Closer Look
The X570 Extreme4 motherboard arrived in a typical for ASRock flat box. Inside the box, we will find the motherboard, user’s manual, drivers and software DVD, SATA data cables, and M.2 screws. Pretty much all we need. What’s new is that the I/O shield is already installed on the motherboard and it can be slightly moved each side, so we are sure it will perfectly fit every PC case.
The exterior of the box tells us everything we may need about the contents. We are used to that in case of ASRock motherboards.
The motherboard looks exceptional. The PCB is black with shiny blue elements.
The used chipset supports 2000 and 3000 Ryzen processors. We have to remember that 1000 series Ryzen won’t run on the X570 motherboards. The chipset itself is sharing large heatsink with two M.2 sockets. One of the sockets supports PCIe SSD only while the other one also supports SATA M.2 drives. Both are full speed sockets and support PCIe 4.0 drives. One of these drives is probably on the way to our redaction so you will be able to find out how it works soon.
The Extreme4 is a feature-rich motherboard. We will focus on these most important features as the list is really long. I feel like every generation is adding some more unique features, while some others are shared for longer.
On the tested Extreme4 motherboard, we won’t find a WiFi or Bluetooth controller. There is however WiFi version of this motherboard which has included WiFi/Bluetooth controller. Our version has additional M.2 socket for WiFi/BT card. It lowers the price, but I’m not sure if so much so it would be worth to release two models of the same motherboard.
From other things worth to mention are multiple USB 3.0/3.1 and what’s new also 3.2 ports. We can also find additional front panel headers for USB 3+.
Besides USB, there are also all other connectors well-known for longer like 7.1 audio or TMP headers.
The ten power-phase design is excellent and lets us use even the most power-hungry processors from the 3000 Ryzen line. During tests with the eight-core 3700X, sensors on the VRM were showing about 60°C what just proves that the power balance is just perfect and there are no problems with cooling.
I will say some more about memory a bit later, but I will only mention that the Extreme4 motherboard runs with memory at DDR4-4666+ out of the box. In fact, we were able to set fully stable DDR4-4800.
We can’t forget about the RGB illumination, which is one of the key features of the Extreme4 motherboard. The motherboard has standard RGB and addressable RGB headers and supports all popular devices with RGB lighting. Everything can be managed in easy to use ASRock software which is available on the DVD or the ASRock website.
