Today, we’ll be taking a look at the ASRock Phantom Gaming B850 Riptide Wi-Fi motherboard. It uses AMD’s latest B850 chipset and it’s compatible with all the latest Ryzen 7000, 8000 and 9000 series of processors on the AM5socket. It’s targeted at the mainstream market for users who’s after an affordable next-gen AMD motherboard for light gaming and content creation.
It features a 14+2+1 Power Phase Design with 80A Dr.MOS for VCore+SOC, giving you and enhanced stability and durability. It’s cooled by several large Aluminium heatsinks for efficient heat dissipation.
It comes with 4 x DDR5 DIMM slots supporting both Intel XMP and AMD EXPO memory with speeds of up to DDR5-8000+ (OC)
Expansion slots include 1 PCIe 4.0 x16 and 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16 with a Lite Release Design featuring a spring-loaded latch for easy installation and removal of graphics cards.
For storage, you get a total of 4 SATA ports, 1 x Blazing M.2 (PCIe Gen5x4) featuring their Toolless Multi-Layer M.2 Heatsink design, and 3 x Hyper M.2 (PCIe Gen4x4) slots.
As far as connectivity is concerned, you get total of 20 x USB ports, a Killer E3100 2.5G LAN, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth. On the back I/O panel, you’ll find a HDMI output, 2 x antenna connectors, BIOS Flashback button, 4 x USB2.0 ports, 2 x Ultra USB power ports, 2 x lightning gaming ports, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen2 ports, 1 x USB 3.0 port, Mic-in, Line-out and SPDIF.
Other features include the 7.1 HD Nahimic Audio, Lightning gaming ports, BIOS Flashback button and ASRock’s Polychrome RGB.
What’s more, the ASRock Phantom Gaming B850 Riptide Wi-Fi motherboard supports SignalRGB, which unifies your all RGB devices with advanced lighting controls, and offers greater customization and flexibility for game-reactive effects, macro automation, and system monitoring.
AMD B850 Chipset
The AMD B850 platform is the foundation for next-generation gaming and content creation experiences. Featuring enhanced overclocking capabilities, DDR5 memory support with AMD EXPO™ Technology, and PCIe® 5 connectivity for NVME storage, the AMD B850 platform is ready to power your desktop for years to come.
Here you can see the main differences between the X870E, X870 and B850 chipsets. The B850 will have a total of 36 useable PCIE lanes (up to 4 lanes for PCIE 5.0), while the higher end X870E will have a total of 44 useable PCIE lanes (up to 24 lanes for PCIE 5.0), and offers support for more higher speed USB ports. USB 4.0 support on the B850 is optional.
Why are PCIE lanes important? Well, the number of PCIE lanes in a slot or connection determines the available bandwidth for data transfer between the motherboard and the expansion card. More lanes generally mean higher data transfer rates and better performance. For the X870E and X870, there’s a total of 44 and 36 PCIE lanes repectively, while the B850 offers up to a maximum of 36 PCIE lanes.
I would like to thank ASRock for providing the review sample. This is a snippet from what ASRock has to say about themselves on their website:
ASRock Inc. is established in 2002, specialized in the field of motherboards. ASRock strives to build up its own brand. With the 3C design concept, “Creativity, Consideration, Cost-effectiveness”, the company explores the limit of motherboards manufacturing while paying attention on the eco issue at the same time, developing products with the consideration of eco-friendly concept.
ASRock has been growing fast and become world third largest motherboard brand with headquarter in Taipei, Taiwan and branches in Europe and the USA. The young and vibrant company targets from mainstream to enthusiast MB segments for different kinds of users, owning reputation around the world market with its reliability and proficiency.
We’ll be testing the ASRock PG B850 Riptide WiFi Motherboard with the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X processor, along with 32GB of Patriot Xtreme 5 DDR5-7600, Crucial T700 PCIE Gen5 SSD, and a GeForce RTX 4080 Super graphics card. With so many high-end components used in our test rig, I’m expecting some good results, even for a motherboard designed for the mainstream market.
First, let’s start by taking a look at the specifications and features in our next page. You can buy the ASRock PG B850 Riptide WiFi Motherboard for around USD $219 from Amazon – https://amzn.to/3PVFKPr
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