This review is updated to be more accurate to reflect more experience I now have with the motherboard.
I'm very positive about the quality and performance of this motherboard. The build: Steel Legend X670E, AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, 2X32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5 6400 (F5-6400J3239G32GX2-TZ5RS), EVGA RTX 3080Ti, 3 NVME drives, and CPU cooler Thermalright 140 Frost Spirit. The system drives two Dell 27" Ultrasharp 4K monitors. My performance goal for this system was effortless heavy multi-tasking and editing of very high-resolution RAW photograph files. I am not disappointed. The system is a multi-tasking beast. The motherboard has a fairly rigid 8-layer PCB, which is sturdy and facilitates easy tinkering with components in the computer case. The board's heatsinks function well, keeping components at good temperatures, regardless of the load (but of course, good case ventilation is a must). Both BIOS fan settings and ASRock's A-Tuning fan curves settings work well with the system. With A-Tuning though, it took quite a few settings configurations to get the sound/cooling levels at the best compromise. I really appreciate the generous number of fan headers and USB ports, including two USB 3.2 Gen2, one of which is USB-C format. I have found both the 1 gigabit and 2.5 gigabit Ethernet ports to work well, although my home LAN will bottleneck speeds under either the 1Gb and 2.5Gb theoretical speeds. I have had two issues with the motherboard. The motherboard will detect XMP settings and drive the two DDR5 modules at their rated speed with BIOS 1.28. I reverted the board back to the shipping BIOS, 1.24, and the motherboard instantly recognized the XMP settings and has been stable at the G.Skill modules’ rated speed. I should note that ASRock did NOT list my RAM model in their compatible memory chart when I built this system. Another issue is that the system will not boot into Windows if the boot NVMe drive is installed in one of the lower M2 slots (M2_1 and M2_3), even though the manual lists those slots as supporting boot drives. The lower slots work perfectly and fast for data drives. One other matter, from date of purchase to product delivery was 15 days, and that was with Prime. Hmm
| Processor | amd_ryzen_7 |
|---|---|
| RAM | DDR5 |
| Memory Speed | 6600 MHz |
| Wireless Type | Bluetooth, 802.11ax |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
