The ASRock X570 Aqua: A $1000 Ryzen Halo Motherboard Reviewed

Board Features

The ASRock X570 Aqua is an EATX motherboard and is easily one of its most extravagant models yet. The X570 Aqua is a halo product which sits right at the top of ASRock's X570 product stack with the main feature focused around its integrated monoblock which cools the CPU, the power delivery, and the X570 chipset with the use of water. Users looking to purchase this model will need an adequate custom water cooling loop. Other primary features include the use of an Intel Thunderbolt 3 controller which adds two USB 3.1 G2 Type-C ports on the rear panel, as well as a DisplayPort 1.4 input so users can run multiple 4K displays from a single graphics card. The ASRock X570 Aqua has two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, with eight SATA ports which are split into two pairs four; four are controlled by the chipset and offer RAID 0, 1, and 10 RAID support. The other four SATA ports are controlled by an ASMedia ASM1061 SATA controller. PCI support consists of two full-length PCIe 4.0 slots which operate at x16, and x8/x8, with a further third full-length slot which is locked down to PCIe 4.0 x4. There are also three PCIe 2.0 x1 slots located sandwiched between the full-length slots.

On the networking side, ASRock includes two Ethernet controllers which consist of an Aquantia AQC107 10 G and Intel I211-AT 1 G. For wireless, there is an Intel AX200 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface which also adds BT 5.0 connectivity. The rear panel omits any USB 3.1 G2 Type-A, but instead opts for six G1 Type-A ports, in addition to the two USB 3.1 G2 Type-C Thunderbolt 3 ports. Also featured is a single HDMI 2.0 video output, five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical out powered by a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec, a P/S2 combo port, and a USB BIOS Flashback button. One of the most impressive technical features is that the X570 Aqua has support for DDR4-5200 memory out of the box, with a total capacity of up to 128 GB.

Test Bed

As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.

While we have been able to measure audio performance from previous Z370 motherboards, the task has been made even harder with the roll-out of the Z390 chipset and none of the boards tested so far has played ball. It seems all USB support for Windows 7 is now extinct so until we can find a reliable way of measuring audio performance on Windows 10 or until a workaround can be found, audio testing will have to be done at a later date.

Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.

Hardware Providers for CPU and Motherboard Reviews
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