Its always been a many choices when it comes to choosing a motherboard, several factor that one considers are the build specs and the total overall pricing. The motherboard is always been a known factor coming to pricing when building one, especially when almost all high end X670E chipset motherboard aint that affordable, we have review two motherboard and they are on the higher side of price.
Today we will look at one of the ASRock offering, the X670E Pro RS, a motherboard under the AMD X670E Chipset that is considered as the enthusiast affordable level board, but still part of the AMD flagship series motherboard from ASRock.
Unboxing and Contents
The ASRock X670E Pro RS came with the following
– 1 x User Manual
– 2 x SATA Data Cables
– 1 x ASRock WiFi 2.4/5/6 GHz Antenna
– 4 x Screws for M.2 Sockets
– 1 x Graphics Card Holder
Design
The very based design from the RS series is mostly on black and silver colors on the motherboard, which signifies modern yet futuristic look with essential ports and support for today’s standard. It also comes with a graphics card holder to prevent the PCI-E graphics card part to go sag down and make not look nice on the builds. Since this is an ATX build, its a well and fairly spaced motherboard for the user to plan what to install, and there is also RGB lights shining under the southbridge heatsink area, a good area to show all the blinks on your build. Heat dissipation is good also with VRM’s, M.2, southbridge are all well covered with heatsinks. As a budget board, not complaining on these extras that I had on this.
Features
Below are the several features of the ASRock X670E Pro RS
- Extreme Overclocking Performance – All X670E motherboards are built with 8-Layer and premium low-loss materials, enthusiasts are able to enjoy the boost of DDR5 memory overclocking performance up to 6600MHz and beyond by enabling the pre-tested profiles. Make sure the memory modules are AMD EXPO™/ Intel® XMP capable and overclockable
- Reinforced DIMM Slot – The reinforced DIMM slot is surfaced mounted onto the motherboard to give better physical strength as well as a more stable memory signal, with this superior revolutionary design, it is able to dramatically overclock DRAM module up to insane frequency.
- PCIe Gen5 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.
- ASRock Graphics Card Holder – Install your heavy graphics card on the holder; connect it to your motherboard and chassis with screws. Flexibly slide up and down to perfectly adjust the height required for your graphics card in place.
- POLYCHROME RGB – In addition to the built-in RGB illumination, it also features onboard RGB headers and an addressable RGB header that allow motherboard to be connected to compatible LED devices such as strip, CPU fans, coolers, chassis and so on. Users may also synchronize RGB LED devices across the Polychrome RGB Sync-certified accessories to create their own unique lighting effects.
Compatibility & Benchmarking
Since this is an AM5 X670 motherboard, for now it is exclusively compatible with all AMD Ryzen 7000 series build and user choice of installing XMP or EXPO based memory solutions. For the PCIe side, you can go with either Gen4 or above NVME and graphics card slot accepts anything from PCI Express 3.0 to 5.0. For now we install it as below to our test rig.
| Processor | AMD Ryzen 7 7700X |
| Motherboard | ASRock X670E Pro RS |
| System Memory | Kingston Fury Beast RGB 16GB X4 DDR5 (running at 6000MT) – EXPO |
| Primary Drive | NVME SSD 500GB (Gen4 X4) |
| Secondary Drive | NVME SSD 500GB (Gen3 X 4) |
| PSU | Thermaltake PF1 750w PSU (Platinum) |
| Operating System | Windows 11 64bit Professional |
| Graphics Card | Radeon RX 6700XT 12GB |
| Cooling | AMD Wraith ARGB Cooler |
We will run some simple performance benchmarks, and its no surprise if you see most of the similarities between models, however the emphasis is still towards the capability of the boards that still able to go up to 6000MT/s RAM speed which if taken into the affordable price consideration. So far all of the results are within expectation.
Software & BIOS
Let’s start with the software, almost all ASRock motherboards has the ASRock Polychrome Sync, which is an app for selecting various RGB modes, as long the components are compatible, you can sync all of them together, including the motherboard RGB LED located below the southbridge heatsink area.
There is also ASRock Blazing OC tuner which is an app that allows you to set overclocking manually or automatically with AMD’s PBO, all of the basic tuning such as frequency, voltage and threshold limit are available, but if you wanted to tune more, you should do it via UEFI.
Over to the BIOS/UEFI panel, ASRock uses a deep in detailed flexible interface which you can set fan curves, voltage control and of course updating the BIOS with your flash drive, selecting boot devices, XMP/EXPO selections for RAM and detailed information on your hardware with Windows 11 full support.
Technical Specifications
| CPU | Supports AMD Socket AM5 Ryzen™ 7000 Series Processors |
| Chipset | AMD X670 |
| Memory | – Dual Channel DDR5 Memory Technology – 4 x DDR5 DIMM Slots – Supports DDR5 non-ECC, un-buffered memory up to 6600+(OC) – Max. capacity of system memory: 128GB – Supports Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) and EXTended Profiles for Overclocking (EXPO) memory modules |
| Expansion Slots | CPU: – 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16 Slot (PCIE1), supports x16 mode Chipset: – 2 x PCIe 4.0 x1 Slots (PCIE2 and PCIE3) – 1 x M.2 Socket (Key E), supports type 2230 WiFi/BT PCIe WiFi module – 15μ Gold Contact in VGA PCIe Slot (PCIE1) *Supports NVMe SSD as boot disks |
| Storage | CPU: – 1 x Blazing M.2 Socket (M2_1, Key M), supports type 2280 PCIe Gen5x4 (128 Gb/s) mode* – 1 x Hyper M.2 Socket (M2_2, Key M), supports type 2260/2280 PCIe Gen4x4 (64 Gb/s) mode* Chipset: – 1 x Hyper M.2 Socket (M2_3, Key M), supports type 2260/2280 PCIe Gen4x4 (64 Gb/s) mode* – 1 x M.2 Socket (M2_4, Key M), supports type 2242/2260/2280 SATA3 6.0 Gb/s & PCIe Gen3x2 (16 Gb/s) modes* – 1 x Hyper M.2 Socket (M2_5, Key M), supports type 2260/2280 PCIe Gen4x4 (64 Gb/s) mode* – 6 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors *Supports NVMe SSD as boot disks Supports ASRock U.2 Kit |
| Ethernet | – 2.5 Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000/2500 Mb/s – Dragon RTL8125BG – Supports Dragon 2.5G LAN Software – Smart Auto Adjust Bandwidth Control – Visual User Friendly UI – Visual Network Usage Statistics – Optimized Default Setting for Game, Browser, and Streaming Modes – User Customized Priority Control |
| Wireless | – 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6E Module – Supports IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax – Supports Dual-Band 2×2 with extended 6GHz band support – 2 antennas to support 2 (Transmit) x 2 (Receive) diversity technology – Supports Bluetooth + High speed class II – Supports MU-MIMO |
| Audio | – 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC897 Audio Codec) – Nahimic Audio |
| Rear I/O Connector | – 2 x Antenna Ports – 1 x HDMI Port – 1 x DisplayPort 1.4 – 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port – 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A Port (10 Gb/s) (ReDriver) – 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C Port (10 Gb/s) (ReDriver) – 4 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Ports – 4 x USB 2.0 Ports – 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port – 1 x BIOS Flashback Button – 1 x Line Out Jack (Gold Audio Jack) – 1 x Microphone Input Jack (Gold Audio Jack) |
| Internal I/O Connections | – 1 x SPI TPM Header – 1 x Power LED and Speaker Header – 1 x RGB LED Header – 3 x Addressable LED Headers – 1 x CPU Fan Connector (4-pin) – 1 x CPU/Water Pump Fan Connector (4-pin) (Smart Fan Speed Control) – 4 x Chassis/Water Pump Fan Connectors (4-pin) (Smart Fan Speed Control – 1 x 24 pin ATX Power Connector (Hi-Density Power Connector) – 1 x 8 pin 12V Power Connector (Hi-Density Power Connector) – 1 x 4 pin 12V Power Connector (Hi-Density Power Connector) – 1 x Front Panel Audio Connector – 2 x USB 2.0 Headers (Support 4 USB 2.0 ports) – 2 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Headers (Support 4 USB 3.2 Gen1 ports) – 1 x Front Panel Type C USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Header (20 Gb/s) |
Verdict and Conclusion
This motherboard is one board I would recommend over the pricing factor, in fact you can even get it for less than RM1500, which is totally a bargain which is one choice to be considered for enthusiast builders. However if you wanted to have more PCI-E expansion, maybe you should look at other offering from ASRock line of X670E motherboard as this model is still lacking of an extra full lane expansion for another peripheral or additional GPU if you wanted to run on para-virtualization on Linux. But still if you just need it for pure work and gaming, then look no further, this could be the right choice for all your Ryzen 7000 series needs.
*Special thanks to ASRock, AMD, Kingston, Thermaltake for providing the units for the purpose of this review.