ASRock X570 Aqua

spaceman

[H]F Junkie
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Jan 7, 2005
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Thought ya'll might dig this one:

https://www.techpowerup.com/256058/...sd-1000-zen2-ready-liquid-cooled-monsterboard

We were pleasantly mistaken when we thought ASRock would stop at the X570 Phantom Gaming X or the X570 Taichi for AMD's new "Valhalla" enthusiast desktop platform. It turns out that they have a roughly-$1,000 monster motherboard in the pipes, called the X570 Aqua. Pictured below, the board is based on a slight variation of the X570 Phantom Gaming X PCB. The biggest change of course is the aluminium shroud that covers most of the board's front side. There's also a metal back-plate.

Beneath the metal shroud is what gives the board its name: a massive liquid-cooling monoblock that cools not just your processor (including heavyweights such as overclocked Ryzen 9 3900X chips), but also the CPU VRM, and the feisty AMD X570 chipset. The coolant channel first goes over the CPU through a large micro-fin lattice, then onto the X570 chipset, and finally over the CPU VRM on its way out. Much like the Phantom Gaming X, this board features daisy-chained dual-channel DDR4 memory slots designed to make the most OC out of 2-module setups.
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Expansion includes three PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots, the top two are wired to the AM4 SoC, and the bottom-most one is electrical gen 4.0 x4, wired to the chipset. There are three gen 4.0 x1 slots in between them. Storage connectivity includes two M.2-22110 slots (64 Gbps, PCIe gen 4.0 x4), from which one includes SATA 6 Gbps wiring; and six other SATA 6 Gbps ports. The board serves up not one, but two 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 ports, complete with USB 3.1 and DisplayPort passthrough to the boot! USB connectivity includes six USB 3.1 gen 2 at the rear panel, including two type-C ports, and four USB 3.1 gen 1 headers. Networking includes a 10 GbE connection driven by an AQuantia AQC107 controller, a 1 GbE connection pulled by an Intel i211-AT, 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) WLAN pulled by Intel "Cyclone Peak" PHY, and Bluetooth 5.0. The onboard audio solution is premium Realtek ALC1220 fare.

We've heard from several sources that this board could command a $1,000 price, which is over two times that of the X570 Phantom Gaming X. Value-addition comes in the form of a slightly beefed up 8-layer PCB, two 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 ports, 10 GbE replacing 2.5 GbE, additional 10 Gbps USB 3.1 gen 2 ports, the aluminium front- and back cladding, and of course, the $200-ish nickel-plated copper monoblock. ASRock is only producing 999 pieces of this board, and the one on display is uniquely marked "002/999," so there's that.
 
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I hope someone tests current pcie 3.0 nvme drives to confirm whether or not we are getting the upper limit of those drives io.

Be interesting to see if there's more to be had in a PCIE 4.0 interface.

The x570 boards with nvme water blocks suggest that at sustained write there's a need to actively cool controllers. The era back in 990fx when we could buy water blocks to cover everything is back.

I'm also super digging new acrylic distro plates. I want to see some real showpiece builds this year.
 
I agree that it's cool to see mobo blocks back in the game. Mostly for nostalgia sake, The newly ITX die hard in me however is sad to have another component to figure out how to keep cool lol.
 
The x570 boards with nvme water blocks suggest that at sustained write there's a need to actively cool controllers. The era back in 990fx when we could buy water blocks to cover everything is back.
To be fair, it's been possible to buy M.2 waterblocks for a while now - it's just been a bad idea. XD

Im drooling over this board. It would be absolutely perfect in my build, but... not to my wallet.
 
To be fair, it's been possible to buy M.2 waterblocks for a while now - it's just been a bad idea. XD

Im drooling over this board. It would be absolutely perfect in my build, but... not to my wallet.

Imagine how many kids think they’ll be editing their way to millions every month and will have to have 12+ cores, nvme raid, etc etc to record gameplay while streaming for future YouTube edits.

I was out last night grabbing some parts off a guy parting out his 11yo kids x470 box in preparation to do that exact workflow.

The dad was all geeked out bc it’s an outlet his wife will sign off on.
Dude was all about how it’s great he didn’t have to buy x299 for cores and lanes now that zen2 is a reality.

Kids have been driving Ryzen or ps4s in my area.
It’s weird, but I’ve seen my friends kids talking about meeting up over the weekend but it’s to play vids, not baseball or paintball.
Literally the cools kids now all clan up.

I’m about to tell some of my old coworkers they can make some serious $ teaching kids you to edit video and use design tools.

My 45 yo self can barely use Movie Maker and I worked in the entertainment industry.
 
It's a nice board but I'm more interested in the Gigabyte X570 Extreme, TBH.

I think it'll be a better board overall than the Asrock (though I really like the Asrock offering)
 
The non-waterblock version of this board is called Creator, it appears to have the exact same features, peripherals, ports, lane configuration, etc.

It is ATX instead of EATX though, looking close its not quite an identical pcb which is interesting.

The tachi and phantom (no longer shit-tality branding, yay) share the same pcb just like earlier versions did. Other than the 2.5GbE realtek and styling I can't find a single difference.
 
IMO ASRock is what ASUS USED to be. Great oc and decent pricing. When Abit lunched it, ASUS started their slow crawl to insane pricing. I hope ASRock doesn’t repeat this trend. I’ve owned about 7 ASRock boards in the past 7-10 years and have had GREAT experiences with them. All were imo equivalent to their ASUS counterparts at a nice discount. I have owned a few ASUS boards in this time as well, with mixed results. Some were jewels and some were flaming turds of evil!!! I would love this board but it’s too rich for this cheap bastards blood
 
There is Ugly, then there is that ugly ass board.

Wow so ugly it makes you want to vomit in your lungs.
 
Well my last Asrock was the Bulldozer Fatality board lol. good board but nooo it wasn't the Sabertooth.

And really glad I had went with the MSI this time around, hadn't had or seen one of those in yearsss.

And I had sent back the Asus Tuff board...just verified it was indeed the CPU faulty...but I mean it was a little more stripped and no lightshow or boot indicators....idk unless you want their flashback thing/stuff they do...but they said the vrm is shitter again they using lesser quality...still the big chokes tho.

idk i'm sure it's ok and fine if that....you're gonna get 4.2 regardless that's guaranteed.

Just a lot Asus HATE going on again lol
 
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