Asrock X670E PRO RS, AMD X670, AM5, ATX, 4 DDR5, HDMI, DP, Wi-Fi 6E, 2.5G LAN, PCIe5, RGB, 5x M.2

Product Information

Focusing on the top of the board, we get a good look at the oversize VRM heatsinks, reinforced DRAM slots, and more. Starting in the upper-left corner, we spy a vented shroud that reaches over the VRM heatsink to allow cool air to pass through the fan hidden below and onto the heatpipe-connected heatsinks. The fan is barely audible at load and blends in with other fan noise coming from the case, so no worries there. Above the VRM heatsinks are two 8-pin EPS connectors (one required) to power the CPU. It's an extreme motherboard as well, the 16 teamed 110A powerstage vcore VRM is no joke, there's two PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots, USB4 support, loads of USB ports, onboard buttons, debug LED codes, 2.5 Gbit LAN and WiFi 6, it's an impressive but also ultra expensive mATX motherboard. In the same price range, the Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi wins the award for the best X670E Mini-ITX motherboard by default, as it's the only one as does the Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Gene for the best and only Micro-ATX motherboard.

The best high-end X670E motherboard is simply the MSI MEG X670E ACE. The stupid expensive Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme and MSI MEG X670E Godlike are excellent motherboards, but we can't justify the asking prices, especially in the case of the Godlike. For some reason Gigabyte spent their PCIe 5.0 budget on the M.2 drives, limiting the PCIe slot support to a single x16 slot. So while we guess four PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots is nice, we'd rather have the flexibility of having more PCIe slots. with "speed" also comes latency to deal with. remember the x16 pcie slot and fastest m.2 slots get their lanes direct from the cpu. Let's talk about test conditions first. For this testing we've built a dedicated system inside the Corsair iCUE 7000X case. Powering it we have the HX1000 power supply and for cooling the Corsair iCUE H170i Elite Capellix. The heatsinks are good for an 'entry level' X670 board. Running a 7950X under a sustained all core load, they were merely warm to the touch.Over the past few months we've been gathering as many AMD X670 motherboards as we could to test their VRM performance and to see if they can all handle the Ryzen 9 7950X without any kind of thermal throttling, something we ran into with a number of X570 motherboards a few years ago. But, e.g. specifically the reviewed X670E Taichi has a second PCIe 5.0 x16 slot at the bottom (only one can be used as x16 at the same time), and the X650E Taichi has the Gen5 M.2 to the side of the RAM. Or e.g. ROG Strix B650E-E Gaming WiFi, that one has likewise two PCIe 5.0 16x slots, and it has two Gen5 M.2 spots, one of which is at the bottom.

Across the bottom of the board are several exposed headers. You’ll find the usual, including additional USB ports, RGB headers, and more. Below is a complete list from left to right. But if one wants to be able to hit the ground running with Gen5 M.2 SSDs, without having to wait for improved M.2 cooler solutions and/or without having to rethink the entire rig cooling in use, then there are as mentioned already some motherboards to consider. The USB complement is good, with a total of ten rear ports. There are two 3.2 Gen 2 ports (one of which is Type-C) plus four 3.2 Gen 1 and four 2.0 ports. Internal headers can provide another eight ports plus the all-important USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 type-C. These are great news to share: there are no bad X670/X670E motherboards. Surely prices might be a bit hard to swallow, but there are no duds, and that's a rare thing when reviewing an entire motherboard series. We hope you found this useful and expect a similar piece covering B650 motherboards. Shopping Shortcuts: An usual mid-tower would leave little to no room at the bottom slot for proper air ventilation. So it doesn't seem much of a mainstream solution to ask everyone to use the bottom slot (even aside of the mentioned issue of latency).Clearly there are people using this specific mobo without issues so it's highly unlikely that there is a fundamental design issue with this mobo as all motherboard makers work from AMDs design guide. More than likely over the next few months the issues will be resolved but there is always challenges for early adopters. The Blazing M.2 accommodates the latest PCI Express 5.0 standard to perform twice the bandwidth compared to previous generation, with a breathtaking 128GB/s transfer speed, it is ready to unleash the full potential of future ultrafast SSDs. Still, if you were to use PCIe 5.0 devices this configuration would make the most sense, as both delivers would receive x8 PCIe 5.0 bandwidth which is 32 GB/s. In comparison the Asus ROG Strix X670E-F Gaming connects its secondary PCIe x16 slot chipset, which is a lot cheaper to wire in, but does limit you to PCIe 4.0 x4 bandwidth (8 GB/s). GPU only covers 1 m.2 slot, but the other 3 are still accessible without removing the gpu, even with a 7900xtx red devil installed.

Wi-Fi 6E (6GHz band) will be supported by Microsoft Windows 11. The availability will depend on the different regulation status of each country and region. It will be activated (for supported countries) through Windows Update and software updates once available. The extra large aluminum alloy M.2 heatsink effectively improves heat dissipation to keep those high speed M.2 SSDs as cool as possible, it is able to give better stability while maintaining top performance. For recording temperatures we're using a digital thermometer with K-Type thermocouples and we'll be reporting the peak rear PCB temperature. Finally, we're not reporting Delta-T over Ambient, instead I maintain a room temperature of 21 degrees and to ensure a consistent ambient temperature a thermocouple is positioned next to the test system.

Delivering the best features of the X670E platform at an affordable price.

Wi-Fi 6E (6GHz band) will be supported by Microsoft® Windows® 11. The availability will depend on the different regulation status of each country and region. It will be activated (for supported countries) through Windows® Update and software updates once available. A 6GHz compatible router is required for 6E functionality. Due to the board layout, one of the PCIe4 M.2 connectors will covered by the GPU, this makes a replacement painful and not great considering the heat produced by a modern NVME SSD/GPU Essentially both boards have the same amount of PCIe bandwidth, the Carbon can just better spread that bandwidth across multiple slots while almost 90% of the PCIe bandwidth of the F Gaming is eaten up by the primary PCIe 5.0 x16 slot. Whether you are using headphones, a headset, external or internal speakers, via USB, Wi-Fi, analog output or even HDMI, Nahimic Audio offers you the most engaging listening experience, vibrant and rich with details. the closer to the cpu, the less latency in getting data to and from the cpu. that's why ram slots are as close as possible to minimize how far the data has to go thus lowering latency as much as possible.