The Box and Packaging
The box looks great with a nice graffiti design that’s eye-catching, however the you don’t get much inside the box. There’s usual user manual, 5 x M.2 screws, a pair of SATA cables, and 2 velcro straps for cable management… and that’s it!
The ASRock Z790 LiveMixer Motherboard
The ASRock Z790 LiveMixer motherboard comes in standard ATX form factor, and features some really unique looking heatsinks with a purple graffiti design, that covers the VRM/Mofets and the I/O hood, as well as the chipset and M.2 slot.
You’ll also find the same graffiti design on the reverse of the board, which is a nice added touch.
The colour of the purple heatsinks are bold and striking. It will definitely turn heads to say the least. However, there’s no RGB lighting on the I/O which I was hoping to see. Having said that, you do get RGB lighting on the bottom M.2 heatsink which turns on when you power up the system.
A Closer Look
To power the board, and to give you that extra stability, you need to connect the 2 x 8-pin PCIE power connectors on the top left-hand corner of the board.
For storage, you get a total of 4 x SATA ports, 1 x Blazing M.2 (PCIe Gen5x4), and 4 x Hyper M.2 (PCIe Gen4x4) slots. And as far connectivity is concerned, you get the Dragon 2.5G LAN, and WiFi 6E + Bluetooth 5.0 via the M.2 Key-E addon module (optional).
The motherboard comes with 4 x DDR5 DIMM slots supporting ram speeds of up to DDR5-7200+ OC. Please take note: The DDR5 memory slot is NOT compatible with DDR4 ram.
For expansion, you get 1 x PCIE 5.0 x16 slots with + Surface-Mount Tech, 2 x PCIe 4.0 x16, 1 x PCIe 3.0 x1, and 1 x M.2 Key-E for WiFi. You’ll find a special eDP connector for ASRock’s internal LCD panel, which you can purchase separately. This eDP port allows users to attached ASRock’s internal 13.3-inch IPS LED monitor for modders, power user and gamers to increase their productivity.
There’s 2 x 3-pin ARGB (5V) headers located on the bottom right side of the motherboard, and 1 x 3-pin ARGB (5V) header, as well as1 x 4-pin RGB (12V) towards the bottom right side of the board.
You get plenty of USB connectivity. A total of 23 USB ports ! There’s 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C (Front), 2 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C (Rear), 2 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A (Rear), 8 x USB 3.2 Gen1 (4 Rear, 4 Front), 10 x USB 2.0 (6 Rear, 4 Front). All USB ports support ESD Protection.
And finally, you also get all of ASRock’ unique features such as Polychrome Sync, auto driver installer, Dr. MOS, 2oz copper PCB, and the Realtek 7.1 HD Nahimic audio, which is more than adequate for today’s applications and games.
The rear I/O panel include the DisplayPort, HDMI, Dragon 2.5G Lan port, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A Ports (10 Gb/s), 2 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C Ports (10 Gb/s), 4 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Ports (USB32_23 are Lightning Gaming Ports. USB32_45 support Ultra USB Power), 6 x USB 2.0 Ports and lastly, 3 audio connectors for mic-in, line-out and SPDIF.
