ASRock Arc A380 Challenger ITX graphics card started selling in Europe. German retailer Mindfactory has it listed at 189€, including taxes (non-referral link), and is ready to ship. This is possibly the first listing of the A380 in the EU. Until now, you needed to import the A380 from China (sold by GUNNIR), or from the US, where the ASRock card has been listed on Newegg for a few weeks now. The ASRock A380 Challenger ITX uses an aluminium monoblock heatsink not unlike Intel CPU HSFs, but ventilated by a noise-optimized single 100 mm fan. The card is 19 cm long, and so bags ITX chops. ASRock is running the A380 at a boost frequency of 2.25 GHz, while the memory ticks at 15.5 Gbps (GDDR6-effective). The card features a single 8-pin PCIe power connector.

Here's the first picture of a custom-design Intel Arc A750 "Alchemist" graphics card, in this case, an ASRock Arc A750 Challenger. ASRock showed the card off at its Tokyo Game Show 2022 booth. The strictly 2-slot thick card appears to have a fairly well-endowed aluminium fin-stack cooling solution featuring a pair of large 100 mm fans. Its cooling solution uses two aluminium fin-stacks skewered by a number of copper heat pipes. The card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and features some illumination in the way of an illuminated Arc logo.

The Arc A750 is based on the same 6 nm "DG2-512" silicon as the A770 Limited Edition—which looks increasingly like an Intel-exclusive that will only be sold in its reference design. While the A770 maxes out the chip with all 32 Xe Cores being enabled (512 EUs, or 4,096 unified shaders), the A750 gets 28 Xe Cores (448 EUs, or 3,584 unified shaders). It also gets 8 GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface (512 GB/s bandwidth), 448 XMX units (accelerates AI and features like XeSS), and 28 RT units. The reference engine clock of the A750 is set at 2.05 GHz, although it's likely that the ASRock Challenger is a factory-overclocked card.

The leading global motherboard, graphics card, and small form factor PC manufacturer, ASRock, announces entering the gaming monitor market with the Phantom Gaming range for gamers completing the gaming solution. ASRock's new Phantom Gaming monitors, including PG34WQ15R2B and PG27FF1A are designed for the FPS, RCG, and other fast-paced games.

"Our goal is to create gaming lineups across the board," said Chris Lee, Vice President of ASRock motherboard & gaming monitor business unit. "We are ecstatic to announce Phantom Gaming monitor, committed to making high-performance and reliable products to gamers." ASRock Phantom Gaming monitors, PG34WQ15R2B and PG27FF1A, will be based on 165 Hz refresh rate and 1 ms (MPRT) response time, which means gamers can be one step ahead of opponents during gameplay. Furthermore, Phantom Gaming monitor offers highly competent functions such as HDR, Flicker-free, and FreeSync Premium technologies, allowing gamers to enjoy incredible gaming experience.

ASRock will announce no fewer than thirteen motherboard models based on the upcoming Intel Z790 chipset, the top chipset option for the 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" desktop processors. "Raptor Lake" is backwards-compatible with Intel 600-series chipset motherboards; and the Z790 is expected to support 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" processors, since both generations share Socket LGA1700. ASRock's lineup is led by the Z790 Taichi, and its variant that features a white-marble finish, the Z790 Taichi Carrara, several models in the Phantom Gaming (PG) series, including the PG Riptide, PG-ITX/TB4, and new extensions including the PG Sonic, and PG Lightning. The Sonic Mixer brand that's making a debut with the AMD X670 chipset is also to be seen here. There's just the one Steel Legend SKU, and a couple of PRO series. The list also mentions one model based on the mid-tier B760 chipset.

Leading global motherboard manufacturer, ASRock, has built new BIOS decreasing AM5 booting time. ASRock is dedicated to providing products with the best user-experience. The new BIOS providing better compatibility and shorter booting time has been built, and it will be available on ASRock website after product launch. Besides, all ASRock X670E/X670 motherboards support BIOS flashback, which allows users to update their motherboards to the newest BIOS with merely 24-pin power supply and a USB drive.[Editor's Note: This news post will provide more context.]

At this point, we don't know if this is a limitation at AMD's level or ASRock's, but someone with access to a retail ASRock X670E Steel Legend motherboard, with all its packaged paraphernalia in place, spotted an interesting sticker covering the board's four DDR5 DIMM slots. The sticker has some info on the ideal DIMM slot selection for dual-channel memory (4x sub-channels); but what catches our eye is a table which states just how long the motherboard will take to train the memory the first time it's booted up, or after a clear-CMOS operation (where your BIOS settings are erased).

The table says that a typical setup with two 16 GB modules (read: two single-rank modules in a 1 DIMM per channel/1DPC configuration), takes 100 seconds to train (or until first boot). Two 32 GB modules (typically a pair of dual-rank modules in 1DPC configuration) take 200 seconds, as do four 16 GB modules (four single-rank modules in a 2DPC configuration). The least optimal config, four dual-rank modules in a 2DPC configuration, takes a whopping 400 seconds (almost 7 minutes) to train. That's 100 to 400 seconds of a black screen, or no display signal, enough to unnerve anyone and assume something is DOA.Update Sep 2nd: The source behind this story confirmed that this is an ASRock-level issue, and that it's been "fixed" with the latest BIOS.

Update Sep 8th: This has been fixed according to ASRock.

With AMD announcing an October 2022 debut of its mid-range Socket AM5 motherboard chipset, the AMD B650E and B650; manufacturers appear to be ready with a fairly broad selection of products targeting various price-points. The B650E and B650 are expected to have a lighter I/O feature-set than the X670E/X670, and will enable manufacturers to sell motherboards at prices starting at $125. Two of the leading manufacturers, ASUS and ASRock, are ready with their product lists.

The initial ASUS motherboard lineup for the AMD B650E and B650 chipsets include just one product in the mainline Prime series, as many as four from the TUF Gaming series, and two from the ROG Strix series. From these, only one is based on the B650E (meaning, it gets a PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slot besides the M.2 Gen 5 slot). The others are based on the vanilla B650 (PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slot besides M.2 Gen 5 slots). None of the boards has more than 4 SATA 6 Gbps ports. The board to watch out for will be the ROG Strix B650E-E Gaming WiFi, as it could bring several high-end features into the mid-range, and if previous generations of AMD chipset are anything to go by, the B650/E retains CPU overclocking support.

ASRock is planning to introduce a new line of motherboards probably targeted at value-conscious creators, with the new LiveMixer series. The company's first LiveMixer product is based on the AMD B650 mid-range chipset. The Socket AM5 motherboard's PCB was leaked to the web, revealing a fairly mid-range feature-set, notwithstanding the 17-phase VRM. We spy at least three M.2 slots, from which one should be Gen 5, an M.2 E-key slot for the WLAN card; addon slots that include a PCI-Express 4.0 x16, and two Gen 3 x4 slots. For all its talk of live-mixing, the onboard audio solution appears to be rather basic, with jacks for just 6-channels, and the CODEC pin-out seems to be made out for an entry-level CODEC, such as the ALC892.

ASRock's Arc A380 "Alchemist" graphics card is now available for purchase on US retailer Newegg for USD $139.99. The card is sold and shipped by Newegg from the US-based warehouses, and isn't a marketplace listing that imports them from foreign retailers. The ASRock A380 Challenger is a close-to-reference card that runs the A380 at slightly overclocked speeds, draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, and uses a simple aluminium monoblock fan-heatsink to cool the GPU. Based on the Xe-HPG graphics architecture, the Arc A380 features 1,024 unified shaders, meets DirectX 12 Ultimate API specs (which includes ray tracing), and comes with readiness for the XeSS performance enhancement. The card has 6 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 96-bit memory bus.

The Intel Arc Alchemist A380 desktop graphics card is now available to pre-order in the USA with Newegg listing ASRock's Challenger ITX model for 139.99 USD and shipping from August 22nd. The ASRock Arc A380 Challenger ITX 6GB OC is a custom design featuring a singular cooling fan and a GPU clock speed of 2250 MHz running at a 75 W TDP paired with a single 8-pin power connector. The card features PCIe 4.0 connectivity and 8 Xe-Cores alongside triple DisplayPort 2.0 connectors and a single HDMI 2.0b. The card will compete with the similarly priced NVIDIA GTX 1650 and the AMD Radeon RX 6400 as seen in our review of the GUNNIR Photon Arc A380 model.

ASRock today introduced the WRX80 Creator, a Socket WRX8 motherboard for AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 series workstation processors. Built in the E-ATX form-factor, the board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, a 6-pin PCIe, and two 8-pin EPS connectors. The star attraction with this platform is 8-channel DDR4 memory, with all eight memory slots on this board featuring a dedicated memory channel. There are seven PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots, from which five operate at full x16 bandwidth, and two can subtract 8 lanes each from two of the other x16 slots. So x16/x16/x16/NC/x16/NC/x16, or x16/x16/x8/x8/x8/x8/x16.

Storage connectivity on the ASRock WRX80 Creator include two M.2 PCIe Gen 4 slots, and a U.2 port, besides eight SATA 6 Gbps. Networking interfaces include two 10 GbE, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, and a 1 GbE used by the IPMI controller. Speaking of which, an ASPEED AST2500 provides basic display and various remote management capabilities. USB connectivity includes two 40 Gbps USB4 ports with mini-DP inputs for DisplayPort passthrough, four 10 Gbps USB 3.2, and a number of 5 Gbps USB 3.2 ports. A premium onboard audio solution featuring a Realtek ALC1220, and TI NE5532 headphones amp, makes for the rest of it. The company didn't reveal pricing.

ASRock is bringing as many as five motherboard models based on the AMD X670E chipset, for upcoming Ryzen 7000-series Socket AM5 processors. The lineup includes the twins X670E Taichi and X670E Taichi Carrara at the top; followed by the X670E Steel Legend, X670E Pro RS, and the X670E Phantom Gaming Lightning. The X670E Taichi/Carrara feature a mammoth 26-phase VRM, which going by the trends, could use 90 to 105 A power-stages. You get two PCi-Express 5.0 x16 slots (x8/x8 with both populated), at least two Gen 5 M.2 slots wired to the SoC, additional Gen 5 M.2 slots from the chipset, and a plethora of connectivity options.

What sets the two Taichi boards apart is the Carrara does away with the matte-black "gearwheel" design theme, and instead features a white marble appearance. It's not known if the marble pattern is a print, or if ASRock used actual stone. ASRock has been trying to upmarket its Steel Legend SKUs for the past couple of generations, and it appears like the X670E Steel Legend will be the third-based board from the series, with no PG Velocita SKU in sight. You get just the one PCI-Express 5.0 x16, at least two Gen 5 M.2 slots, a couple of Gen 4 M.2 slots, and fairly premium connectivity, including WLAN.

The second company to launch an Intel Arc A380 graphics card is somewhat surprisingly, if already rumoured, ASRock. The card in question goes under the somewhat awkward name of Intel Arc A380 Challenger ITX 6GB OC or A380 CLI 6GO for short. Unlike the Gunnir card, this is a rather compact, Mini-ITX friendly card that measures 190 x 124 x 39 mm and sports a single fan. Despite its diminutive size, it's still a dual slot card and ASRock outfitted it with a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, just as Gunnir did with its card.

The base frequency is somewhat higher at 2250 MHz vs. 2000 MHz for the Gunnir card, although ASRock doesn't mention the boost clock on its website. As the name implies, the card comes with 6 GB of GDDR6 memory with a rated data rate of either 15 or 15.5 Gbps, as both numbers are mentioned by ASRock, still on a 96-bit bus. The card has a single HDMI 2.0b port and three DisplayPort 2.0 ports with DSC. The card obviously has a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface as well. ASRock has implemented a 0dB mode where the fan stops spinning during low loads. According to Videocardz, the ASRock Intel Arc A380 Challenger ITX 6GB OC is already on sale in the PRC for the equivalent of US$192.

Is there anything better than yet another benchmark leak of upcoming products? This time around we don't have to make do with Geekbench or some other useless benchmark, as a bilibili user in the PRC has posted a video where he has put the upcoming Intel Core i5-13600K and Core i7-13700K CPUs through 10 different games, plus 3DMark Fire Strike and Time Spy. This has been done at 1080p, 1440p and 2160p at that, using a GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card. Both CPUs are QS or Qualification Samples, which means they're going to be close to identical to retail chips, unless there are some last minute issues that are discovered. The CPUs were tested using an ASRock Z690 Steel Legends WiFi 6E motherboard, well, two actually, as both a DDR4 and a DDR5 version were used. The DDR4 RAM was running at 3600 MHz with slow-ish timings of 18-22-22 in gear 1, whereas the DDR5 memory was running at 5200 MHz, most likely at 40-40-40 timings, although the modules were rated for 6400 MHz, in both cases we're looking at 32 GB.

Courtesy of @harukaze5719, we have some much easier to read graphs than those provided by the person that tested the two CPUs, but we've included the full graphs below as well. Each CPU was compared to its current SKU equivalent from Intel and in many of the games tested, the gain was a mere percent or less to three or four percent. However, in some games—at specific resolutions—especially when paired with DDR5 memory, the performance gain was as much as 15-20 percent. A few of the games tested, such as FarCry 6 at 4K, the game ends up being GPU limited, so a faster CPU doesn't help here as you'll see in the graphs below. There are some odd results as well, where the DDR5 equipped systems saw a regression in performance, so it's hard to draw any final conclusions from this test. That said, both CPUs should offer a decent performance gain, as long as the game in question isn't GPU limited, of around five percent at 1440p when paired with DDR5 memory.

ASRock has signed up as one of Intel's board partners for its Arc "Alchemist" graphics cards, and is ready with its custom-design Arc A380 Challenger card, pictured below. The company joins the likes of China's Gunnir, in bringing to market some of the first graphics cards from the yet-elusive GPUs from Intel. The ASRock-branded custom A380 card surfaced on Chinese social-media site Bilibili, revealing a cost-effective design, with a simple aluminium mono-block fan-heatsink. The board draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, and like Gunnir's A380 card, has a spartan-looking PCB. There's still no word on global availability, and ASRock could stick to the China-first rollout of Arc.

As we approach the launch of Intel's upcoming Raptor Lake desktop processors, we are getting more leaks of testing performed by system integrators and 3rd parties that have early access to the engineering sample (ES) chips. A few days ago, we saw an Intel Core i7-13700K CPU run Geekbench 5 benchmark with the older DDR4 memory on ASRock Z690 Steel Legend WiFi 6E. Today, we are seeing a similar test performed on the same processor, with ASRock Z690 Steel Legend WiFi 6E/D5 equipped with DDR5 memory. While the previous DDR4 testing used modules running at 3200 MT/s, the DDR5 testing uses 5200 MT/s rated DRAM with unknown timings and setup.

As far as performance goes, the single-core result of the 16-core Intel Core i7-13700K processor was 2090 points with DDR4, while DDR5 showed a slight regression of 2069 points. Of course, this could be attributed to the margin of error. As far as multi-core performance goes, the DDR4 testing managed to produce 16542 points, whereas the DDR5-equipped platform scored 19811 points. This is an immediate 20% performance uplift in multi-core score. It shows that all the cores present in Raptor Lake processors are starving for bandwidth, and a faster memory protocol can bring quite an improvement. As usual, we have to wait to confirm this information with our testing so that we can draw more conclusions.

Several new ASRock products have passed through the KCC, which is the Korean equivalent of the FCC and normally this would be a new motherboard or maybe some small form factor system, but surprisingly enough, we're looking at gaming monitors. The leak comes courtesy of @momomo_us who's dug up a lot of juicy details on two of the models, whereas we only know the basic specs for the other models. First up, we have the PG34WQ15R, which is a 34-inch curved VA display with a 3440x1440 resolution. It supports FreeSync Premium and has a refresh rate range of 48 to 165 Hz over DisplayPort and 48-100 Hz over HDMI, which seems to be an HDMI 1.4 limitation. The next model is the PG27FF, which is a regular 1080p IPS display that also supports FreeSync Premium, here with a refresh rate range of 48 to 165 Hz over both DP and HDMI. There appears to be multiple sub SKUs of this model, but all start with PG27F.

Then we have the PG32QF, which should be a flat 32-inch display, with unknown specs, but the Q in the model name suggests that it's a 1440p monitor. Finally we have the PG42U, where the U in the model name suggests it's a 4K 42-inch display. The stand looks nearly identical to the one ASUS uses for its ROG Strix XG43UQ 4K screen and the specs are likely to be quite similar too, which means we might see support for 144 Hz or higher refresh rates. All four displays are manufactured by TPV Technology, which produces its own monitors under the AOC, Envision and Philips brands. It's unknown when these new monitors from ASRock will launch, but considering they've passed through certification, it's highly likely that they'll turn up sometime later this year.

With Intel Raptor Lake-S desktop processors around the corner, we see an ever-increasing number of entries to the popular synthetic benchmark databases. Yesterday we had an Intel Core i5-3600K CPU, while today, we are presented with Core i7-13700K SKU. The new 13th generation Core i7-13700K CPU features eight P-cores and eight E-cores. Compared to the 12th generation Core i7-12700K, this is a step up with eight P-cores and four E-cores. According to Geekbench 5 benchmark, the new Qualification Sample (QS) of Core i7-13700K CPU was running at the minimum clock of 5.289 GHz, maximum clock of 5.381 GHz, and average speed of 5.36 GHz. It was tested on the same configuration as yesterday's i5 SKU with ASRock Z690 Steel Legend WiFi 6E motherboard with 32 GB of DDR4 memory.

As far as the results are concerned, the 13th gen i7-13700K SKU scored 2090 points in the single-core test, while the multi-core score totaled 16542 points. If we compare this to the 12th gen i7-12700K CPU that it replaces, the new model leads by about 10% and 17% in single-core and multi-core tests, respectively.

It's a busy day when it comes to Intel Raptor Lake benchmark leaks and this time around, we're looking at a pair of Core i5-13600K CPUs, but in two different motherboards. The first CPU sits in an ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme board and is paired with 32 GB of DDR5 memory, whereas the second CPU is in an ASRock Z690 Steel Legend WiFi 6E board, this one also paired with 32 GB of RAM, but DDR4 rather than DDR5. Both systems are running Windows 10 and unlike the Core i9-13900K results that we saw a couple of weeks ago, these two results are both valid according to the Geekbench results browser.

Courtesy of @harukaze5719 we have a nice graph with the results below, even comparing them to the average Geekbench results for a Core i5-12600K, as well as a Ryzen 9 5950X and a Ryzen 5 5600X. The Core i5-13600K beats everything in the single threaded results and the ASUS system is not far behind the Ryzen 9 5950X in the multithreaded tests. The ASUS system is significantly faster than the ASRock one though, so it seems like Raptor Lake is really making the most out of DDR5 memory. As we don't know the memory clocks, it's hard to say if that is also a contributing factor here, but it's likely that the ASUS system uses much faster memory, as in some of the sub-tests like Rigid Body Physics, the two systems are on par in terms of performance. It'll be interesting to see how Intel prices these upcoming CPUs, especially considering that the company has already warned it'll raise its prices in time for the retail availability of Raptor Lake.

Although AMD has not as yet announced its B650E chipset, rumour about such a chipset started before Computex. To date, no specific motherboard models have been mentioned by model name, but courtesy of Videocardz, we now have a list of several upcoming models from ASRock. The company has already announced its X670E range of motherboards, which consists of five models, of which four can already be seen on the ASRock website. ASRock appears to be planning five B650E boards, plus another six B650 SKU's. The company also appears to be the OEM for NZXT's second AMD motherboard, which appears to be called the N7-B65XT, which might also be a B650E based board.

Unfortunately we don't know any of the technical details about the upcoming B650/B650E boards from ASRock, but the model names give away that two of the five B650E boards will be Mini-ITX boards. It doesn't look like ASRock will be offering a high-end B650E model, but at least there will be an upper mid-range Steel Legend board. ASRock will also have a couple of mATX B650 boards, one should be a more gaming focused mid-range model, with the other being what appears to be a fairly basic model. One peculiar addition is a B650 SKU with the prefix LiveMixer, which is a new series from ASRock as far as we're aware. ASRock doesn't appear to be offering any X670 motherboards at all, at least not based on the current information.

Slowly but surely, we're getting more and more details about upcoming AM5 motherboards and ASRock has put up a very spec light page for its upcoming X670E Pro RS motherboard. Not much has changed since the Computex reveal, but the product page did contain a couple of extra board shots as well as a look at the rear I/O. This time around the M.2 WiFi card slot is also populated, suggesting that there will be a WiFi version of this model shipping. The board has a single "Blazing" M.2 slot for a PCIe 5.0 SSD as well as what should be three PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots, of which two come with a shared heatsink and one has no heatsink at all. The final M.2 slot is limited to PCIe 3.0. As this is an X670E board, the PCIe x16 slot is of course PCIe 5.0.

Other features include Realtek's Dragon branded 2.5 Gbps Ethernet controller that has some gaming specific software. It appears that ASRock has trimmed the audio jacks to a bare minimum, with only a line out, a mic in and an optical S/PDIF being connected to the Realtek ALC897 audio codec. The board also has a single USB-C port around the back, although it's at least a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port (20 Gbps). There are a total of five USB-A 3.2 ports, of which one is capable of 10 Gbps speeds, with the other delivering 5 Gbps. There are also four USB 2.0 ports, a DP and HDMI port, as well as a UEFI/BIOS update button around the back. Other expansion options include an internal USB-C header and two PCIe x1 slots of unknown type, as well as six SATA ports and two USB 3.x type headers. This should be one of the more affordable X670E motherboards when the AM5 platform launches later this year.

ASRock has recently released two new products to upgrade the network connectivity on compatible AMD & Intel motherboards with the latest Wi-FI 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 standards. The AMD upgrade kit includes a M.2 2230 PCIe module most likely featuring the MediaTek MT7921K chipset which debuted in the AYANEO handheld last year. The Intel version also includes a M.2 2230 module but featuring the CNVIo2 interface with either a AX211 or AX411 chipset limiting support to ASRock 600-Series motherboards.

These modules both support Dual Band 2x2 Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity with the AMD version certified for AM4 motherboards going back to the ASRock A320TM-ITX. The upgrade kits each feature a set of two antennas and extension cables along with a plastic cover and mounting screw for the modules. The listings don't contain any pricing information and retailers haven't listed either kit for purchase yet.

ASRock has released UEFI/BIOS updates for at least 47 of its 600-series chipset based motherboards, which will add support for the next generation of CPUs from Intel. The new CPUs are of course Intel's 13th gen Core CPU's, codenamed Raptor Lake, even though ASRock doesn't specifically mention this anywhere in the text on its portal site. We're expecting to see similar announcements from the other motherboard makers in due time. ASRock doesn't go into any kind of details as to which CPUs are supported and the company doesn't appear to have updated its CPU support lists yet, which is a shame, but not entirely unexpected, since the Raptor Lake CPUs aren't expected to launch until later this year.

However, ASRock has implemented what the company calls Auto Driver Installer or ADI in this UEFI/BIOS update for the boards and this is likely to be an unpopular addition, as it means drivers will be automatically be downloaded and installed if the system is connected to the internet. Presumably there will be an option to disable this feature, but it appears to be enabled by default, which has proven to be an unpopular option when other companies have done it. Admittedly it could be a handy feature during a new build or OS reinstall, but it's also a potential attack vector for malware.

It would appear that we're slowly getting closer to the launch of AMD's AM5 platform, as ASRock just put up its first X670E motherboard on its website. The page still has very limited information and there's only a single picture of the motherboard, which is the same one that the company shared at Computex. However, we now get a few more details with regards to what to expect in terms of additional features. For starters, ASRock has gone for a 26-phase SPS Dr.MOS power design, which should be plenty even for the most avid overclocker. The board has a pair of PCIe 5.0 x16 slots that operate in dual x8 mode when both slots are used. In addition to this there are four M.2 slots, where ASRock has decided to call the CPU connected slot for Blazing, as it's PCIe 5.0, whereas the three PCIe 4.0 slots are using the Hyper name the company has used so far.

The board also has eight SATA ports, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, which apparently are USB4 certified as well and a header for a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) case mounted port. Furthermore the board has five rear USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) USB-A ports around the back, plus three USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) ports and a further four via headers, as well as a single HDMI port of unknown version. ASRock has gone for an Intel Killer E3100G 2.5 Gbps Ethernet controller and an Intel Killer AX1675X WiFi 6E and Bluetooth card, with the combo having Killer DoubleShot Pro support. Finally audio is via a Realtek ALC4082 USB connected audio codec and an ESS Sabre 9218 DAC. Overall this looks like a pretty kitted out board without too much excessive bling and will hopefully be priced accordingly.

Although Intel's 13th generation of Core CPUs—codenamed Raptor Lake—aren't expected to launch until sometime in September or October this year, details of some of ASRock's motherboards for the new CPUs have leaked. ASRock is preparing to launch at least nine Z790 and three H770 motherboards, of which at least four will have support for DDR4 memory, according to VideoCardz. The list is missing a flagship Aqua model, but contains Taichi, Pro RS, Phantom Gaming Lightning and Riptide models, as well as a Steel Legend H770 boards and a couple of -C models, which are likely budget boards, despite being based on the Z790 chipset.

There will be a microATX Phantom Gaming Lighting board with DDR4 and a Phantom Gaming Riptide model with DDR5 support. So far no other features have been reported and from our understanding, the Z790 won't differ hugely from the Z690 chipset. The extra PCIe lanes from the 13th gen Core CPUs are expected to support PCIe 5.0 this time around, which will allow for faster NVMe based M.2 drives to be used. Intel is not planning on integrating Thunderbolt 4 support in these CPUs based on available information.