Closer Look
Like all ASRock motherboards, the ASRock X870 Riptide arrived in a well-described retail package. The box is medium-sized compared to the average motherboard box size. It has two levels: a motherboard on the top and a small box with accessories. The lower level hides all the cables and manuals.
Inside the box is a motherboard, quick installation guide, SATA data cables, thermal sensor, WiFi antenna, RGB cable, and Phantom Gaming keycap. It’s everything we may need for the installation and more.
The motherboard’s design has been refreshed with the dominant black. Even though it’s a mid-shelf model, some elements are shared with the highest models, like the toolless PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSD installation. It would be great if the easy PCIe graphics card removal were standard, but we can see it only in the X870E Taichi. Sadly, it helps a lot, but we won’t see it on the Riptide.
The motherboard has a main PCIe slot and one of the M.2 sockets in the 5.0 standard called Blazing. Although we wish for more M.2 PCIe 5.0 sockets, this is enough for most users, especially since we have two-mode PCIe 4.0 x4 sockets and possible RAID configurations.
The X870 Riptide has a 14+2+1 power phase design with 80A phases. It also uses high-end 20k capacitors, one of the main features of all higher ASRock motherboards. The power design is more than enough for all Ryzen AM5 processors. During the tests, we couldn’t hear any coil whine, which suggests the high quality of the design.
The X870 Riptide has many good features, like USB4 and WiFi 7. However, these controllers are already a standard in the new motherboards, while one of the most significant differences is the modern audio codec. Most of the competition uses already old Realtek ALC1200 series codecs. At the same time, ASRock gives us ALC4082 with improved audio quality and additional features, which are listed on this review’s previous page.
Since I mentioned connectivity, we can count on the fastest storage in desktop motherboards and fast networking, where the new standard became 2.5Gbps LAN. Even here, ASRock wanted to add something premium and gave us an Intel E3100 Killer NIC.
The X870 Riptide supports all the popular DDR5 memory kits up to 8000MT/s. However, because of how the AMD Ryzen works, the optimal still seems to be 6400MT/s, and the best is dual-rank RAM. In our tests, we used Kingston Renegade RGB 96GB 6400MT/s CL32 kit, which seems the best around as it’s the fastest option at a 1:1 ratio, has a dual-rank design, and runs at tight timings out of the box. It has a programmed XMP profile, but ASRock motherboards handle it well, like EXPO profiles.
Above are some example photos of the test rig. As you can see, the Riptide has only an RGB backlight under the long 2-socket M.2 heatsink on the bottom of the motherboard. All heatsink covers are still eye-catching, and the whole motherboard reminds more of the higher series.
Another great feature is ASRock’s BIOS/UEFI, which I will describe on the next page of this review.
