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ASRock Returns to its Roots with Wacky X670 Upgrade Card

TheLostSwede

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For those that don't remember the early days of ASRock, the company started out making some rather unusual motherboards, often with some wild and wacky upgrade paths, such as both a slot and a socket for a CPU or both AGP and PCIe graphics card slots. Since then, ASRock has become a much more mainstream motherboard maker, but the company appears to have gone back to its roots with what the company calls the X670 Xpansion Kit. Right now, the expansion card appears to be working with the B650 LiveMixer motherboard and it's unknown if it's compatible with other models from ASRock. It seems to be limited to ASRock motherboards only, due to the fact that the add-in card requires not only a x4 PCIe slot with all lanes attached, on the motherboard, but also a custom cable that is most likely for "low-speed" I/O's such as I2C, SPI and so on.

As the name suggests, the X670 Xpansion Kit allows B650 motherboards to be turned into X670 motherboards, more or less. The card is home to a second chipset, which enables not only two additional M.2 slots for PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs, but it also features two SATA ports, a 10 Gbps USB-C port, three USB-A ports and—maybe most interestingly—a 10 Gbps Ethernet interface. It's unclear if this will be a retail product, but the card provided to Level1Techs doesn't appear to be an engineer unit, but a full retail ready product. It's definitely an interesting upgrade path for those that have invested in a B650 motherboard and there's no real reason why this shouldn't work as well as having the second chipset on the motherboard, especially as ASRock appears to have fitted a signal re-driver on the add-in card to make sure the PCIe signals are handled properly.





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They let a mad scientist loose.

pcie/agp bracket addon for new cpu in coming.
 
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This is so pleasantly weird. Should have a PCIe slot on top so we can stack several of those cards if necessary.
 

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I actually just watched this video while I was doing the dishes :D

 
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I actually just watched this video while I was doing the dishes :D
Can people multitask? Sure! (It's just that the results are poor)
 
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When channels do that blown eye gimmick I get irate. fkn childish.
 
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now, that's something i like from ASRock (and i am used to ...)

impressive idea and implementation (now, the price ... pweety pwease?)
 
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This is fascinating. I wonder how much it'll cost? If it's less than $100 I might just buy one to throw in my rig down the line...
 
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This is beyond cool.

Hopefully a way is found to use this add-in card under 'unsupported' conditions :pimp:
 
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Personally I would have preferred more sata instead of one of the m.2 but this is great! It makes x670 almost irrelevant and gives a lot more expansion flexibility, I love it.

Hopefully a way is found to use this add-in card under 'unsupported' conditions :pimp:

It requires a "special" control header but in the video comments someone was sugesting it's just eSPI or LPC bus so it could be possible with bios hackery. It would be great to, that 'LiveMixer' asrock motherboard doesn't do this justice (too much color and marketing gimicks, not much function)
 
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my guess is the cost of it will make pointless and dead on arrival, because you could just bought an x670 board to begin with after you add in the add-in cost... eh...
 

ir_cow

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my guess is the cost of it will make pointless and dead on arrival, because you could just bought an x670 board to begin with after you add in the add-in cost... eh...
exactly.
 
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It would be Frankenstein amazing If it works on a X670E and turns it into a 3-chipset monstrosity
 
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It would be Frankenstein amazing If it works on a X670E and turns it into a 3-chipset monstrosity
...and here I am dreaming about slotting this into the CPU-connected Gen4.0 M.2 slot (via adapter) on my X570. Generational Hybridization :D
(I have 'a thing' for anachronistic and explicitly 'unsupported' combos, regardless of 'bottlenecks' or hassles to get working.)
 
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Can people multitask? Sure! (It's just that the results are poor)

Watched a video lost a finger while doing dishes. Go gadget go! Oddball device by AsRock going back to it roots of we put all this technology in a blender and this is what we came up with.
 
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I don't suggest attempting flat-pack (IKEA-style) furniture...

IKEA self assembly...
monty python kick GIF
 

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This looks like a genuinely good upgrade card for any motherboard, not just B650 ones. Of course, I question if it has the bandwidth for all that i/o, but if you'd max out all of that you most likely bought the wrong board to start with.
 
D

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Always like seeing neat unusual stuff like this - I remember my first ASRock board and it was one of those described in the article where it had both AGP & PCI-E, giving me a nice easy upgrade path. I have an ASRock board in my main rig that I just upgraded to, and an ASRock board in my Plex server - they make pretty good stuff. Knock on wood, I've never had a single issue with any of them.
 
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This is so pleasantly weird. Should have a PCIe slot on top so we can stack several of those cards if necessary.
Reminds me of:

stackEm.png

^not mine. Pulled off Vogons forums.
Yes, that's a PCIe HD 4850, in a PCIE-PCI bridging adapter, in an AGP-> 32-bit PCI 66Mhz adapter, in some ancient AGP mobo, w/ a K6-III...
(I consider many of these bridge chips basically "add-on Southbridges". The article's subject card, also is essentially a 'add-on Southbridge'.)
 
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Reminds me of:

View attachment 279972
^not mine. Pulled off Vogons forums.
Yes, that's a PCIe HD 4850, in a PCIE-PCI bridging adapter, in an AGP-> 32-bit PCI 66Mhz adapter, in some ancient AGP mobo, w/ a K6-III...
(I consider many of these bridge chips basically "add-on Southbridges". The article's subject card, also is essentially a 'add-on Southbridge'.)
can you go to down to a TSA slot ? lol even older than pci slots.
 
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