The ASRock X570 Aqua: A $1000 Ryzen Halo Motherboard Reviewed
by Gavin Bonshor on December 19, 2019 9:00 AM ESTCPU Performance, Short Form
For our motherboard reviews, we use our short form testing method. These tests usually focus on if a motherboard is using MultiCore Turbo (the feature used to have maximum turbo on at all times, giving a frequency advantage), or if there are slight gains to be had from tweaking the firmware. We put the memory settings at the CPU manufacturers suggested frequency, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.
For X570 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1903 update as per our Ryzen 3000 CPU review.
Rendering - Blender 2.7b: 3D Creation Suite - link
A high profile rendering tool, Blender is open-source allowing for massive amounts of configurability, and is used by a number of high-profile animation studios worldwide. The organization recently released a Blender benchmark package, a couple of weeks after we had narrowed our Blender test for our new suite, however their test can take over an hour. For our results, we run one of the sub-tests in that suite through the command line - a standard ‘bmw27’ scene in CPU only mode, and measure the time to complete the render.
Streaming and Archival Video Transcoding - Handbrake 1.1.0
A popular open source tool, Handbrake is the anything-to-anything video conversion software that a number of people use as a reference point. The danger is always on version numbers and optimization, for example the latest versions of the software can take advantage of AVX-512 and OpenCL to accelerate certain types of transcoding and algorithms. The version we use here is a pure CPU play, with common transcoding variations.
We have split Handbrake up into several tests, using a Logitech C920 1080p60 native webcam recording (essentially a streamer recording), and convert them into two types of streaming formats and one for archival. The output settings used are:
- 720p60 at 6000 kbps constant bit rate, fast setting, high profile
- 1080p60 at 3500 kbps constant bit rate, faster setting, main profile
- 1080p60 HEVC at 3500 kbps variable bit rate, fast setting, main profile
Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7.1: Ray Tracing - link
The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, or POV-Ray, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 1-2 minutes on high-end platforms.
Compression – WinRAR 5.60b3: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30-second 720p videos.
Synthetic – 7-Zip v1805: link
Out of our compression/decompression tool tests, 7-zip is the most requested and comes with a built-in benchmark. For our test suite, we’ve pulled the latest version of the software and we run the benchmark from the command line, reporting the compression, decompression, and a combined score.
It is noted in this benchmark that the latest multi-die processors have very bi-modal performance between compression and decompression, performing well in one and badly in the other. There are also discussions around how the Windows Scheduler is implementing every thread. As we get more results, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz, and IPC win in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here.
Neuron Simulation - DigiCortex v1.20: link
The newest benchmark in our suite is DigiCortex, a simulation of biologically plausible neural network circuits, and simulates activity of neurons and synapses. DigiCortex relies heavily on a mix of DRAM speed and computational throughput, indicating that systems which apply memory profiles properly should benefit and those that play fast and loose with overclocking settings might get some extra speed up. Results are taken during the steady-state period in a 32k neuron simulation and represented as a function of the ability to simulate in real time (1.000x equals real-time).
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Santoval - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
Your analogy is fallacious. You can't compare motherboards to Chanel handbags. They are motherboards ffs, not Hermes handbags.GreenReaper - Saturday, December 21, 2019 - link
I do; I will. The test is whether people are willing to buy them on that basis, in part or in whole.The majority of people don't buy handbags that way either. But some do, and for many it's a factor.
YB1064 - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
The board is far from worthless. It performs on par with other high end boards, without the attendant heat. The feature set is also niche and premium. I think we are spoiled by the massive overclocks from Intel and thus anything offered by Ryzen seems paltry by comparison. I own a Supercarrrier Z270 and it runs a 7700k@5100MHz no problems. Great feature set and stable. ASRock is not trash by any means.DanNeely - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
As someone who watercools his systems I'm theoretically in the market for something like this. A mono-block appeals in that it avoids any potential issues with the VRMs being designed expecting airflow from a CPU cooler (my current haswell system has a board with a factory waterblock on the VRMs). But while I'd be willing to pay a premium over the cost of the mobo and CPU waterblock for it; they're marking up $500 for the waterblock and ~$400ish more than a CPU block is way too much of a premium even if I was willing to pay $500 for a baseline board with TB3 and 10GBE. $150 or maybe even $200 for the monoblock would be tempting.rahvin - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
As someone else that watercools I also had the same reaction. Interesting product, but it's not a serious product at it's price. It was created as a marketing effort which is why they are only making 1000 of them and more than half will probably go to review sites like anandtech.careyd - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
Pushback: I am building a workstation for DaVinci Resolve color grading on this board. 3950x, a pair of 2080Ti's, 64GB RAM. Requirement for me is 10Gbe and Thunderbolt 3 on board. My choice on X570 was down to the AsRock Creator $599 and Aqua ($999) due to this. They are essentially the same board, functionally speaking. I was committed to doing custom watercooling loop this time around...not because I had to but because I wanted to, but I'm happy to have the cooling improvements. So, if you are down to the choice of those two boards, and briefly consider building up the Creator with EK or equivalent quality waterblocks (if you can even find them for the chipset and VRMs on here), you'd be looking at about another ~$250-300 in costs over the cost of the Creator board. So in that situation a $200-ish premium for a well-integrated custom monoblock board is not that big of a stretch.To be clear, I'm not saying it's for everybody, but for a system that will generate revenue 20x it's cost in it's usable lifetime I think it's fine.
PeachNCream - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
If you only generate $50-100K in revenue from your build over its lifespan (assuming 2 years here) then you need to go find a better source of income because that is some low end chump change for all that effort.careyd - Saturday, December 21, 2019 - link
I dont feed trolls. You'll have to get your satisfaction elsewhere.PeachNCream - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
There's nothing about pointing out that the ROI you quoted is barely scraping out middle income on the high end if your estimates of revenue over costs are accurate that constitutes trolling. However, I do know of people that get offended when the facts of their statements turn out to look a bit silly and then accuse others of trolling in order to feel better.lmcd - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
You're clearly trolling if you can't calculate the cost of that build. $1700 for CPU + Mobo, another 2k for GPUs, over $300 in RAM, $100 for the water cooler, $150 for the case, $150 for the PSU, and assuredly $300 or more of storage. That's a minimum of $4800 without whatever pro monitor he might be including and whatever combination of better cooling, storage, or case he's including.That's already at your "maximum" estimate for revenue, and that's the minimum reasonable for the build.
Then there's the next fallacy: you're assuming there's not a PC this is replacing, which is an absolutely idiotic assumption. ROI is always against the status quo, not against 0. An "aging" machine with a i7-6950X and 2x GTX 1080 would greatly decrease the expected ROI, so you can't project his revenue against the cost of the machine and the ROI ratio.
So yes you're absolutely trolling. Just because you're a regular doesn't mean your head isn't up somewhere it shouldn't be.