Asrock X670E PRO RS, AMD X670, AM5, ATX, 4 DDR5, HDMI, DP, Wi-Fi 6E, 2.5G LAN, PCIe5, RGB, 5x M.2

Product Information

The board is well made and gets the job done without any of the bells and whistles of the more expensive options out there. There are a few minor issues, hence not giving five stars. Well, I actually have this MB running a Ryzen 9-7900, Gskill 32gb memory at 6K mhz, Samsung 980 Pro and a Samsung 970 EVO. Graphics card is a Gigabyte 3080 with a 1200 watt Power Supply. I have some issues with the board. Across the bottom of the board are several exposed headers. You’ll find the usual, including additional USB ports, RGB headers, and more. Below is a complete list from left to right. Focusing on the top of the board, we get a good look at the oversize VRM heatsinks, reinforced DRAM slots, and more. Starting in the upper-left corner, we spy a vented shroud that reaches over the VRM heatsink to allow cool air to pass through the fan hidden below and onto the heatpipe-connected heatsinks. The fan is barely audible at load and blends in with other fan noise coming from the case, so no worries there. Above the VRM heatsinks are two 8-pin EPS connectors (one required) to power the CPU.

Of course, it is an X670 Extreme board so you get PCIe 5.0 for the primary PCIe slot, which is nice, there's also a second PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot and the VRM has been upgraded with 105A powerstages from the 60A models used by the Elite AX but really that's going to be of benefit for very few people. It's an extreme motherboard as well, the 16 teamed 110A powerstage vcore VRM is no joke, there's two PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots, USB4 support, loads of USB ports, onboard buttons, debug LED codes, 2.5 Gbit LAN and WiFi 6, it's an impressive but also ultra expensive mATX motherboard. with "speed" also comes latency to deal with. remember the x16 pcie slot and fastest m.2 slots get their lanes direct from the cpu. For recording temperatures we're using a digital thermometer with K-Type thermocouples and we'll be reporting the peak rear PCB temperature. Finally, we're not reporting Delta-T over Ambient, instead I maintain a room temperature of 21 degrees and to ensure a consistent ambient temperature a thermocouple is positioned next to the test system. GPU only covers 1 m.2 slot, but the other 3 are still accessible without removing the gpu, even with a 7900xtx red devil installed.What it does do is deliver the core X670E feature set with no fuss. You get PCIe 5.0 graphics card and SSD support, Wi-Fi 6E, a capable VRM and presumably you'll be able to drop a future Ryzen 8000 or 9000 CPU in with just a BIOS update. Still, if you were to use PCIe 5.0 devices this configuration would make the most sense, as both delivers would receive x8 PCIe 5.0 bandwidth which is 32 GB/s. In comparison the Asus ROG Strix X670E-F Gaming connects its secondary PCIe x16 slot chipset, which is a lot cheaper to wire in, but does limit you to PCIe 4.0 x4 bandwidth (8 GB/s). Let's talk about test conditions first. For this testing we've built a dedicated system inside the Corsair iCUE 7000X case. Powering it we have the HX1000 power supply and for cooling the Corsair iCUE H170i Elite Capellix. The I/O at the rear is excellent for a board at this price point. You get Wi-Fi 6E and Realtek 2.5G LAN which matches some much more expensive boards. Then you get DP 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 ports for use with the new integrated GPU capabilities of Ryzen 7000 CPUs. For some reason Gigabyte spent their PCIe 5.0 budget on the M.2 drives, limiting the PCIe slot support to a single x16 slot. So while we guess four PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots is nice, we'd rather have the flexibility of having more PCIe slots.

Clearly there are people using this specific mobo without issues so it's highly unlikely that there is a fundamental design issue with this mobo as all motherboard makers work from AMDs design guide. More than likely over the next few months the issues will be resolved but there is always challenges for early adopters. The USB complement is good, with a total of ten rear ports. There are two 3.2 Gen 2 ports (one of which is Type-C) plus four 3.2 Gen 1 and four 2.0 ports. Internal headers can provide another eight ports plus the all-important USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 type-C. You also get USB4 support, 10 USB ports on the I/O panel, high quality external audio, two M.2 ports, 2.5 Gbit LAN and WiFi 6E, so it's a super well equipped ITX motherboard, but of course it's not exactly cheap. Compares to conventional DIP style PCIe slot, the SMT type PCIe slot improves signal flow and maximize stability under high speed, a key breakthrough to fully support the lighting speed of the latest PCIe 5.0 standard. The latest PCI Express 5.0 is capable to perform a breathtaking bandwidth of 128GBps, ready to unleash the full potential of future high end graphic cards.Moving to the bottom half of the board, we’ll start on the left side that houses the audio section. Hidden under a shroud is a premium Realtek ALC4082 codec along with an ESS SABRE9218 DAC designated for front panel duty. Poking out from under the shrouds and heatsink are a few red WIMA audio caps, while several other dedicated audio caps are hidden. The ALC4082 codec is one of the best integrated options available. Usually we'd go over each motherboard, talk about the key features, the heatsinks, and the VRM components, but we've got 22 boards, so spending a few minutes on each one isn't all that interesting for this roundup. Instead we'll jump straight into VRM thermal testing, then brush over a spec comparison table, before making some actual board recommendations, so let's get into it. Test System and Notes Over the past few months we've been gathering as many AMD X670 motherboards as we could to test their VRM performance and to see if they can all handle the Ryzen 9 7950X without any kind of thermal throttling, something we ran into with a number of X570 motherboards a few years ago. Wi-Fi 6E (6GHz band) will be supported by Microsoft Windows 11. The availability will depend on the different regulation status of each country and region. It will be activated (for supported countries) through Windows Update and software updates once available. Asus is the only brand to offer a Mini-ITX X670E board, and they're also the only brand to also offer a MicroATX X670E board. So that means we have one Mini-ITX, one MicroATX and 20 ATX boards on hand.

The extra large aluminum alloy M.2 heatsink effectively improves heat dissipation to keep those high speed M.2 SSDs as cool as possible, it is able to give better stability while maintaining top performance. the closer to the cpu, the less latency in getting data to and from the cpu. that's why ram slots are as close as possible to minimize how far the data has to go thus lowering latency as much as possible. It's proof you don't have to spend loads of money on an expensive motherboard. Saving a couple of hundred dollars and putting it towards a faster CPU or better graphics card will deliver actual performance gains. Unless you need things like USB 4, 10G LAN or multiple PCIe 5.0 SSD support, you don't really lose all that much compared to more expensive boards.

Premium Taichi specs and appearance for around $499.

These are great news to share: there are no bad X670/X670E motherboards. Surely prices might be a bit hard to swallow, but there are no duds, and that's a rare thing when reviewing an entire motherboard series. We hope you found this useful and expect a similar piece covering B650 motherboards. Shopping Shortcuts: And well, the good news is you don't have to worry about VRM thermals with X670 boards, not even a little. In the past, we've seen boards that should perform well fail miserably in this testing, but that's not the case here... Essentially both boards have the same amount of PCIe bandwidth, the Carbon can just better spread that bandwidth across multiple slots while almost 90% of the PCIe bandwidth of the F Gaming is eaten up by the primary PCIe 5.0 x16 slot.