The ASRock Z490 AQUA is the kind of board you put on posters or desktop backgrounds: clean, striking, and with excellent attention to detail. With every possible feature except the kitchen sink, the ASRock Z490 AQUA is every bit a flagship motherboard. The RGB led implementation is the best I have seen, and that isn't even counting the OLED screen over the rear I/O.

Out of the box, performance was quite good. Memory overclocking was great as well, as I reached 4000 MHz CL16 stable with my Trident Z Neo quad-channel kit. For CPU overclocking, I was able to achieve 5.3 GHz on all cores. The largest limitation to overclocking with Z490 is going to come down to dealing with the heat produced by the incredibly dense Intel Core i9-10900K. That said, when it comes to VRM thermals, the ASRock Z490 AQUA proved even better than you might expect. Between the top-tier 90 A power stages and monoblock cooling, the ASRock Z490 AQUA breezed through my torture test, with temperatures staying comfortably below 40 °C.

Every part of the ASRock Z490 AQUA is well-designed and implemented. The detail that impressed me the most is the Thunderbolt implementation—this feature also won the AQUA an innovation award. The controller and ports are housed on a pair of parallel vertical add-in cards on the rear I/O. To help cool the Thunderbolt controller, ASRock added a thermal pad to interface with the aluminium on the rear I/O cover, leveraging an otherwise cosmetic component to improve thermal performance.

The ASRock Z490 AQUA is a great motherboard, and an impressive exhibit of modern hardware engineering. The ASRock Z490 AQUA is also just under US$1100, an incredibly high price for a Z490 motherboard. Despite all of the premium features, it is not the right board for most consumers, and it's not supposed to be. The ASRock Z490 AQUA is a halo product: It's designed to generate attention and bragging rights for ASRock, all while catering to a niche subset of enthusiasts with deep pockets. The ASRock Z490 AQUA fulfills this role perfectly.