Wednesday, May 29th 2019
ASRock X570 Aqua is a $1000 Zen2-ready Liquid-Cooled Monsterboard
We were pleasantly mistaken when we thought ASRock would stop at the X570 Phantom Gaming X or the X570 Taichi for AMD's new "Valhalla" enthusiast desktop platform. It turns out that they have a roughly-$1,000 monster motherboard in the pipes, called the X570 Aqua. Pictured below, the board is based on a slight variation of the X570 Phantom Gaming X PCB. The biggest change of course is the aluminium shroud that covers most of the board's front side. There's also a metal back-plate.
Beneath the metal shroud is what gives the board its name: a massive liquid-cooling monoblock that cools not just your processor (including heavyweights such as overclocked Ryzen 9 3900X chips), but also the CPU VRM, and the feisty AMD X570 chipset. The coolant channel first goes over the CPU through a large micro-fin lattice, then onto the X570 chipset, and finally over the CPU VRM on its way out. Much like the Phantom Gaming X, this board features daisy-chained dual-channel DDR4 memory slots designed to make the most OC out of 2-module setups.Expansion includes three PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots, the top two are wired to the AM4 SoC, and the bottom-most one is electrical gen 4.0 x4, wired to the chipset. There are three gen 4.0 x1 slots in between them. Storage connectivity includes two M.2-22110 slots (64 Gbps, PCIe gen 4.0 x4), from which one includes SATA 6 Gbps wiring; and six other SATA 6 Gbps ports. The board serves up not one, but two 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 ports, complete with USB 3.1 and DisplayPort passthrough to the boot! USB connectivity includes six USB 3.1 gen 2 at the rear panel, including two type-C ports, and four USB 3.1 gen 1 headers. Networking includes a 10 GbE connection driven by an AQuantia AQC107 controller, a 1 GbE connection pulled by an Intel i211-AT, 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) WLAN pulled by Intel "Cyclone Peak" PHY, and Bluetooth 5.0. The onboard audio solution is premium Realtek ALC1220 fare.
We've heard from several sources that this board could command a $1,000 price, which is over two times that of the X570 Phantom Gaming X. Value-addition comes in the form of a slightly beefed up 8-layer PCB, two 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 ports, 10 GbE replacing 2.5 GbE, additional 10 Gbps USB 3.1 gen 2 ports, the aluminium front- and back cladding, and of course, the $200-ish nickel-plated copper monoblock. ASRock is only producing 999 pieces of this board, and the one on display is uniquely marked "002/999," so there's that.
Beneath the metal shroud is what gives the board its name: a massive liquid-cooling monoblock that cools not just your processor (including heavyweights such as overclocked Ryzen 9 3900X chips), but also the CPU VRM, and the feisty AMD X570 chipset. The coolant channel first goes over the CPU through a large micro-fin lattice, then onto the X570 chipset, and finally over the CPU VRM on its way out. Much like the Phantom Gaming X, this board features daisy-chained dual-channel DDR4 memory slots designed to make the most OC out of 2-module setups.Expansion includes three PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots, the top two are wired to the AM4 SoC, and the bottom-most one is electrical gen 4.0 x4, wired to the chipset. There are three gen 4.0 x1 slots in between them. Storage connectivity includes two M.2-22110 slots (64 Gbps, PCIe gen 4.0 x4), from which one includes SATA 6 Gbps wiring; and six other SATA 6 Gbps ports. The board serves up not one, but two 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 ports, complete with USB 3.1 and DisplayPort passthrough to the boot! USB connectivity includes six USB 3.1 gen 2 at the rear panel, including two type-C ports, and four USB 3.1 gen 1 headers. Networking includes a 10 GbE connection driven by an AQuantia AQC107 controller, a 1 GbE connection pulled by an Intel i211-AT, 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) WLAN pulled by Intel "Cyclone Peak" PHY, and Bluetooth 5.0. The onboard audio solution is premium Realtek ALC1220 fare.
We've heard from several sources that this board could command a $1,000 price, which is over two times that of the X570 Phantom Gaming X. Value-addition comes in the form of a slightly beefed up 8-layer PCB, two 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 ports, 10 GbE replacing 2.5 GbE, additional 10 Gbps USB 3.1 gen 2 ports, the aluminium front- and back cladding, and of course, the $200-ish nickel-plated copper monoblock. ASRock is only producing 999 pieces of this board, and the one on display is uniquely marked "002/999," so there's that.