Wednesday, January 8th 2025
ASRock Shows Off Steel Legend BMD, Riptide & Lightning Motherboards at CES 2025
Earlier in the week, ASRock debuted its Intel B860/H810 and full range of AMD B850 motherboards—the TechPowerUp team headed across CES 2025's showroom floor to check whether the Taiwanese manufacturer had some of these newly announced products on display. Various white Steel Legend models were present, including an intriguing B850 mainboard sample sporting ASRock's back mount design (BMD). The B860M Pro BMD board was not in sight (or not captured on camera)—according to a press release from earlier in the week, BMD had its premiere on this Intel-based solution.
AsRock reps happily showed off two Intel B860-chipset Steel Legend boards with traditional all-front facing connectors—an ATX option as well as an M-ATX (B860M) model were examined from close-up. A Phantom Gaming B860 Lightning Wi-Fi model was presented to TechPowerUp—its darker aesthetic contrasts sharply when lined up against its pale Steel Legend neighbors.
(Below, respectively) ASRock's B860 Steel Legend Wi-Fi, B860M Steel Legend, and Phantom Gaming B860 Lightning Wi-Fi motherboard models.
ASRock's Z890 Taichi AQUA model sat very prominently on the showroom table—its E-ATX form factor certainly occupied a larger footprint than the nearby ATX, M-ATX and ITX boards. The premium flagship Taichi AQUA first appeared at Computex 2024, and was officially launched later in the year. ASRock likely had it on display this week at CES for some added "wow factor."
A Phantom Gaming B850 Riptide Wi-Fi board was also available for examination:
A dinky Phantom Gaming B850I Lightning board looked almost out of place on ASRock's display table—seemingly the only ITX option showcased here.
AsRock reps happily showed off two Intel B860-chipset Steel Legend boards with traditional all-front facing connectors—an ATX option as well as an M-ATX (B860M) model were examined from close-up. A Phantom Gaming B860 Lightning Wi-Fi model was presented to TechPowerUp—its darker aesthetic contrasts sharply when lined up against its pale Steel Legend neighbors.
14 Comments on ASRock Shows Off Steel Legend BMD, Riptide & Lightning Motherboards at CES 2025
Also, curious how you use any of the connectors at the bottom with chunkier, 3 slot cards...
2x AM5 B650 Boards with PCIe 4.0 have 4.
Half (10) of the Intel 1200 ITX Boards have 4 Sata ports AND PCIe 5.0.
The new Intel 1851 B860I Lightning WiFi has at least 3. And I have seen at least another one in the CES with 4.
But no new AM5 ITX boards in CES with 4 Sata ports.
That is all here on the german market.
Yes Intel has still better connectivity then AMD on ITX, despite having enough lanes or space on the chipset.
Generally Intel has more diverse boards to choose from...despite nobody really buying Intel...3 Sata SSDs, they gathered over some years. 2x 2TB and 1x 8TB. So 3 Sata ports would be enough.
I also have M.2 with 2TB and 1TB and an old one with 512GB as long as I can fit it.
If I ever need an optical drive, I'll buy an external one over USB.
I DO have an old 5,25" DVD drive in the attic. :D
Has anyone seen or heard of rumors regarding how soon we could expect to see any of these in retail channels or any plans to offer BMD models of the higher tier AMD or Intel chipsets? Adding this feature to the Tai Chi Aqua motherboard would be a Dream Come True for me!
In case ASRock reads any of these:
Keep this awesome engineering going and partner with Alphacool to get liquid cooling Mono Blocks covering:
• CPU Socket (some AM5 and LGA-1851 options would be great!)
• Voltage Regulator Stages around the CPU socket
• LPCAMM2 memory module (like Crucial's 64GB LPDDR5X-7500 module)
• M.2 PCIe SSD Slot nearest the CPU socket
MSI debuted a LPCAMM2 model of their Project Zero motherboard, a year ago but it didn't ship in 2024. Now's your time to strike!
Much Love to all of the great coverage on this to Tech Power Up!! Excellent Tech Journali
Not AM5 but meets other criteria