.

Best of all, the A2000 ranked as the fastest SSD in the group when loading Final Fantasy's game scenes, making it a great value for gamers. But if you care about aesthetics, it may stick out like a sore thumb if you don’t place it under a heatsink. That is not to say it needs one, however. During our tests, the A2000's temperatures were well-managed. Even when running multiple 50-100GB transfers simultaneously, temps stayed below 60C with little airflow in our 25C environment.   

Kingston’s A2000 is a well-rounded NVMe SSD overall. Whether you are a business class user, prosumer, or just someone looking to outfit their new build with some speedy storage, the A2000 is a great choice. With competitive pricing, high endurance and five-year warranty to match, the drive ranks among the top value picks.

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Like the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite we recently reviewed, the X570-Plus Wi-Fi also hails from the budget end of AMD’s pricier new X570 platform and is priced at a penny under $200 / £233.99 at Newegg at time of publishing. It comes with PCIe 4.0 support, dual PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots, Wi-Fi and a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port out back, among other features.

Asus’ TUF lineup has changed from the ultra-robust, heavy shielding it was known for in years past and has evolved more toward gaming-centric boards with protection on individual parts such as the PCIe and DIMM slots. ESD guards, additional surge protection measures and military-grade components are still a part of the TUF lineup, but the additional hardening went beyond what was necessary for most use cases. These changes have made the Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus Wi-Fi the second-least-expensive board in the Asus X570 product stack just missing the mark to be  our best motherboards pick in the budget X570 category.

The TUF Gaming X570-Plus Wi-Fi’s $200 price will help buyers who want to purchase the flagship chipset and all that it offers, while leaving room in their budget for other important parts. Asus accomplishes this by not using ‘value adds’ like an integrated rear IO  plate or loads of RGB lighting. The X570-Plus Wi-Fi handled overclocking our Ryzen 7 3700X without a complaint and performed well in our benchmarks at stock speeds, making it a good base to build a new AMD Ryzen 3000 series system.

Like other X570 motherboards, the Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus Wi-Fi supports both Ryzen 2000 and Ryzen 3000 series processors. It includes eight SATA ports and four DIMM slots capable of supporting up to 128GB of DDR4 RAM, although curiously, overclocked memory speed support is not listed. For networking and audio, we find a Realtek L8200A GbE NIC and Realtek ALC S1200A audio codec (albeit an Asus’ tweaked version), which is capable of  7.1 surround and DTS ausio. Below is a complete list of specifications from Asus.

• Read our How To Choose A Motherboard guide to help narrow down your buying options.

Specifications

Included accessories are minimal, as we would expect on a budget level motherboard, but the basics are covered. Here’s a list of what ships in the box along with the board.

• User’s manual
• I/O Shield
• Support / driver DVD
• Asus 2T2R Wi-Fi antenna
• 2x SATA cables
• Screw for M.2 slot
• TUF Gaming sticker
• TUF certification card

As far as looks go, the X570-Plus Wi-Fi looks the part of recent Asus TUF Gaming based boards. The PCB is jet-black with a lined pattern making its way from the bottom-right corner through the left VRM area and rear IO. The rear IO shield has TUF Gaming branding on top with some yellow accents scattered throughout the board.

The DIMM slots alternate black and grey, in keeping with the overall visual theme of the board, giving some accent to the all-black PCIe slots. Additionally, the top slot is protected with Asus Safeslot metal wrapping. Other connectors and slots are black, except for the RGB headers.

On the RGB LED front, the TUF Gaming has a minimalistic approach. To the right of the chipset heatsink, where we’d normally find the SATA ports, is where the LEDs are located. The LEDs themselves are on the bottom side of the board and shine through the lined pattern making for an attractive effect. Control over the integrated lighting and any strips attached to the headers are handled by the company’s Aura Sync software.

The X570-Plus Wi-Fi shouldn’t have any issues matching most build themes. It does indeed have a bit of the yellow color and branding that will stand out a bit, but they are accents more than dominant features. The pattern across the middle of the board is going to be the most polarizing aesthetic feature, as some prefer a more plain appearance.

Focusing in on the top portion of the motherboard, we can see a better view of the VRM heatsinks, shroud, and some of the headers found there. We won’t find RGBs under the plastic IO shroud, but the TUF branding is represented on this shroud, letting everyone know where the board came from. In the accessory stack, Asus also includes a couple of stickers for the battery as well as on the chipset fan hub, just in case you wanted to go all-in on the TUF branding.

The VRMs are covered by decent-size heatsinks which did the job at stock, Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) and while overclocking. Asus states a 12+2 VRM setup, but the board has a ‘true’ rating of 4x3 + 2, since the controller, the ASP 1106GGQW is a 6-phase unit in 4+2 mode. Power is fed to the VRMs through a required 8-pin EPS connector, plus an optional 4-pin which will provide more than enough power for the Ryzen 3 CPU lineup. I’m not sure how overclocking would go on the beefier chips, especially the 3950X, but the TUF board held up just fine with a 3700X.

To the right of the socket area are four DIMM slots in that black/grey color scheme mentioned earlier. Just above them, we can see two fan headers (CPU and CPU_OPT), along with a standard 4-pin RGB header in white. All six fan headers on the board support both PWM and DC (4-pin and 3-pin) fans. The fan header count is more akin to a mid-range board than a budget model. To the right is the 24-pin ATX connector which feeds power to the board. The second (of three) RGB headers -- this one is addressable RGB -- is located just above the ATX connector.

Last in this area is the debug LED, which lights up during the POST and boot process. There are four LEDs, DRAM, CPU, VGA, and Boot. If there is a problem when the system is on its way up, wherever the problem is the LED will stay lit. This a useful tool for troubleshooting issues before entering Windows and a less-expensive alternative to a two-digit debug LED which shows codes. This is a nice feature for this price point.

On the bottom half of the board, the left side houses all the audio bits. The Realtek S1200A 7.1 channel chip is hidden under the metal Faraday cage with the TUF symbol on top. Below that are five Chemicon Japanese audio caps. The audio bits are separated from the rest of the motherboard to further reduce EMI and improve sound quality. At this level, users will not typically find op-amps and high-quality audio, but for most, the mature ALC 1200 will be sufficient.

The PCIe area consists of two full-length slots and two x1 slots. The primary GPU slot is protected by the Asus Safeslot, with metal surrounding the grey connector, while the others are black. As far as bandwidth goes, the primary GPU slot runs at PCIe 4.0 x16 while the secondary full-length slot runs at PCIe 4.0 x4 speeds. The x1 slots run at, you guessed it, x1 speeds. This is a typical configuration for this class of board and the X570 chipset.

Also found in this location are two M.2 slots. The top slot sits above the primary GPU slot while the second is below the secondary PCIe slot and has a heatsink. Both slots support PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe as well as SATA-based drives and will fit M.2 modules up to 110mm in length. If you use an NVMe based drive, either PCIe 3.0 or 4.0, install it under the heatsink, as fast drives tend to run hot and can throttle in heavy use scenarios.

The chipset heatsink takes up a bit of real estate and like many X570 boards has a small fan to keep the 11W chip below it cool. The fan was inaudible over the video card fans in our setup, so there are no worries there. To the right and below the chipset heatsink are eight SATA3 6 Gbps ports. Four of the slots are closer to mid-board, while the other four are located on the bottom of the board -- an unusual setup which should still be easy for cable management. Where the SATA ports are typically found, directly to the right of the chipset heatsink, is where we find the sole RGB LED location and its diffused light shining through the PCB.

Across the bottom are several headers which include the 3rd RGB header, front panel USB header, along with another (of six) fan headers. There is nothing out of the ordinary to report here, so here’s a bulleted list of the other headers.

• Front Panel Audio
• Serial Port/COM connector
• Fan header
• 2x USB 2.0 headers
• Fan header
• Front panel header
• Clear CMOS jumper

Last but far from least is the rear IO. Unlike the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite we recently reviewed, the Asus board here uses the less-expensive IO plate instead of a more-attractive integrated unit. This shouldn’t matter to most as it is the rear IO and typically rarely seen.

On the rear IO itself, there are a total of seven USB ports, three of which are USB 3.1 Gen 2 (the Type-C port and the two aqua-colored Type-A ports). The other four Type-A ports are USB 3.1 Gen 1 flavor. If you have a PS/2 mouse or keyboard, there is a port for that as well. Also located on the rear IO are the Wi-Fi antenna headers, the Realtek L8200A LAN port, as well as a 5-plug audio stack with SPDIF. If you’re using an AMD APU and need video outputs, HDMI and DisplayPort here have that covered.

Software and Firmware

Asus’ software world revolves around AI Suite 3 (AIS3). AIS3 gives access to functionality such as system monitoring, power savings and overclocking as well as fan control and other fine adjustments. System monitoring is located across the bottom and covers CPU frequency, Voltage, temperature and fan speeds, giving the user a nice graphical readout of the state of their PC’s union.

AIS3 is divided up into different sections which cover different areas. These include Digi+ VRM, EPU, TurboV EVO, Fan Expert 4, and EZ Update. Users tend to have a love / hate relationship with this software, depending on who you ask. At times, for a hardcore enthusiast who works generally in the BIOS, AIS3 can get in the way of pushing things, so in general many advanced users will stick to the BIOS.

The Digi+ VRM section gives users access to control phases for the CPU and SOC as well as Load Line Calibration and current capability adjustments from within windows. These options help to stabilize the system when overclocking. What was entered is what was displayed so things here worked fine.

The EPU section is straightforward and displays options for power plans such as the amount of time it takes for the monitor to shut off as well as the time set for the PC to enter sleep mode. It includes three different modes to adjust -- Performance, Power Saving, and Away Modes. Users are able to tune what the fans do as well as how much the vcore lowers in power saving situations. This section is useful for those who may not want to dig into the power savings with a fine-toothed comb, but still need to make a few adjustments.

Next is the TurboV EVO section. Here you are able to adjust the CPU ratio and a multitude of voltages for overclocking purposes including VDDCR CPU and SOC Voltage, DRAM voltage and others. There is an auto-tuning tab which will automate the overclocking process with a touch of a button. A third tab allows for video card overclocking from here instead of a 3rd party application which some users can benefit from.

Next in up AIS3 is Fan Expert 4. As the name describes, this section is for fan control. It presents four preset options (silent, standard, turbo and full speed) as well as being able to set custom curves for each. I prefer using this utility as opposed to the BIOS if only for the better-looking interface. The BIOS offers a bit more fine-tuning, however.

Also included in AI Suite 3 is PC Cleaner (works like disk cleaner), EZ Update to update for updating drivers, as well as a system information option.

AI Suite 3 covers the gamut for monitoring and adjusting important functionality in your PC, sitting in the tray ready for use and isn’t much of a bother for most people. The application is a useful Windows-based tool and may provide some relief for those who may be intimidated working in the BIOS, though advanced users may skip it altogether.

Asus’ application to control RGB LEDs is Asus Aura Sync. The program is able to control the integrated RGB LEDs on the motherboard along with any products attached which support Aura Sync including graphics cards, DRAM, and any LED strips using the motherboard headers. Users are able to control the LEDs using 12 preset patterns as well as customizing each to some extent, be it the speed of the effect or how the color is displayed. You can also quickly disable the lighting as well through the app (and BIOS).

Firmware

Asus’ BIOS on the TUF series starts off in EZ Mode which displays useful information as well as having a few options to edit. The BIOS scheme uses a black background with blue highlights, differing from their ROG themed boards which are black and red.

EZ Mode displays details on the installed CPU and memory, fan speeds, storage, temperature and voltage for the CPU as well as an option for adjusting boot order. Users are able to access QFan control to set up fan speeds and profiles and even enable XMP/DOCP profiles from here.

In Advanced mode, we’re greeted by the familiar setup of headings across the top, along with some monitoring on the right side. The headings are My Favorites, Main, Ai Tweaker, Advanced, Monitor, Boot, Tool, and Exit.

My Favorites section is a place where you can customize what’s on the page with your own options. By default, it comes populated with memory frequency, voltage options, SATA and Onboard device configuration as well as boot options. Many, especially overclockers who tend to manipulate the most options, will populate this area with the most frequently used options in the BIOS so the most common functions are on one screen.

The Main section is informational for the most part, displaying details about the BIOS and CPU. Additionally, this is where users are able to set the system language, date and time.

Ai Tweaker is where the fun starts and the overclocking options are found. While there is a bit of redundancy on some items throughout the BIOS, Asus does a good job of putting the more commonly used options in one place. Within the section, the main page gives easy access to the CPU and BCLK ratios along with the major voltage options used in overclocking. Inside this section are sub-headings for Precision Boost Overdrive, DRAM Timing control, as well as Digi+ VRM for managing power and load line calibration functions.

The Advanced heading is where we find CPU, SATA, Onboard device, USB, and NVMe configuration options. Also within this section is the redundant part of Ai Tweaker with AMD Overclocking. Both the Gigabyte X570 BIOS and the Asus BIOS had the same section and the same disclaimer about doing damage to the PC, making me wonder if this is something AMD had board partners add in the BIOS. Inside of this section is where users can change PBO, voltages, and the DDR/Infinity fabric frequency and timings as well.

Inside the Monitoring section, we find information on the CPU temperatures (package and core) and motherboard temperature as well as fan speeds and voltages for the CPU and the major rails from the power supply. At the bottom of the page, we find Q-Fan configuration and is where to adjust fan speeds and profiles at the BIOS level.

Inside Q-Fan control is where adjustments of all the attached fans or pump would be handled. It displays a fan curve with three preset modes: silent, turbo, and full speed to choose from. In addition to the presets, users can create their own custom curve for each header when selecting the manual option.

The Asus BIOS over the past couple of generations has been one of the better and most ergonomic UEFI’s. While there is always going to be some redundancy, it is kept to a minimum. Options for common functions are easily found and in logical places. We don’t have any complaints about this BIOS.

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How We Test

The test systems are as close as we can to running the same specifications. Though memory may be different brands, the speed and primary timings are the same as well as the GPU. We use as an updated W10 64-bit OS (1903) with all threat mitigations applied.

Test System Components

Benchmark Settings

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Benchmark and Final Analysis

All standard benchmarks and power tests are performed using the CPU’s stock frequencies (including stock AMD Turbo), with all of its power-saving features enabled. Optimized defaults are set in the BIOS and the memory set. The memory is manually set up to run at DDR4 3200 MHz (base spec for Zen 2) @ 16-18-18-38 primary timings. 

Synthetic Benchmarks

Synthetics are a great tool to figure out if a board is running out of spec, as identical settings should produce extremely similar performance results. Advanced memory timings are the one place where motherboard makers can still optimize for either stability or performance though, and those settings can impact some testing.

In our synthetic set of tests, the Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus Wi-Fi performed well, mixing it up with the other X570 motherboards. All results were within general run variance difference with no anomalous data points. In general, PBO showed some improvement across most tests, but not much overall.

3D Games

Game results continue to show a very tight set of results without any appreciable differences. PBO didn’t do much for gaming, but did show an almost 5% gain in Ashes at 1080p using the ‘crazy’ settings.

Timed Applications

Our timed The timed applications also show little difference between the boards. Enabling PBO showed notable improvements here performing on average a bit over 4% better than stock in these tests.

Overall Performance

Overall performance differences between the boards we tested were negligible, outside of the PBO results which showed gains in timed applications, but otherwise nothing notable. The X570-Plus Wi-Fi’s worst showing was in productivity where it showed 6% less performance in those tests. Creativity testing showed it was 2% faster there, so it's a give and take it seems (that and PCMark’s consistency isn’t the greatest).

Power & Relative Energy Efficiency

On the power consumption front, the Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus Wi-Fi idled at 68W, with load power reaching 143W. With PBO enabled, we saw 221W in our Prime 95 testing, nearly 80W more than stock. If you are the type of user interested in saving some power, leave PBO disabled as the performance gains are simply not worth the notable power increase.

Overall efficiency proved to be good here with a positive 7.6% result at stock. Enabling PBO kills that with a large power increase for not even a 1% overall performance bump.

Overclocking

Overclocking on this board yielded 4.224 GHz using 1.343V on the core. While the clock speed is a bit higher than what was achieved on the X570 Aorus Elite, this was due to spread spectrum and the floating BCLK as we used the same 42.25 multiplier. Anything above this voltage left us with temperatures above 90C, too hot for comfort. Regardless, anything above this multiplier at this voltage caused an error in stress testing.

Load voltage was fairly stable with LLC set to auto. With a BIOS setting of 1.343V, load in Windows turned into 1.328V. Raising the LLC to 2 ended eliminated the droop and we ended up at 1.328V which was similar to the Gigabyte overclocking results.

We successfully loaded up our GSKill Trident Z Neo 4x8GB DDR4 3600 16-16-16-36 sticks without issue here as well. Beyond that value, the memory divider hits 1:2 situation and overall performance tends to drop without much-increased speeds. So we aren’t pushing it past that point. AMD said DDR4 3600 is the sweet spot and we're able to reach that without issue on this board.

Overall, the board clocked well and brought the chip to its limit. This is the second board we’ve overclocked this CPU on so far and were met with the same result. Perhaps a higher-end board with a more robust VRM could help things, but the main issue is getting those temperatures in order.

Final Thoughts

The Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus Wi-Fi ($200) passed all of our tests with flying colors both at stock and when overclocked with PBO and manually. The feature set versus the similarly priced Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite has it as the preferred board between the two, even more so if you’re in need of integrated Wi-Fi and a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port on the back.

Other features include the full complement of eight SATA ports (the Aorus Elite had six), dual PCIe M.2 slots (with one heatsinked) and a VRM capable of driving our Ryzen 7 3700X to its thermal limits while not melting the heatsinks attached. If a front panel USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port is a requirement, the Gigabyte board is your only option at the sub $200 price. Another value-added feature on this board is the debug LED which is not typically found on entry-level boards.

The Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus Wi-Fi is a competent motherboard which starts off at a very reasonable price. Performance against similarly priced and more expensive boards is, for all intents and purposes, the same and even in our overclocking tests. Between the TUF and the Aorus Elite, the Asus is the more feature-rich option. If you’re after rear USB-C and Wi-Fi, while keeping your board budget tight,  look no further than the Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus Wi-Fi.

Image Credits: Tom's Hardware

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As Intel disclosed during its Cascade Lake-X launch, the company is bringing new networking tech to the desktop with its i225-V controller for 2.5Gbps Ethernet, while its AX200 module slots in for Wi-Fi 6 wireless connectivity. Coincidentally, those are two technologies that chief competitor AMD does not have as in-house IP, adding to Intel’s value proposition.

2.5Gbps Ethernet Appears

After over a decade of 1 Gbps Ethernet, Intel is now moving to a 2.5GbE PHY with its i225-V Ethernet controller, codenamed Foxville. Phoronix was first to discover Foxville in 2018 via Linux kernel patches, and the chip is now expected to be integrated into new LGA2066 motherboards for the recently announced Cascade Lake-X high-end desktop (HEDT) processors. 

While HEDT is a very small portion of the market, TechPowerUp expects the chips will also find their way to the 400-series chipsets that Intel will launch with the upcoming 10th-Gen Comet Lake-S desktop processors.

Realtek, Broadcom, and multi-gigabit Ethernet leader Aquantia have already launched their 2.5GbE PHYs, so Intel isn’t the only brand with 2.5GbE PHY by any means. However, Intel's move to this faster generation is likely to speed up the mainstream adoption, including potentially more mainstream multi-gigabit switches.

TechPowerUp claims that Intel is the most popular GbE provider with its i218-V and i219-V controllers, and explains that Intel’s Ethernet controllers have a low cost due to their reliance on PCH-based MAC and a proprietary PCIe-based bus, strengthening their appeal:

“Much like the i219-V, the i225-V is a low-cost PHY that relies on PCH-based Ethernet MAC and its proprietary PCIe-based bus that runs at half the data-rate of PCIe. This is precisely why the i219-V doesn't feature on AMD motherboards, but rather its pricier sibling, the i211-AT, which comes with an integrated MAC and a standard PCIe interface.”

Intel’s product page states that the controller has a 1.95W TDP and a $2.40 recommended customer pricing (RCP). The enterprise remains at 10GbE.

Wi-Fi 6 Boosts Wireless Connectivity

Cascade Lake-X will also support Wi-Fi 6, previously known as 802.11ax. 

Wi-Fi 6 is expected to enjoy rapid adoption, with an over 50% adoption rate in end-devices by 2022. It delivers a theoretical bandwidth of up to 2.4Gb/s. Cascade Lake-X’s support follows in the footsteps of the mobile 10th-Gen processors. However, support is different for the two platforms.

On the mobile side, Intel first partially integrated Wi-Fi functionality with its 8th-Gen lineup. Intel infuses the digital logic of its Wi-Fi 5 directly onto the chipset, called integrated connectivity or CNVi. Customers can then buy a separate M.2 form factor or soldered companion module (CRF) for the RF components of the solution. The two solutions connect through a proprietary CNVio interface. This gives Intel a cost advantage over third-parties because the chipset contains the CNVi regardless of whether one uses the CRF or a third-party Wi-Fi 6 solution with a PCIe link. Put another way, the only companion RF modules come from Intel.

With its 10th-Gen CPUs, Intel has now done the same for Wi-Fi 6 by integrating it into the 400-series mobile chipset. Intel claims the RF module package is 70% smaller than the fully discrete solution, and the combined silicon area is 15% smaller. Intel doesn’t integrate the RF component because that would require Wi-Fi certification at the system level instead of the module, which would be a headache for partners. It also allows Intel to build the RF analog component on UMC’s 28nm process.

Wi-Fi 6 support on Cascade Lake-X, on the other hand, merely means the platform supports Intel’s discrete PCIe-based AX200 adapter. It has an RCP of $10.00-17.00. For comparison, the aforementioned AX201 companion RF module costs $9.00-$16.00. Intel’s most advanced discrete Wi-Fi 5 product, Wireless-AC 9260, has a bandwidth of 1.73Gb/s for $9.00-15.00.

Wi-Fi: Technical

Wi-Fi 6 has two new key features. 802.11ax makes use of what is called quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). In telecommunications, periodic electromagnetic waves are used to transmit data. The waves represent data by varying the parameters of the wave, such as its phase, amplitude, or frequency. This is called modulation. Now, if one would alter several of these characteristics, or for example, use multiple phases, then it would be possible to represent multiple bits within a signal.

This is similar to multi-level cell NAND. For example, the latest quad-level cell (QLC) NAND uses sixteen voltage levels to represent 4 bits in one cell. This would be the equivalent of 16-QAM. Just like in NAND, though, transmitting more bits per symbol comes at the expense of a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

As the first new feature, Wi-Fi 6 now uses 1024-QAM instead of 256-QAM. So this means that there are now 10 bits per symbol instead of 8, yielding a 25% improvement in bandwidth.

The new OFDMA feature helps with data and time scheduling. Simply put, data packets can now have varying sizes and multiple streams simultaneously, where each stream represents a different application, such as video streaming, gaming, etc. These resources units, as they are called, are centrally scheduled to avoid contention overhead. The benefit of this feature is reduced latency and greater efficiency in dense deployments. Intel reported a reduction in latency from 36ms to 7.6ms.

Intel claims that its own Wi-Fi 6 implementation, which it calls Gig+, is the best. Intel's implementation also supports optional 160MHz channel binding, instead of 80MHz, and network noise filtering. The latter provides better reliability and improved performance in dense environments.

Summing up, Wi-Fi 6 delivers 75% lower latency, 4x more network capacity, which translates to 4x throughput in congested areas, and 39% higher nominal bandwidth. Intel’s Wi-Fi 6 also supports the optional 160MHz channel binding for another 2x improvement in bandwidth, bringing the expected bandwidth increase to 2.8x. (A 160MHz channel is also optional in Wi-Fi 5.) Intel’s graph shows the expected throughput at 70% of the theoretical maximum speed.

Features and Specifications

We’ve reviewed quite a few full-size (ATX) X570 motherboards at this point, and our current favorite there is the Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming. Now it’s time to shift focus to ITX form factor boards, for those looking to build something more compact. The first of these smaller models we’ll be looking at in depth is the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3. As its name suggests, the miniature board comes with a Thunderbolt 3/USB capable Type-C port, which is rare even on full-size boards, let alone ITX options like we’re looking at here.

The Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 includes a robust 10 Phase VRM, 7.1 channel Realtek ALC 1220 audio, integrated Wi-Fi 6 abilities, and one of the highest memory speed support listings we’ve seen, at DDR4 4533+(OC). Priced at $239, it lands near the budget side of things (remember that X570 boards tend to be pricier than their X470 counterparts overall), but still offers quite a bit in the tiny package.

The Phantom Gaming lineup is, as its name implies, the gaming product line from ASRock. The goal of this line, according to the company, is to provide top of the line gaming products to gamers, professionals, and PC enthusiasts. There are three boards from ASRock in this family. The entry-level X570 Phantom Gaming 4, X570 Phantom Gaming X (which we will have a review of soon as well), and the Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 we are looking at now. Outside of these boards, ASRock has a full lineup of X570 boards, from entry level to flagship.

Like other X570 boards, the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 supports both Ryzen 2000 and Ryzen 3000 series processors and includes four SATA ports, a single PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot on the back and two DIMM slots capable of supporting up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM, with overclock speeds up to a whopping DDR4 4533 MHz. For networking and audio, we find an Intel I211-AT GbE NIC and Realtek ALC 1220 audio codec which runs 7.1 surround. Below is a complete list of specifications from ASRock.

Specifications

Features

The included accessories for this little board provide most of what we’d expect, and what the average consumer will need to get started. Here’s a list of what ships in the box, along with the board.

• Quick Installation Guide
• Support DVD
• 2T2R Wi-Fi antenna
• 2x SATA cables
• 1x screw for M.2 slot
• ASRock sticker

Quite frankly, there isn’t much room on the board with all its features for styling cues, as the available real estate is obviously a lot smaller ATX. To that end, we don’t see any stenciled patterns. The only design features are on the rear IO cover, VRM heatsinks, as well as the RGB lighting located across the bottom of the board by the PCIe slot.

The rear IO cover doubles as the VRM heatsink for the left bank of power bits. It’s black and grey, sporting a brushed-aluminum finish in the middle with the Phantom Gaming branding on there as well. The heatsink on top is tall and thin. But with half of these phases dedicated to the SOC, it shouldn’t have an issue with overclocking.

The chipset fan reminds me of the X58 days, with the large heatsink on the then-discrete Northbridge, that had heatsinks and a fan to keep the hot-running part cool. Here we see a triangle-shaped cooler for the PCH and what looks to be a 40mm fan underneath. With this BIOS, the fan is audible over the GPU, a case fan, and the Corsair H150i AIO in use in stock form. It isn’t particularly loud, but it is easily heard. With all the other boards we have looked at so far, outside of powering on, the chipset fans were not audible during our testing. So if you’re bothered by fan noise, you should either look elsewhere or wait a bit and check forums to see if a future BIOS update fixes this issue.

Most SFF builds are hidden inside small cases without windows. For any that do have windows, the board will mesh with most any build theme as the only colored accent is the Phantom Gaming name on the rear IO cover. The RGB LEDs are bright and illuminate the backside and bottom of the board. If the six LEDs are not enough, two additional strips (one regular, the other addressable), can be added via headers.

For full-size boards, we normally split it up into the top and bottom half and focus on each. But with an Mini-ITX board, there really isn’t a point, as the board is so small.

Starting off on the left with the rear IO cover, we get a better look at the brushed-aluminum finish, along with the Phantom Gaming branding and red accents, which slice their way through the back portion of the cover. The grey portion is used as a heatsink for the left VRM bank as well as the chipset heatsink via heat pipe connection. While it may not have the surface area we’re used to seeing, it's beefy. Both heatsinks did get warm during testing, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Feeding power to the VRMs is a single 8-pin EPS connecter, located between the rear IO cover and top VRM heatsink. This feeds power to what ASRock mentions is a 10 phase VRM. The power delivery consists of very good parts, including an Intersil ISL69147 controller in 4+2 mode, with the CPU phases doubled (by ISL6617A doublers). The Dr. Mos design uses the latest Smart Power stage technologies with current and temperature monitoring of each phase, which ASRock says delivers smoother and neater power to the CPU. The CPU power delivery is very good, in particular for such a small board. There shouldn’t be any issues with higher-wattage Ryzen chips. 

In the top-right corner, we find both RGB headers (4-pin and 3-pin addressable), along with two of the three fan headers. The third fan header is located on the bottom portion of the board also next to the DIMM slots. The fan headers are of the hybrid variety and support both DC- and PWM-controlled fans. Control over the fans is covered in the BIOS or through the Phantom Gaming Tuning app and the FAN-Tastic Tuning section.

While the header count is low, one needs to consider the lack of real estate on the board, as well as the fact that the chassis these boards fit in generally have less room for fans in the first place. In other words, the count should be adequate when using an appropriately sized case for the board.

The two DIMM slots are black and do not come with reinforcement. The board will support up to 64GB of DDR4 with speeds up to DDR4 4533+ when overclocking. This rating is the highest we have seen so far. But with the memory we have, we won’t be able to test that high. With smaller boards like this, the memory traces are typically shorter, allowing for better memory overclocking capabilities.

The curiosity here is due to all of the IC’s found just above them. Typically, this area is clear except for perhaps a cap or two. Here we see a fan header and other various bits on top. The other curious bit is that even though it is rated for DDR4 4533, the fastest memory kit on the qualified vendor list is rated at DDR4 4266 and that is one kit. The next highest value is DDR4 3600. That said, the board handled our GSkill Neo kit at 3200MHz and its XMP rating of 3600 Mhz without issue.

On the right edge of the board is the 24-pin ATX connector, front panel USB 3.0 header, and four SATA3 6 Gbps ports. The SATA ports support RAID 0, 1, and 10 if you are looking for a bit more speed or parity.

Towards the bottom we can see the large chipset heatsink and fan, along with headers shoe-horned between it and the DIMM slots. We see the front panel header, USB 2.0 and TPM headers here. Across the bottom is the Realtek ALC1220 chip and just below that is the front panel audio header. We don’t find EMI shielding on these IC’s, likely due to a lack of room for it.

Next is the single PCIe 4.0 x16 slot. The slot is reinforced with ASRock’s Steel Slot technology (metal) providing extra anchor points for heavy graphics cards, and additional signal stability according to the company.

So where is the M.2 slot? On the back. The small board has space for just one PCIe 4.0 x4-based drive up to 80mm in length. It does NOT support SATA based M.2 modules. Any SATA drives will need to connect via the four standard SATA ports. Being located on the back of the board, the NVMe M.2 slot does not come with a heatsink, nor is there much room for one between it and your case. So if you’re considering one of those speedy PCIe 4.0 drives with the thick heatsinks, you should probably look elsewhere.

Before we wrap this section up, take a look around the socket area. Notice we don’t see the typical AM4 mounting hardware in place, nor the mounting locations. What you see are actually the Intel mounting holes for 115x socket, a mutant of a solution if you will. This peculiar implementation was done for compatibility reasons. ASRock says that while there are plenty of CPU coolers that work with AM4, some do not support AM4, with most of those coolers being low profile and designed specifically for ITX boards. However, those coolers do support Intel’s mounting. By making this switch, ASRock has effectively improved the cooler availability for the board. That said, it still means if you don’t already have a compatible cooler to carry over from a previous build, you’ll have to buy one, rather than installing the cooler AMD ships in the box. This will probably cause confusion with buyers who aren’t sure exactly what they’re getting into with this particular board.

The rear IO plate on the Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 is integrated and implements a similar design to what is seen on the rear IO cover on top, with black on the edges and grey in the middle. The rear IO includes five total USB ports with three ports supporting USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) speeds. The Type-C port doubles as a Thunderbolt 3 port, with the full 40 Gbps throughput. Outside of that we see a legacy PS/2 combo port for a keyboard or mouse, the Wi-Fi antenna connections, a clear CMOS button, and video outputs in the form of DisplayPort and HDMI 2.0. Additionally, we see the Intel LAN port as well as the 5-plug audio stack plus a S/PDIF connection.

The rear IO includes the basics for a board of this class. The rare feature is the Thunderbolt 3 port. That said, five USB ports of any type is a fairly low count and can easily be used up today, so be aware of that limitation if you regularly plug lots of accessories and peripherals into the back of your PC.

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Software and Firmware

Software

On the software side, ASRock gives users a few useful applications for system monitoring and overclocking with the Phantom Gaming Tuning program, RGB control, and even an ‘app shop’ for easy downloading and installation of ASRock apps and other 3rd party applications.

ASRock’s App Shop is a small-footprint application giving users convenient access to their own apps including the Polychrome RGB LED utility, XFast LAN, Restart to UEFI, and the app charger. In addition to the ASROck apps, some third-party applications including Chrome and Norton Security can also be downloaded from here.

Also within this application, you can access the latest BIOS and drivers for the system. This section displays a list of drivers/BIOS and the current version and shows the latest version available. Simply select which to update (or use the update all function) and it will update your drivers.

Overall, the application was useful for a first-time update situation and its role for one stop updating. I let it update any drivers needed and it was successful in doing so.

Next up is the Phantom Gaming Tuning application. As the name implies, this program is used to tune your system and offers monitoring capabilities as well. It starts off in the Operation Mode screen, which allows users to select between different performance modes, including Power Saving, Standard, and Performance Modes.

Overclocking capabilities are handled in the OC Tweaker section. Here we have access to CPU frequency and voltage, SOC and DRAM voltage, among other secondary voltages. Unlike other similar applications from the board partners, ASRock doesn’t give a CPU multiplier and BCLK adjustments. In order to change the CPU speed you need to enter a specific clock like 4225 MHz. Outside of not having that kind of granular control, the few changes I made with it in Windows (clocks and voltage) worked without issue.

For monitoring, the Phantom Gaming Tuning application lists several domains including clocks, fan and temperature as well as voltages. Here again we do not see BCLK listed, but a simple clock speed. CPU, motherboard and PCH temperature sensors are listed here, along with any fans which happen to be plugged in. We can see the SB fan spinning at over 5K RPM here. Critical voltages including Vcore, CPU VDD, DRAM, and others are listed, along with the three major rails from the power supply.

Last but not least is FAN-Tastic Tuning. This section is where you can apply custom fan curves for each fan. Simply jump in and run the fan test (finds the min/max speeds of the attached fans/pumps), then select the fan you would like to control using the dropdown in the upper left, and tweak to your heart’s content.

Overall, I like the Phantom Gaming Tuning application. It worked without issue in all of its functionality and provides system monitoring. Though it was easy to set clocks, I do wish there was more granularity in overclocking, as in options for a CPU multiplier and BCLK instead of simply entering a clock value. That said,  I can see how this can be better, especially for those looking for a more simple setup.

ASRock’s Polychrome Sync application is used to control the RGB ecosytem on the motherboards as well as any attached compatible devices. It will read your environment and add access to any devices which can be controlled through the software. In total, there are over 15 different preset modes/patterns that can be applied to the RGB lighting. You can also customize the color and speed of many of these modes.

Polychrome worked well out of the gate and for the screenshot you see below. However, upon a reboot and bringing up the application again, it did not recognize the memory and sync it in the ecosystem as it did previously. No system changes (BIOS updates, software updates) were done in the meantime so we aren’t sure what happened there.

Firmware

Jumping into the ASRock BIOS, we’re greeted by a fairly standard setup with headings across the top and data on the remaining part of the screen. Theme wise, the Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 has a mostly black background with a red/maroon accent sweeping in from the center to the upper right corner with any writing in white. One thing that we noticed on this UEFI is the lack of an ‘Easy Mode’. So far, all vendors and boards we have tested so far included one up until now. Outside of that minor quibble, it was smooth sailing all around with this BIOS.

Digging deeper, the first section we’ll discuss is Main. This screen is purely informational, covering the UEFI version, Processor type, speed, and microcode, as well as the total memory installed.

The bulk of the work for an overclocker will be handled in the OC Tweaker section. Here we can find access to the CPU details from SMT modes, memory speed and timing adjustments, as well as voltage functionality.  Like the Windows-based Phantom Gaming Tuning software, we do not find a BCLK or CPU multiplier function in the BIOS, either. In other words, you’ll need to manually input the clock speed in MHz instead of using a multiplier or BCLK value for finer tweaks. Other than that, all of the functions needed to overclock your Ryzen 2/3 processor are located in this spot.

There are plenty of adjustments for DRAM, including all the primary, secondary, and tertiary timings and of course the ability to set XMP mode. Support is listed for DD4 4533+ when overclocking, so there are high hopes from ASRock on its abilities. As we mentioned earlier, the Mini-ITX size boards tend to overclock better due to shorter trace routing and improved signaling. But as always, your mileage may vary.

Inside the Advanced section is where users are able to configure the CPU, Onboard devices (HD audio, WAN/BT, PS/2, etc), storage, as well as having that second AMD Overclocking sub-section we’ve seen in each BIOS so far.

Within the AMD Overclocking area, there is both redundant and more granular options for the DDR and Infinity Fabric, PBO, SOC and other voltages. I find reaching this CPUs maximum can be achieved without going into this section, but it can be useful for other things such as manually configuring PBO options.

The Tool heading is where you’ll find BIOS adjustments for RGB LEDs, SSD secure erase and NVMe sanitization tools. This is also where you can flash the UEFI through Instant Flash.

Inside the H/W Monitor portion, you get a system status of temperatures, fan speeds, voltages, and power supply voltage. Below these readings is where to find fan control. The fans have speed options from silent to full speed, along with the ability to customize and create your own fan curve. Unlike some firmwares, this one doesn’t have a fancy GUI. Still, setting a custom curve was straightforward. Additionally, the board has the ability to select a temperature source to react on, either the CPU or motherboard.

The Security and Boot sections are self explanatory, with nothing sticking out as missing here. If you need to set a system password at the BIOS level, Security is where it is handled. Adjusting anything with regards to the boot process, including boot order, time outs, and fast boot, is located in the Boot section.

The BIOS in ASRock’s Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 looks good and worked well for our testing. Outside of the odd lack of BCLK and CPU multiplier control, placement of all the options felt logical and easy to access.

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How We Test

We’ll be comparing the ASRock Z570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 to Gigabyte Z570-I Aorus Pro Wi-Fi (review upcoming), as they are both Mini-ITX size boards. We’ve also included the Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus Wi-Fi as a data set as well. Just note that it’s a larger full-ATX model.

Comparison Products

The test systems are as close as we can to running the same specifications. Though memory may be different brands, the speed and primary timings are the same as well as the GPU. We use as an updated W10 64-bit OS (1903) with all threat mitigations applied.

Test System Components

Benchmark Settings

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Benchmark and Final Analysis

All standard benchmarks and power tests are performed using the CPU’s stock frequencies (including stock AMD Turbo), with all of its power-saving features enabled. Optimized defaults are set in the BIOS and the memory set. The memory is manually set up to run at DDR4 3200 MHz (base spec for Zen 2) @ 16-18-18-38 primary timings.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Synthetics are a great tool to figure out if a board is running out of spec, as identical settings should produce extremely similar performance results. Advanced memory timings are the one place where motherboard makers can still optimize for either stability or performance though, and those settings can impact some testing.

In our synthetic set of tests, the ASRock performed as expected, winning some and losing some compared to the other boards on the charts. All results were within general run variance, outside of perhaps the MS Office scores where the ASRock was a couple of percent slower than the Gigabyte ITX board and the Asus. In general, PBO (Precision Boost Overdrive) showed negligible improvements over stock (where PBO is set to Auto, note). So it seems like ASRock and the board’s optimized defaults work well. You may be able to get more out of it making custom PBO settings. 

3D Games

Our game results have continued to show minimal differences, with all results within 1%.

Timed Applications

The timed applications also show little difference between the boards in optimized default form. Enabling PBO showed no improvements.

Overall Performance

Overall performance differences between the boards we tested were not much at all. The ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 performed as well as all the other boards. PBO yielded nothing tangible, much as we’ve seen with the competition.

Power and Relative Energy Efficiency

Idle power use for the ITX/TB3 was the lowest at 65W, even when was PBO enabled. Load wattage, alternatively, was by far the highest, hitting 211W while in optimized default mode. This tells us the AMD limits are bypassed and some enhancements seem to be built in to the board. This didn’t really play out in performance, however. Other boards accomplished the same performance using  roughly 25% less power.

With that, overall efficiency on this board in default mode was almost 12% lower than the other boards. If you are trying to save power, this isn’t the board to do it, at least not without some tweaking of the settings.

Overclocking

Overclocking our Ryzen 7 3700X CPU on this board yielded a 4.25 GHz clock with 1.325V (1.35V set in the BIOS). Jumping up to the next multiplier on this same voltages ended up in a failure. More voltage ended up in throttling, while less voltage was a fail in a much quicker time. This is simply the end of the road for this processor with ambient cooling.

The VRM proved to send relatively stable voltages (according to software). When setting 1.35V in the BIOS, we ended up at 1.325V under load with LLC on auto. When using optimized defaults, it reads as level 3, but when using a fixed voltage, it automatically switched to level 1, the highest. There was still a bit of vdroop, but nothing to worry about.

For memory, the ASRock board handled manually setting our GSkill Neo sticks to DDR4 3200 CL16 as well as running the XMP settings at DDR4 3600. It also did so using the 1:1 ratio for optimal performance. We didn’t test the highest rated OC setting of 4533 MHz. But as we’ve said elsewhere, AMD says 3600 is the sweet spot. Stepping up much above that won’t gain you much in the way of substance, other than bragging rights.

Overall, the board was able to reach the same clocks on the processor as competing boards, with similar voltage.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the Mini-ITX ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 proved to be a good board throughout our testing. In its ‘default’ state, the results blended in with the others seamlessly, as we would expect. In this stock configuration, PBO was set to auto. But when enabled, it really didn’t do much over the optimized settings. When manually overclocked, the board reached the same clock speed as the other boards without issue.

On the features front, the tiny board packed in at least one of everything found on the larger boards including four SATA ports, a single M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 slot, and of course the USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port, which doubles as a Thunderbolt 3 port with the full 40 Gbps bandwidth. The power delivery uses quality parts and kept cool while running the CPU at 4.25 GHz with all cores and threads enabled on our Ryzen 7 3700X.

If looks are a part of the equation, the simple design and RGB LEDs across the bottom allow the board to fit with any build them you like without sticking out like a sore thumb. The rear IO panel is already mounted on the board, and is also able to slide a bit for even better fit in your case, a nice value add as most are locked in place.

The ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 is priced at $239 on Newegg, with its only competitor in this form factor being the Gigabyte X570-I Aorus Pro Wi-FI priced less at $220. The major difference between these boards is the Thunderbolt 3 capabilities of the ASRock, and some video outputs where the Gigabyte ITX board has more. Outside of that, performance between the two is too close to name a winner. But if you use any Thunderbolt 3-connected devices (or think you might in the future), this is the hands down choice for an ITX board. Just note that if you’re planning on installing a fast PCIe 4.0 SSD, the rear mounting of the M.2 slot means you’ll have to do without a fancy heatsink, which could also mean slower performance under sustained loads.

Image Credits: Tom's Hardware

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Linux users received some good news today: Phoronix reported that Linux 5.3 will finally address issues with audio input on systems with AMD processors. Those fixes will be added to currently available versions of the Linux kernel, too, so users won't have to install the point upgrade.

Phoronix said that Linux users who rely on AMD processors have been reporting "crackling" audio input since at least 2017. The problems don't usually appear to affect the audio output, so many people were probably unaware of the issue, but there were sporadic reports of "occasional playback hiccups."

These issues were said to affect systems featuring motherboards built around AMD's X470 and X370 chipsets that used Realtek audio codecs. Linux users couldn't find a workaround to address the issue--which isn't common for that particular community--so they simply had to accept the crackle.

Or at least they did until SUSE engineer Takashi Iwai shared a series of not-quite-fixes discovered after "lengthy debugging sessions."  Those workarounds are:

Set up the proper driver caps for this controller, similar as the other AMD controller.Correct the DMA position reporting with the fixed FIFO size, which is similar like as workaround used for VIA chip set.Even after the position correction, PulseAudio still shows mysterious stalls of playback streams when a capture is triggered in timer-scheduled mode. Since we have no clear way to eliminate the stall, pass the BATCH PCM flag for PA to suppress the tsched mode as a temporary workaround.

Iwai said the patch set to debut with Linux 5.3 introduces these workarounds by setting the driver caps preset to AXZ_DCAPS_PRESET_AMD_SB, enabling FIFO-corrected position reporting and enforcing the SNDRV_PCM_INFO_BATCH flag. This should temporarily resolve audio input problems.

But the patch notes were clear about these being workarounds rather than legitimate fixes. "Note that the current implementation is merely a workaround," Iwai said. "Hopefully we'll find a better alternative in future, especially about removing the BATCH flag hack again."

Realtek, a company more known for its sound processors, has entered the SSD game within recent time. But, while the company is slightly new to the game, development of its next-generation PCIe 4.0 controller is underway. Unfortunately, 'under development' is as far as the company is at this point, with no engineering samples anywhere to be seen. Rather, the company showcased it current-gen controllers, like the RTS5762 and RST5763DL (DRAMless), and a new USB to PCIe bridge controller that natively supports RGB lighting.

The RTS5771 is Realtek's next-gen top-tier controller and it is aimed to hit the market sometime in Q3 2020. It will feature a multi-core, DRAM-based architecture, with a second-generation LDPC error correction engine as well as AES encryption. Performance stats aren’t yet available, but with eight NAND channels and NAND interface speeds of up to 1,200 MT/s and a PCIe 4.0 x4 host link, it should be quite potent.

The DRAMless RTS5765DL is going to be a bit slower, but more efficient its PCIe 3.0 x4 host interface and support for just four NAND channels. It will be sampling sooner in Q4 of this year. It’s NAND interface will operate at up to 1,200 MT/s speeds to keep up with the latest NAND and it will also feature a multi-core CPU architecture with the same security and LDPC support, too. The package size will be BGA 11x11 for the RTS5765DL controller, while the beefier RTS5771 has not been finalized yet.

As mentioned previously, Realtek was also showing off their current-gen products. So far, the company has been able to secure contact with ADATA, and through that partnership, the latest XPG SX6000 Pro has come to light. The SSD is powered by the RTS5763DL, a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3-compliant controller that can deliver sequential performance of up to 2.1/1.5 GB/s read/write and 250,000 IOPS. This may be a bit slow for some, but that’s where the RTS5762 comes into play.

The current high-end controller in the company’s lineup is the RTS5762. This controller has recently hit the market in ADATA’s newest SSD, the XPG Spectrix S40G RGB SSD. With performance stats of up to 3.5/3.0 Gb/s and the capability to hit 420,000 / 320,000 IOPS, the seemingly high-end controller just may keep up the pace against the current top dogs in the controller industry, but we’ll have to see that once we get our S40G review sample in.  

The company also showcased a new RTL9210 USB 3.1 Gen 2 to PCIe 3.0 x2 bridge controller for external SSDs and enclosures. This is a welcome sight because a popular controller, the JMicron JMS583 is available, but it is pretty power-hungry, and thus, there are some compatibility issues with some hosts that don’t deliver enough juice. The Realtek is said to consume much less power through active state power management support, and thus it will also help to lower overall heat output too. Additionally, it supports RGB lighting natively through the controller. It’s rather limited being able to address just three LEDs at this time, but it will be interesting to see what vendors make of it. As with Realtek’s other controllers, ADATA currently has this one embedded into their external device lineup.

Features and Layout

The $196 / £159 ASrock Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 fills the void between ASRock’s Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 (which we reviewed) and its Phantom Gaming 6 (which we didn’t), offering the more-expensive board’s 2.5 gigabit Ethernet controller but not its triple M.2 SSD support or Wi-Fi controller. The 7 costs about $25 less than the Phantom Gaming 9, but a more-thorough examination is required to find out if that lower price translates to a better value.

Specifications

The Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 might fill a gap in ASRock’s Phantom Gaming portfolio, but a quick overview of its headers shows remarkable similarities to the company’s Z390 Extreme4. An extra Ethernet port fed by Realtek’s 2.5GbE controller marks its major improvement over the non-Phantom-series board, though the Phantom Gaming 7 also adds a “Port 80”  two-digit diagnostic display, onboard power and reset buttons, and a heat spreader for the upper M.2 drive slot. While users could purchase a separate Reatek 2.5GbE card for the Extreme4 for as little as $30, those lesser additions could make up the rest of the Phantom Gaming 7’s $40 price premium over its Extreme4 sibling.

Less obvious is the revised voltage regulator, which features fewer higher-capacity phases to address the power fiasco revealed in the Z390 Extreme4. Condemning the Extreme4 might not be the best way to promote the Phantom Gaming 7, but the new design gives us hope for expanded options in the sub-$200 enthusiast motherboard class.

Not every subtle design change is an improvement for builders, however. While the Z390 Extreme4’s upper PCIe x1 slot was above its top PCIe x16 slot, the Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 moves it below that slot. The coolers of most performance graphics cards require at least two slots of space, but such cards block card access to the Z390 Phantom Gaming 7’supper PCIe x1 slot.

Likewise, the additional heat spreader for the upper M.2 slot, while advertised as a benefit to end users, complicates SSD installation. That’s due to the heat spreader being integrated with the Z390 heatsink, which requires builders to remove the entire assembly to install the upper drive.

The second and third PCIe x1 slots are open-ended to enable the installation of cards with longer interfaces (such as x4), though doing this with the lower slot requires leaving off its M.2 head spreader. PCIe x16 slots are resourced as x16/x0/x4 or x8/x8/x4, with the top two slots sharing the CPU controller’s sixteen pathways and the lower slot competing with every other device (including M.2, USB and SATA) for bandwidth through the Z390 chipset’s 32Gb/s DMI.

The lower M.2 storage slot supports drives up to 110mm long, while the upper supports the common 80mm standard at most. In the center, an M.2 Key E slot supports both PCIe/USB and Intel CNVi module standards for notebook-style wireless cards.

An extra SATA-based PCIe controller expands Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 legacy drive support, though the reason for this might not be immediately clear: Two SATA ports are disabled for each M.2 SSD a user installs.

A single second-generation front-panel USB 3.1 header resides above the SATA slots, but it’s limited to USB 3.0 transfer rates (5Gb/s). Though the data rate is only half of what the connector was designed to support, its inclusion allows users to connect the matching front-panel cable of their high-end case.

The Z390 Phantom Gaming 7’s bottom edge is filled with headers for front-panel audio, addressable RGB cables, two traditional RGB strips, a Thunderbolt upgrade card, two (of five) fans, two dual-port USB 2.0 front-panel cables, a trusted platform module, legacy (beep code) PC speaker and 3-pin power LED, and an Intel-style front-panel switch/LED set.

Similarities to the Z390 Extreme4 extend to the I/O panel, where placement is identical for the ports both boards have in common: The Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 loses the cheaper board’s VGA output and gains a second network port, with the single PS/2 keyboard/mouse, four USB 3.1 Gen1 (5Gb/s), DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4 for onboard video, two USB 3.1 Gen2 (10Gb/s Type A and Type-C), five analog I/O and single digital audio ports remaining. Even the empty antenna holes are in the same location, though the Phantom Gaming 7 gets upgraded to a factory-installed (rather than snap-in) I/O panel shield.

The Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 includes four SATA cables, a legacy SLI bridge, M.2 mounting screws, a driver and application disc, a multi-language user manual, a software setup guide, a case badge, and a postcard. Currently in somewhat of a retro resurgence, postcards were the snail-mail predecessor of Instagram, where the picture promoting what you were doing was provided for you.

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Software and Firmware

ASRock’s Phantom Gaming Tuning has not yet been adapted to support the new Z390 Phantom Gaming 7, though the rest of the software is carried over from its Phantom Gaming 9.

ASRock’s Polychrome Sync works mostly well, but the Rainbow mode doesn’t appear to synchronize color shift timing between the motherboard and our Predator RGB DIMMs. Breathing, Strobe, and Cycling are better synchronized,  but the memory leads the motherboard LEDs by fractions of a second. Greyed-out modes in the first image become available when the motherboard isn’t set to synchronize with memory, and unsynchronized settings for memory are given a shorter set of lighting options.

Firmware

The Z390 Phantom Gaming 7’s UEFI features two different GUIs, with EZ Mode being the default. From there, users can set the clock, enable XMP, change boot order, flash firmware updates from a USB drive, download firmware updates to a USB drive, and set fan maps using a graphical interface.

Keying “F6” brings up the board’s Advanced mode interface, where the OC Tweaker menu provides a wide variety of overclocking options. The Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 pushed our Core i9-9900K to 4848 MHz with all cores loaded under Prime95 Small-FFTs. Intel’s default Turbo Boost setting for this CPU under the same load is 4700 MHz.

Our DDR4-2933 got a far larger overclock to DDR4-3800, using its rated 1.35V with extended 19-21-21-42 timings. Memory tweakers will find a great variety of settings to play with, which could allow them to reach even higher DRAM overclocks (or reduce latency for better response times). For those who easily lose track of where they’ve been, its DRAM Tweaker submenu adds detail to the memory’s rated settings.

As a test load, Prime95 small-FFTs puts great stress on the CPU’s AVX registers which in turn causes the voltage across the circuit to drop. The Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 continued to push CPU core voltage to 1.29 to 1.30 volts under that heavy stress after setting its Load-Line Calibration to “Level 1” mode. Our voltmeter showed memory voltage that was 12mV to 14mV over whatever we set, so that setting 1.34V gave us a reading of 1.352 to 1.354V: To keep overclocking comparisons fair, we long-ago chose a 1.355V ceiling.

Those who prefer to enter UEFI in Advanced mode can pick the default GUI from the UEFI Setup Style option within Advanced Mode. Just remember that “clear CMOS” also resets this option.

The “Tool” menu offers the same flash programs as found in EZ Mode, but adds an RGB submenu, another tool for sending email to ASRock tech support, a tool to copy RAID drivers to a USB drive, and a tool to securely erase data from SSDs. At the bottom of the Tool menu are options to copy the main firmware to the backup IC, and a network configuration utility to help people on intranets access the internet.

The firmware version of Polychrome RGB doesn’t address RGB memory, but it does adjust onboard lighting schemes along with attached LED strips.

ASRock Fan Tuning algorithm determines minimum and maximum fan speeds to calibrate its integrated fan maps accordingly. Users can access the graphical fan tuning interface from FAN-Tastic tuning, or manually program each fan mathematically.

Four of the five headers can be switched between PWM and voltage-based RPM control, but the main CPU fan header is PWM-only.

Image Credits: Tom's Hardware

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How We Test

We discussed the similarities between the Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 and Z390 Extreme4’s circuit boards at length, but the Extreme4 doesn’t have 2.5GbE. That premium feature pits the new board against ASRock’s Z390 Phantom Gaming 9. Not wanting to overemphasize the ASRock brand, we also included the closest-matching boards from MSI and Gigabyte.

Comparison Products

The Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 has a far narrower range of voltage settings than its pricier sibling, but that should be a problem for a test system that won’t be pushed past 1.305V CPU core or 1.355V DIMM. These could reflect a reduction in load capacity (where more voltage causes the device to pull more current), but ASRock did advertise its 60A chokes as somehow beneficial.

Test System Components

Benchmark Settings

Image Credits: Tom's Hardware

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Benchmark Results and Final Analysis

We disable any motherboard-specified CPU overclocks for our basic performance tests, and disable XMP since some boards would formerly re-enable those CPU overclocks when XMP was applied. All CPU-based power-saving features are enabled to achieve the best idle power readings throughout these tests.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Both ASRock boards showed reduced graphics scores in 3DMark Firestrike, and the Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 performed poorly in PCMark Creative. We’d expect the performance deficit to show up in Compubench were this simply a matter of graphics performance, but the Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 leads the longest of those tests.

3D Games

Proving that the Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 doesn’t suffer a graphics tests, it matches competing boards almost perfectly at the higher-quality settings of all four games. A small win at our lower Ashes setting is offset by a small loss at the lower setting of F1 2015.

Timed Applications

The Z390 Phantom Gaming 7’s most-serious performance deficits are in applications tested through PCMark. We considered that the problem might be within our installation, reinstalled our test image, and tried again, only be disappointed a second time.

Power, Heat & Efficiency

The Z390 Phantom Gaming 7’s power consumption is on par with comparable boards in the sub-$200 Z390 class.

Those moderate power numbers weren’t exactly helpful to the voltage regulator however: Probing the entire voltage regulator for hot spots, we found some scorching chokes behind the CPU socket, that were over 20 degrees hotter than the hottest spot of the Z390 Gaming SLI. The Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 and Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon's voltage regulator temperatures were checked with a thermistor at the same relative location, but we removed the data since that method is less able to pinpoint such anomalies.

The actual reading of the Z390 Phantom Gaming 7’s hottest choke was 126 degrees C, and it was surrounded by a few other chokes that were only a few degrees cooler: We had to reduce the room temperature to 18 degrees just to keep the board running long enough to get that measurement. Thermal protection for MOSFETs eventually kicked in as these chokes heated surrounding components, but that process took long enough that it occurred after the choke temperature had appeared to quit climbing. Our default configuration relies only on the draft of our liquid cooling systems fan to cool the voltage regulator however, and simply putting more airflow (an extra fan) closer to the Z390 Phantom Gaming 7’s voltage regulator solves the issue.

Percent-based scoring in today’s review uses the average of all seventeen Z390 boards we’ve reviewed. The Z390 Phantom Gaming 7’s 1.7% below-average performance combines with is 2% above-average power consumption to produce a 3.7% below-average efficiency rating.

Overclocking

We’ve added a fan over the voltage regulator of every Z390 board during our overclocking analysis, as overheated voltage regulators have been a problem since the Core i9-9900K’s introduction. That simple solution has resolved the thermal issue of even the hottest boards, yet it didn’t resolve the Z390 Phantom Gaming 7’s lower-than-average overclock. We know that nobody’s willing to completely ignore the value of a board’s features if it comes up a mere 102 MHz short of a top rating, but a loss is still a loss.

On the other hand, the Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 did a solid job of pushing our DDR4-2933 test samples to either 3733 (2-DIMM) or 3800 (4-DIMM) data rates, and even edged out other sub-$200 boards in overclocked memory bandwidth.

Final Analysis

Value seekers are always discussing “bang for the buck,” so we always include a performance-per-dollar chart that serves as little more than entertainment when onboard features are what buyers are really paying for. The Z390 Phantom Gaming 7 and its Phantom Gaming 9 sibling score lowest here, because the 2.5GbE controller adds around $30 to both prices.

Having said that, if we wanted a 2.5GbE controller onboard we’d just pony up the extra cash for the Z390 Phantom Gaming 9. It’s a far better board overall, with better features such as an integrated Wi-Fi controller and true 10Gb/s USB 3.1 Gen2 front-panel header, and none of the heat alarms noticed in the Gaming 7. We’d call that $25 well spent.

If the $25 difference caused us to forgo 2.5GbE, we’d jump straight down to Gigabyte’s Z390 Gaming SLI for its better overclocks and lower temps, as well as its lack of PCIe pathway sharing.

Image Credits: Tom's Hardware

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Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming Motherboard Review

The Strix B450-F Gaming is classed as a mid-range board and is part of the Republic of Gamers lineup, which places an emphasis on gaming and related premium features. The board supports both Crossfire and SLI multi-GPU configurations, has a 6+2 phase VRM and uses the SupremeFX S1220A audio (an Asus-tweaked Realtek codec) while supporting the full range of Ryzen processors, up to the flagship mainstream processor in the Ryzen 7 2700X.

Asus places the B450-F Gaming as a middle of the road gaming motherboard from its ROG lineup. With a price of $120 and support for both AMD- and NVIDIA-based multi-GPU builds, it’s a solid mid-range board, with some premium aesthetics, which we’ll delve into below.

The Asus Strix B450-F Gaming costs $119.99 at Amazon and is, for the most part, a fully featured board and based off its big brother from the X470 chipset. The B450-F gaming includes six SATA ports, two M.2 slots for storage plus an M.2 Key E slot for a Wi-Fi module, premium audio, USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) ports, as well as tastefully implemented RGB LEDs. A full list of specifications are found below.

Specifications

The included accessory stack is appropriate for the board and should contain what is needed to get started. The accessories included are:

• 4x SATA cables
• M.2 screws
• RGB LED extension
• 7x zip ties
• Alternative chipset cover
• Installation manual
• Driver disk
• ROG door hanger
• ROG stickers

The board itself is matte black with shiny black stenciling around the PCI and chipsets, with ROG-related slogans, like Republic of Gamer, Hybrid, and some characters from languages other than English. It’s worth noting this design is also on the back of the board in grey, but unless you happen to have a case with a see-through motherboard tray, this isn’t something you’re going to see once the board is installed.

Covering the Rear IO area and part of the VRM heatsink is a plastic shroud with the only RGB LED implementation on the board, embedded in the ROG logo. The heatsinks for the VRMs are grey and have a fair amount of surface area to keep the heat-producing components underneath running in spec.

Asus employs its Safeslot reinforcement technology (in the form of metal slot wrappers) on the first two full-length PCIe slots, identifying the primary PCIe slots in the process. Another design feature similar to what we saw in the PCIe area is located on the chipset heatsink as well. Asus calls this styling a “...futuristic cyber-test pattern which fuses multiple gaming cultures to create a unique identity for this generation.” according to Asus. If the brighter plate on the chipset heatsink isn’t your style a more subtle option is included. In order to swap these out, simply peel off the cover protecting the tape and stick it on.

Overall the Strix B450-F Gaming presents users with a fairly blank black slate to work in with a build theme. If the single RGB LED section isn’t enough, there are two headers on the board to expand your lighting options. Both the integrated and external RGB LEDs are controlled via the Asus Aura RGB Software.

Taking a look at the top half of the board, we’ll focus around the AM4 socket first where you’ll find VRMs and DRAM slots as well as some fan headers. On the left side, we get a better look at the shroud, which partially covers one of the two VRM heatsinks and holds the RGB LEDs under the ROG symbol. The heatsinks themselves are tall and able to dissipate the heat generated from the 6+2 phase VRM in our testing. Just above the heatsink is a single 8-pin EPS connector for the CPU.

The VRM is 6 total phases managed by a 4+2 channel controller. The SOC uses a split/teamed 2+2 configuration. In a nutshell, we shouldn’t have an issue driving most CPUs with this setup. We didn’t have an issue with our 2700X overclocked at 4.2 GHz, which is about the end of the road for current-generation Ryzen based CPUs, anyway.

Of the board’s six total fan headers four are located on the top half, two sit on the right of the top VRMs and two more live above the PCIe x1 slot. The two located to the right of the VRMs are for the CPU fan(s), with the other two (CHA_FAN1 and AIO_PUMP) designated for case fan and an AIO pump duty. All headers on the board support both DC and PWM fans and can be controlled through the QFan in the BIOS and Fan Expert 4 in AISuite.

Just below the two fan headers is the QLED, which displays a different color LED to identify where in the boot process the board may be. The four options are Boot (Yellow/Green), VGA (White), DRAM (Yellow), and CPU (Red). If it gets hung up in one of those areas, the LED remains lit, letting you know there is an issue in that area. This is an important feature, especially since the board doesn’t include a POST code LED debugger or beep speaker. 

In addition to the fan headers to the right of the VRM, we see the first of two RGB headers -- the other located across the bottom of the board next to the other fan headers. Both RGB headers connect to standard 5050 digital LED strips and will output a maximum of 3A/36W. Both the integrated and connected RGBs are controlled through the Asus Aura software.

Continuing to move right, we run into the four DRAM slots. They lack any metal protection or RGB lighting (not that we expect them at this price point) but do use a single latch to lock the memory sticks down securely. If you happen to swap out RAM frequently, you may learn to like them (as I do) for easier removal. Either way, the sticks aren’t going anywhere once you get them latched in.

Finally, on the far right side is the 24-pin ATX connector and a front panel USB 3.1 Gen1 header. 

Looking at the bottom half of the board, on the left side we find the audio bits which are separated from the rest of the board by a small yellow line. Under the shiny faraday cage labeled “SupremeFX” is the audio module with the same namesake. Marketing aside, what you’re looking at here Asus’ twist on the Realtek ALC1220. The dedicated audio capacitors (in yellow) are made by Nichicon and said to produce warm and natural audio. Pumping out the tunes to your headphones are dual op amps able to support input impedance of 32-600Ω, which is fairly typical.

In the middle of the board are three full-length PCIe slots along with three x1 length slots peppered around them. The primary GPU slots (the two using Asus’ Safeslot reinforcement) will run at x16 or x8/x4 using Ryzen 1st/2nd gen CPUs or x8 using a CPU with Ryzen + Vega integrated GPU (like the Ryzen 5 2400G). The last full-length slot sources its bandwidth from the chipset, runs at PCIe 2.0 x4, and shares bandwidth with the bottom two PCIe x1 slots.

Between the PCIe slots are two M.2 slots with the top slot, M.2_1, supporting up to 80mm SATA or PCIe 3.0 x4 based modules, while M.2_2 supports PCIe modules only up to 110mm. Unlike the Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro Wi-Fi we’re benchmarking this against, the Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming doesn’t supply heatsinks for the modules. If you plan on using an NVMe based drive with sustained writes, consider getting aftermarket heatsinks for keeping the drives cooler. But for most common workloads, like gaming and common productivity programs, storage access is mostly bursty. So for most users, M.2 heatsinks are more a nice thing to have, adding to the overall aesthetics, rather than something that’s necessary.

The top socket will disable SATA ports 5 and 6 regardless of the device type installed. Meanwhile, the second M.2 socket supports PCIe only and will force the primary PCIe slot to run in x8 mode. So choose your poison there: either disable SATA ports, or run PCIe in x8 mode.

Sliding right a bit, we can see a better shot of the chipset heatsink, as well as the six SATA ports on the far-right side of the board.

Across the bottom are several headers and ports from USB 2.0 and 3.0, front panel audio, and another RGB header. The items below are listed from left to right.

• Front Panel Audio
• Serial Port connector
• TPM connector
• 2x USB 2.0 headers
• Clear RTC RAM jumper
• RGB header (4-pin)
• Chassis fan 2 and 3 headers
• System Panel connectors

The Rear IO panel has a fairly typical assortment of ports and plugs out back, including two USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A ports, four USB 3.1 Gen1 ports (one Type-C), and two USB 2.0 ports. We found it unusual the Type-C port was running Gen 1 (5 Gbps) speeds as typically the newer connector runs Gen 2 (10 Gbps) speeds. For video outputs, the board includes a full-size DisplayPort as well as a single HDMI port. Other ports include the Intel I-211AT NIC, along with five 5-plug audio jacks and an S/PDIF port. Legacy support at the back is provided by the PS/2 port, which seemingly will never die.

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Software and Firmware

Moving on to the software side of things, Asus includes an application called Ai Suite 3 which is a one-stop shop for system monitoring, fan control, overclocking, and more. Dual Intelligent Processors 5 (DIP5) is a landing page in AI Suite 3 listing a couple of the major sections within the application. This includes the TPU section for CPU multiplier and voltage control, EPU for adjusting power plans, Fan Expert 4 to manipulate fan speed and curves, DigiVRM to optimize power delivery and EZ Update which will pull the latest software, drivers and BIOS updates.

Monitoring information is located on the bottom of the application and anchored in place regardless of what section you happen to be in up top. The monitoring includes CPU speed, voltage, temperature, and fan speeds. When clicking into the settings here, voltage can be adjusted, temperature limits/alarms can be set, along with fan speed alarms.

For novice users, Ai Suite 3 is a well-featured, one-stop shop application showing all the pertinent information needed to run a stable system as well as making adjustments for overclocking and cooling.

Next up, there’s the RGB LED controls, both for the lights on the board and any you attach to the headers. Asus’ weapon of choice is Asus Aura. The software contains 12 different control presets (on this board at least--the number will vary by model according to Asus), with most able to adjust the colors and other traits. The software can also sync compatible products so the light show matches across your hardware setup.

Going into more detail on the TPU section of Ai Suite 3, you’ll find it divided into two parts. The top section is where users adjust the CPU multiplier slider in 0.25 increments. The bottom portion is where the main voltages can be adjusted, including CPU VCore, DRAM, and VDDSOC (for the memory controller) among other minor voltages. TPU can also save settings into a profile for easy loading later.

If overclocking through Windows is your thing, the TPU section has you covered and is a capable utility for its purpose.

Asus also includes an EZ Update utility which periodically checks for the latest versions of installed software and applications. It will go out to the Asus website, see if there are any updated versions of your installed Asus software/drivers and give the option to install the updates.

Another important application is Fan Xpert 4. This section includes four preset fan modes, silent, standard, turbo, and full speed. If the broad presets don’t tickle your fancy, control over each fan is possible by selecting a header in the top section.

Before starting to adjust fan curves, the board prompts you to run the fan tuning application, which automatically finds the low speeds and configures the minimum duty cycle of any fans/pumps attached to the headers. Once the fans are all tuned, select the header to adjust and click on the graph.

This will display a detailed table of speeds and RPMs for the fan as well as a curve on the left to edit. It includes a hysteresis option labeled ‘Fan Smooth up/down time’ which adds a delay to how quickly the fan responds to thresholds. This can minimize fans ramping up and down in quick succession (although so can a proper fan curve).

Firmware

Checking in on the Firmware/UEFI BIOS, Asus’ starts off in Advanced mode with its familiar menu across the top, along with the black background and red highlights on the ROG B450-F Gaming. At the very top is a list of keyboard shortcuts to various other areas of the BIOS, including My Favorites to customize a BIOS page, Qfan Control to access fans, the EZ Tuning Wizard for automated overclocking, as well as a quick button to disable/enable any onboard RGB LEDs.

The main headers across the top include My Favorites, Main, Ai Tweaker, Advanced, Monitor, Boot, Tool, and Exit, with each corresponding to a different set of functionality and options below.

In the Ai Tweaker section, users can adjust a multitude of options, including DOCP memory profiles, BCLK frequency and CPU core ratios, CPU and SOC voltages, DRAM voltage as well as access to the Digi VRM section for finer power control. In a nutshell, most everything you need to overclock is found in this section.

Another frequently accessed section worth digging into is the Monitoring and Q-Fan section, where you can adjust each connected fan/pump. As noted previously, all headers support both PWM and DC control, a nice feature to have on a budget board.

Like Ai Suite 3’s Fan Xpert 4, QFan also ‘dials in’ your fans first to check their minimum speed in order to set the curves up properly. Each fan has its own preset profile or the ability to set manually. Both the BIOS and Fan Xpert 4 worked without issue in our testing.

Last but not least, the Asus BIOS also has an EZ Mode, which displays high-level information about the system, including the installed CPU and memory, which slots are populated, SATA and M.2 information, Fan profiles/speeds, along with CPU voltage and temperatures. Boot priority can also be adjusted from this screen, along with access to QFan to adjust fan profiles.

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How We Test

The Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming will be compared to a similarly priced and appointed Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro Wi-Fi.

Comparison Products

For comparing with the Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming, we used the previously reviewed Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro Wi-Fi. The test system I am using contains different hardware than the review (video card and RAM) as well as an updated W10 64-bit OS (to use the RTX based GPU). We only have one comparison board for this deep dive as the results from the previous review wouldn’t be valid with such different parts.

Benchmark Settings

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Benchmark Results and Final Analysis

All standard benchmarks and power tests are performed using the CPU’s stock frequencies (including stock AMD Turbo), with all of its power-saving features enabled. We use the XMP setting as most will do so and not tweak manually. Since XMP is an Intel feature, not all boards will read it properly and may set different timings. But most people will likely set DOCP/XMP and forget it, so that’s the way we test. In this case, setting DOCP ran our sticks at 16-17-17-39 instead of 15-17-17-39 the Gigabyte board ran them at.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Synthetics are a great tool to figure out if a board is running out of spec, as identical settings should produce extremely similar performance results. Advanced memory timings are the one place where motherboard makers can still optimize for either stability or performance though, and those settings also impact Sandra’s bandwidth-intensive Cryptography tests.

In our synthetic set of tests, the Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming performed admirably, trading blows with the Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro Wi-Fi. All results were within general run variance difference, with no anomalous results.

3D Games

Checking in on the games, here we also see parity among the two boards tested. We don’t find an appreciable difference here either.

Timed Applications

In our timed applications, we saw slight differences between the Asus board and Gigabyte in our Mixed Workloads section, where the Asus was just a bit slower overall. Thinking this could be due to the memory difference, we re-ran with the matching primary timings and received similar results. The rest of the tests showed results that were very close together, within a margin of error on the benchmarks.

Overall Performance

Looking at the graph above, we should be able to deduce that outside of the mixed workload section, the results were within 1% of each other or no noticeable difference. The mixed workload result is the only set of tests which showed more than a negligible difference, averaging 2% slower than the Gigabyte board. That’s a measurable difference, but almost certainly not a noticeable one.

Power and Heat

In this chart, we can see the Asus ROG Strix compares well under load to the Gigabyte board, peaking at 187W (at the wall) for the entire system, while the Gigabyte used 184W. At idle, default settings saw the Asus consuming 69W and the Gigabyte using 46W. That’s a substantial difference, so If your PC is sitting there idling most of the time and power use is a concern, in this case, stick to the Gigabyte board.

Final Thoughts

Wrapping things up, the Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming gives users a lot of features for its $120 price point. The B450 chipset allows for overclocking, and we were able to take our 2700X up to 4.2 GHz using 1.35V using AIDA64 stress tests. The board handled the overclock and running our memory without issue, though the DOCP setting didn’t quite set the memory to the XMP profile and lowered the CL rating one notch, with the rest of the primary timings the same.

The B450-F Gaming comes with the standard SATA port allotment, dual M.2 slots, and plenty of USB ports, including a USB Type-C port (running 3.1 Gen 1 speeds). The pre-mounted IO shield is a great value-add and gives the board a more premium look and feel. The primary difference between this board and the Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro Wi-Fi we tested against is the latter includes a Wi-Fi adapter where this Asus does not. The Gigabyte board also used less power at idle in our tests.

Overall, the Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming is a more-than-capable mainstream offering with a variety of pleasing  features for its $120 price. For most, it’s a good motherboard to build Ryzen system around, while saving some cash versus the X470 version, which can be spent on better graphics or roomier, faster storage. So long as Wi-Fi isn’t part of your build requirement, the B450-F Gaming makes for a solid choice as the basis for your next Ryzen build.

Image Credits: Tom's Hardware

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Colorful Technology Limited, a manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards and high-performance storage solutions, this week listed a new motherboard based on the Z390 chipset, the CVN Z390M Gaming V20. Like its most recent release, the CVN B365M Pro V20, the CVN Z390M is designed to support Intel’s 8th and 9th generation processors on the LGA1151 CPU socket. The board is aimed directly at gamers, enthusiasts and PC builders building on a Micro-ATX platform.

The CVN Z390M Gaming V20 carries the CVN theme, a nod to the U.S. Navy's similarly named aircraft carriers. It boasts large heatsinks covering the the power delivery area (looks to be eight total phases – perhaps a 5+3 setup), with a smaller heatsink covering the chipset and extending out over the M.2 slot to keep it cool.

Two gray aircrafts stenciled in by the PCIe slot and SATA ports continue the military aesthetic. The CVN Gaming 79 label on the heatsink is a tribute to the new Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier, the 1,100-plus foot CVN-79, which is currently being built for the U.S. Navy with plans to launch later in 2019. Like its aforementioned B365-based little brother, there are no RGB LEDs, but there does appear to be an addressable RGB LED header located by the SATA ports if you need to add some flair.

The Z390-based motherboard includes a single shielded full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 slot along with two PCIe x1 slots (not shielded). On the rear I/O you can find two video outputs, DVI and HDMI, for those who plan to use the integrated graphics. Out back, are two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 portsand two USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) ports – Type-A and Type-C. There's also a legacy PS/2 port, Realtek RTL8111H Gigabit LAN port, as well as Realtek ALC892 audio.

On the storage front, the Z390M Gaming V20 offers five SATA3 6 Gbps ports with four oriented normally (horizontal), while the fifth sits vertically. The Micro-ATX board includes two M.2 slots, capable of handling up to a 110mm M.2 module, and a third M.2 slot, Key-E designed for CNVi-based Wi-Fi modules (not included).  

Neither pricing nor availability was mentioned. 

Colorful CVN Z390M Gaming V20 Motherboard Specs

We’ve heard musings about the B365 chipset since late 2018 with new motherboards announced and displayed at the CES tech show in January. Over the last couple of months, most board partners have been silently releasing these boards to market. Asus has a few of these boards in their stable, eight to be exact, with the latest release in the form of the Prime B365-Plus. The board appears to be their first ATX form factor offering in B365 form.

As a quick refresher, the B365 chipset is similar to the H270 chipset with a few differences. Since it belongs to the 300-series, it supports 8th and 9th generation Intel processors and features, among some other minor changes. The thought here is by using the older 22 nm process, it frees up 14 nm capacities for Intel's higher profit products, such as Intel Core and Intel Xeon CPUs. 

The Asus Prime 365-Plus has all the basics one needs from a motherboard, including two full-length PCIe slots that support AMD CrossfireX, six SATA3 6 Gbps ports, dual M.2 slots supporting up to 110 mm modules, 64 GB DRAM capacity, entry-level Realtek ALC887 based audio, Realtek Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports on the rear I/O (with additional headers for more), as well as three video outputs (VGA, HDMI and DVI). The board does not include any aesthetic RGB LEDs but does include headers for adding strips. 

Asus Prime B365-Plus Motherboard Specifications

Power to the processor is delivered by a 4+3 phase configuration, with four of the three cooled by a heatsink. This VRM count should handle even the Intel Core i9-9900K at stock, as the chipset doesn’t have the ability to overclock in the first place.

Neither pricing nor availability is listed, but since this is based on the B365 chipset and doesn’t have a lot of the extras, we expect to see this board somewhere around the sub-$100 price point when it is available.

Colorful Technology Limited, a manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards and high-performance storage solutions, has announced its newest motherboard based on the latest mid-range B365 chipset the CVN B365M Pro V20. That mouthful for a name will support both Intel's 8th and 9th generation processors using the LGA1151 package. Colorful says the motherboard is intended for mainstream to entry-level PC builds.

A quick look at the Micro-ATX size board reveals a black and silver theme with large heatsinks covering the 4+2 phase VRM area, with a smaller heatsink covering the chipset, which extends over one of the three M.2 slots. There are some grey stenciling highlights throughout the board, which fits very well with the overall quasi-military aircraft carrier theme.

The design looks to springboard off of its CVN naming, which in the military stands for Carrier Vessel Nuclear. CVN-65 is actually the name of the USS Enterprise, a decommissioned U.S. Navy aircraft carrier (CVN-80 is in the works). That makes sense considering the board features a military aircraft and helicopter landing pad symbol by the PCIe slots and CPU socket, respectively. There was no mention of RGB LEDs in Colorful's announcement, but in the images we can see at least one RGB LED header.  

The B365-based motherboard has two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots, both with additional steel support surrounding the slot. The top slot has the full x16 bandwidth from the CPU, while the bottom slot is x4 with its lanes coming from the chipset. Colorful didn’t mention multi-GPU support for AMD Crossfire. There is an additional chipset-fed PCIe x1 slot as well. For those using integrated graphics, the board also includes an HDMI and DVI video outputs.

For storage, the board has six SATA3 6 Gbps ports, with two normally oriented and four that sit vertically. In addition to the SATA ports, the CVN B365M Pro V20 offers three M.2 slots. The top two will support both PCIe and SATA-based M.2 modules, while the bottom will only support a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module (not included).

USB support comes in the form of six USB 2.0 ports, five USB 3.0 ports and one USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-C, including headers. We will not find USB 3.1 Gen2 support on this board through the B365 chipset as it is essentially a Kaby Lake-based 22nm chipset and doesn't support it natively. Audio comes through the more budget-oriented Realtek ALC892 CODEC, along with audio separation from the board and what looks to be Chemicon audio caps. Networking on the CVN B365M Gaming Pro V20 uses a Realtek RTL8111H Gigabit LAN. 

Colorful did not specify pricing or when it will start selling the motherboard. 

Colorful CVN B365M Gaming Pro V20 Motherboard Specs

Features & Specificiations

The Asus Republic of Gamers (ROG) Strix X370-I Gaming picks up where a preceding motherboard, the Biostar X370 GTN left off. While that board wasn't able to leverage the strengths of AMD's X-Series chipset (to the point were B350 would have been a better choice), the ROG Strix X370-I leverages the chipset's high speed I/O for big-board features like M.2. Add some serious overclocking capability, and you're looking at a tremendously powerful, yet amazingly small, platform for your AM4 processor.

Specifications

Features

As the I in the name states, the ROG Strix X370-I Gaming deploys AMD’s X370 chipset into the Mini-ITX form factor. Like many Asus products, this board is all polish and features.

The contents of the box hit the sweet spot for what we expect from such a small package. Four SATA cables, documentation and an off-chassis Wi-Fi antenna round out the more standard offerings. The inclusion of a front panel adapter is nice for SFF builders since wiring up chassis cables can be problematic in cramped spaces. Also, the board comes with an addressable RGB extension cable for additional flexibility with system LEDs. Included Asus ROG stickers are less vibrant than those from Gigabyte or MSI. 

Asus strips the I/O panel down to a very basic configuration. Where we typically see a plethora of ports for legacy input devices, multi-channel audio and ample USB connectivity, ROG Strix X370-I Gaming builders only have access to four USB 3.0, two USB 3.1 Gen2, one gigabit Ethernet, two Wi-Fi antenna ports and three analog audio ports (mic, line-in, line-out). Don’t plan on using an APU (accelerated processing unit) with this board since Asus opted to remove the video outputs in favor of reducing the complexity caused by wiring out iGPU signals. Some might think of this configuration as removing too much, but the cuts allow for a more spacious 8-pin EPS power connector.

Intel's I211-AT module drives the gigabit Ethernet while the Realtek 8822BE provides both 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.1 connections for a mobile gaming setup. An added perk is the audio ports, which are illuminated according to their intended purpose, meaning when the system is plugged in, red, green and blue light emits out the back to help guide gamers to their headphone and mic jacks.

The primary design departure is the included M.2 riser housing. One thing that college students and HGTV enthusiasts know is that accessing vertical space is a great way to sneak in features. Asus takes this to heart and breaks out both the analog audio and primary M.2 interface above the planar. The two screws that secure the M.2 heat spreader are different lengths, so keep that in mind during installation. Also, the heat spreader’s lighting is routed through a seven-pin header with very thin pins, requiring extra caution during installation. Though not necessary, accessing the lowest layer of the stack is accessible by removing a few more screws and carefully removing the upper PCB.

In case one M.2 doesn't satisfy a builder’s storage needs, Asus places a second M.2 on the underside of the planar with access to four lanes of PCIe Gen2. Though not preferable from a performance perspective, this solution is optimal for compact case builders, as two of the included four SATA connectors are sandwiched between the M.2 riser and the DIMM slots. However, the remainder of the SATA headers is easily accessible along with the USB 3.0, USB 2.0 and front panel headers (use that included extension as necessary). 

Continuing the journey along the right side of the board, the 24-pin ATX connector is snuggly placed next to the two DDDR4 single-latch DIMM slots. The northern edge of the board hosts the two RGB headers, three 4-pin fan headers and the spacious 8-pin 12V EPS connector.

Let’s not forget about the front-panel audio connector, which is an unfortunate victim of Asus’ clever board placement, considering it resides in the shadows of the M.2 shield and the Wi-Fi module riser. This is unsightly for our build, but maybe there’s a better way to route this cable that we just can’t execute on our Thermaltake F51 Suppressor.

As with any Mini-ITX board, placement preferences are subjective and some parts fit better into specific enclosures or use cases. The Asus ROG Strix X370-I Gaming trimmed off just the right number of basic features to accommodate the premium features and performance that is synonymous with the X370 we’ve come to love. Sure, having access to the full allotment of USB on the back panel along with expanded audio connections would be nice, but both of those features are lower in priority than additional storage for a small form factor build.

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Software & Firmware: Asus’ Spin on Terminology

UEFI

Many vendors like to change their voltage rail nomenclature and individual feature names, but Asus decides to go full crazy and introduce several custom modes when perusing the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). Ai Tweaker is the main overclocking tab and houses the bulk of Asus’ enhancements to the standard UEFI. Luckily, the bottom portion of the screen provides a verbose output of what each parameter does and, in some cases, the formulas for producing produce settings. For example, the Custom CPU Core Ratio allows users to adjust the frequency multiplier and the frequency divisor to obtain a very granular range of frequencies.

TPU and Performance Bias grant users access to some shortcuts for increasing particular benchmarks and performance metrics. This is typically is frowned upon by reviewers, but as a customer, it might be worth the extra money.