Closer Look
ASRock B550 Extreme4 motherboard arrived in a retail package which well described as all ASRock motherboards. Like all Extreme series motherboards from ASRock, the B550 Extreme4 is kept in blue tones, but this time we can see an additional element in the box’s center, which suggests RGB lighting.
We will find a well-protected motherboard, user’s manual, drivers and software DVD, SATA data cables, and M.2 screws inside the box. Comparing to the Velocita series motherboards, we won’t find a gamer’s pack with stickers. It’s still more than enough we need for the installation.
The I/O shield is pre-installed. It already became a standard in gaming series motherboards as it makes installation easier and has no disadvantages.
The motherboard looks similar to the Velocita or Steel Legend series, but the PCB is black and blue while heatsinks are black and silver. All components are well placed, so there is no problem with installing large graphics cards or even the largest CPU coolers.
The motherboard has no additional fans, but because of large heatsinks, there are no problems with cooling, and even 12 or 16 core processors will work without issues. It’s a clear advantage over X570 motherboards, which required additional fans to keep the chipset cool. The B550 chipset uses less power and heats up less, so we don’t have to worry about additional airflow or a chance that the fan will break after long work.
The motherboard has a 14-power phase design, so the same as the PG Velocita. It’s enough to support even 16-core processors from current or upcoming Ryzen series. The motherboard, of course, supports Ryzen 4000 series processors and soon also Ryzen 5000.
The same as other high gaming series motherboards from ASRock, the Extreme4 uses Realtek Dragon 2.5G NIC. As long as our network is equipped with 2.5G or faster network devices, we can enjoy over twice as fast communication. We’ve also noticed that the latency is slightly lower during tests than that of popular 1G NICs.
The B550 Extreme4 supports up to 128GB RAM in four 32GB memory modules. It won’t be required in a gaming PC, but those who are more into content creation, graphics, or video editing may use higher density memory modules which are widely available on the market.
The motherboard presents amazing with additional RGB illumination. ASRock equipped the B550 Extreme4 with RGB LEDs under the chipset and IO covers. There are also RGB and ARGB headers to synchronize various newer and older devices, lighting bars, and other lighting sources. There is also a handy software to manage everything.
Below are some photos of the working setup. The motherboard supports various cooler and RAM products, so there shouldn’t be any problems with all popular brands.
One more great feature is ASRock’s BIOS/UEFI, which I will describe on this review’s next page.
