Quickly to the right hardware equipment …
Layout, Design and Features
ASRock X570 Extreme4 RGB lighting
ASRock X570 Extreme4 Equipment and other features
ASRock X570 Extreme4 Voltage Regulator and Heat Sink
ASRock X570 Extreme4 Expansion cards
ASRock X570 Extreme4 Memory
ASRock X570 Extreme4 Hard disk drive connectors
ASRock X570 Extreme4 USB and Firewire
ASRock X570 Extreme4 Network
ASRock X570 Extreme4 Sound
ASRock X570 Extreme4 ATX back panel connectors
ASRock X570 Extreme4 PC System
Layout, Design and Features …
The ASRock X570 Extreme4 High Density Fiber Sapphire Black PCB board supports AMD Matisse, Picasso and Pinnacle Ridge processors and makes an excellent impression.
The motherboard offers Premium 60A Power Chokes coils, Nichicon 12K Black Caps capacitors, Digi Power and 7.1 HD Audio via the ALC1220 Audio Codec with Purity Sound 4 support and Nichicon Fine Gold Audio Caps. It also features two fast Hyper M.2 slots for PCIe Gen4 x4 modules with up to 64 Gb/s connection and a simple M.2 slot for WIFI modules.
The two Hyper M.2 slots were mounted under the large chipset cooler, which on the AMD X570 has to be actively cooled again after a long time. As you can see here, we tested the X570 Extreme4 with a Crucial MX500 M.2 SSD 1TB SSD.
Here you can see again the small active chipset fan, which is necessary again with the AMD X570. Fortunately, the fan runs relatively quietly, so that it is drowned out by most CPU cooler fans without any problems.
RGB lighting …
RGB lighting has certainly already become a selling point for many and ASRock has done a lot for this as well. Conventional RGB strips can be connected to the white 4-pin 12V RGB headers to illuminate the housing, for example. In addition, the X570 Extreme4 even has a second 12V RGB LED connector in the upper area. There is even a 3-pin 5V Polychrome RGB connector, which supports individually addressable LEDs when using addressable RGB strips.
And the best thing is that even addressable RGB LEDs are pre-installed under the chipset cooler and on the I/O panel on this motherboard.
The RGB headers and the integrated RGB LEDs can be controlled via UEFI or via the supplied ASRock Polychrome RGB LED software. For example, you can select the colors in an RGB color selector and set whether the RGB headers should be controlled separately or together with the RGB lighting under the chipset cooler and the IO cover. The lighting can of course also be completely deactivated.
It is possible in the new ASRock Polychrome RGB software to control each LED under the chipset cooler and the IO cover individually! 😀
In the ASRock Polychrome RGB LED software, for example, you select the colors in an RGB color selector. And with the addressable RGB connector and the integrated ARGB LEDs you even get completely new RGB features like Spring, Meteor, Stack, Rainbow, etc. …
A total of up to 100 addressable LEDs can be addressed individually.
So you get lots of great RGB effects, which we presented in ASRock Polychrome RGB Software Video on our OCinside YouTube Channel (don’t forget to turn on the subtitles in English).
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And to get a small impression of the very special ASRock X570 Extreme4 effects, we have created another video here.
Let’s get back to the equipment, though. Here you can see two internal USB3.2 Gen1 connectors (the front USB 3.2 Gen2 type-C connector is near the front panel connector), the 24-pin ATX power connector, some Nichicon capacitors and the second RGB connector.
Voltage Regulator and Heat Sink …
The picture shows the side view of the mainboard with the two heat sinks made of aluminium alloy on the Intersil MOSFETs.
Here you can see the two dismounted aluminium heat sinks which are pressed onto the voltage converters together with the heat conducting pads and the I/O panel cover together with the RGB connector.
Under the heat sinks of the ASRock X570 Extreme4 the so-called Smart Power Stage area is cooled.
Here you can see the coils and the phases consisting of a total of 10 Vishay SiC634 50A phases with Intersil ISL69147 PWM controllers to ensure a stable power supply of the AMD CPU.
Equipment and other features …
The ASRock X570 Extreme4 has numerous features, such as the ASRock A-Tuning Tool, ASRock Instant Flash, ASRock Internet Flash, NVMe Sanitization Tool, SSD Secure Erase Tool, Digi Power, ASRock RGB LED, ASRock Polychrome RGB and ASRock FAN-Tastic Tuning.
Expansion cards …
Depending on the CPU used, the motherboard offers two PCI Express 4.0 x16 slots for a graphics card with x16 Lanes bandwidth (AMD Matisse CPU) or two PCI Express 3.0 x16 graphics cards with x16 Lanes connection (AMD Pinnacle Ridge CPU) or two PCI Express 3.0 x16 graphics cards with x8 Lanes connection (AMD Picasso CPU). Additionally there are three PCI Express 4.0 x1 slots.
Memory …
The ASRock X570 Extreme4 board can be equipped with up to four DDR4 modules and can be upgraded depending on the operating system used (see list) up to a maximum of 128 GB RAM. Here you can see a picture of the four DDR4 memory slots with dual channel support.
The AMD AM4 motherboard supports DDR4 memory modules and can be optimized in BIOS with a Ryzen Matisse processor for DDR4-3200 Dual Channel modules or a Ryzen Pinnacle Ridge or Picasso processor for DDR4-2933 Dual Channel modules. The UEFI offers optimized settings from DDR4-1866 up to DDR4-6000.
Thanks to XMP support (Extreme Memory Profile), XMP memory modules are set correctly with one mouse click in the UEFI and there are of course many more memory adjustments and even more OC options, but more about that later. Which exact RAM modules are officially supported, you should read before buying at ASRock on the memory support page, because this is especially (but not only) very important for AMD Ryzen systems.
Hard disk drive connectors …
The ASRock X570 Extreme4 offers a total of eight angled SATA3 Ports.
The AMD SATA3 ports support RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, NCQ, AHCI and the Hot Plug function in AHCI mode (AHCI stands for Advanced Host Controller Interface and should be selected especially for SSDs in UEFI). Thanks to UEFI BIOS, drives with more than 2TB can also be used to install Windows 10 x64. The installation of the drivers ran without problems in Windows 10, so that the Windows 10 installation was quickly completed.
The RAID drivers can be installed via the Easy RAID Installer point in the UEFI. The drivers are supplied for 64-bit Windows 10 on DVD and are also available for download on the ASRock support page, whereby the Windows 10 installation is currently preferred.
USB and Firewire …
The ASRock X570 Extreme4 has six USB 3.2 Gen1 ports and two USB 3.2 Gen2 ports on the IO Panel. On the picture you can see the USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A on the right and below the USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port which can be plugged in on both sides.
Internally two USB 2.0 ports for up to four optional USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.2 Gen1 headers for up to four optional USB 3.2 Gen1 ports (formerly USB 3.0) are available. The 20-pin header can be connected either to an optional USB3 front panel or to a chassis with USB3.0 support. New is the Front USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C connector, which allows 5 Gbps on the front panel of the case (far left in the picture).
Hint: If you are wondering about the different descriptions of the USB ports, we would like to explain the differences between USB 3.0, USB 3.1 Gen1, USB 3.1 Gen2, USB 3.2 Gen1 and USB 3.2 Gen2. Regarding the USB power for charging devices, USB 2.0 officially provides 5V with 0.5A, thus 2.5W, and USB 3.0/3.1/3.2 officially provides 5V with 0.9A, thus 4.5W, and USB 3.0/3.1/3.2 officially provides 5V with 0.9A, respectively ASRock with Type-A connector up to 1.5A, and USB Type-C connector 5V with 3A, thus 15W (1A in sleep state). Furthermore, the transfer rates of the USB ports are also different. USB 3.1 Gen1 was formerly called USB 3.0 and is therefore identically, they both deliver up to 5 GBit/s. USB 3.1 Gen2 delivers up to 10 Gbps. In addition, there is USB 3.2 Gen2x2, which allows doubling up to 20 GBit/s. Here you are again the possible transfer rates in a table.
| USB Interface Comparison | ||
| Transfer rate | ||
| Interface | theoretical | practical |
| USB 2.0 | 480 MBit/s | 30 MByte/s |
| USB 3.0 | 5 GBit/s | 450 MByte/s |
| USB 3.1 Gen1 | 5 GBit/s | 450 MByte/s |
| USB 3.1 Gen2 | 10 GBit/s | 800 MByte/s |
| USB 3.2 Gen1 | 5 GBit/s | 400 MByte/s |
| USB 3.2 Gen2 | 10 GBit/s | 800 MByte/s |
| USB 3.2 Gen2x2 | 2×10 GBit/s | 1600 MByte/s |
Network …
The ASRock X570 Extreme4 is equipped with a Realtek I211AT, via which the 10/100/1000 network port on the ATX panel is realized. The LAN port is WoL capable, offers LAN cable detection, supports power efficient Ethernet according to 802.3az standard, PXE and more.
Sound …
The ASRock X570 Extreme4 motherboard features the simpler Realtek ALC1220 audio codec with content protection and Purity Sound 4, which supports 7.1 surround sound and outputs this analog via 5x 3.5mm jack sockets on the ATX panel or via the internal front panel audio connector, for example. Furthermore there is an optical SPDIF digital output and Premium Blu-Ray support. This makes an additional sound card with digital outputs unnecessary for most users.
ATX back panel connectors …
From left to right you can see HDMI, 1x PS/2 connector for PS/2 keyboard or PS/2 mouse and 2x USB 3.2 Gen1 ports, 2x USB 3.2 Gen1 type-A, 1x USB 3.2 Gen2 type-A and 1x USB 3.2 Gen2 type-C, RJ45 Gigabit LAN and 2x USB 3.2 Gen1 type-A, optical SPDIF output and 5x 3.5mm jacks for sound.
Test system …
Now we come to the AMD AM4 CPU socket.
We tested the X570 Extreme4 motherboard with the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X processor. The AMD Ryzen 5 2400G processor with integrated graphics unit is unfortunately no longer supported by the X570, so we couldn’t make a direct comparison to the previous CPU on this X570 motherboard.
AMD Ryzen 3000 processors support Dual Channel Mode. The two memory modules are used on the AMD X570 motherboard to provide Dual Channel support.
Here you can see the RAM assembly again from the side.
As we have already reported on OCinside.de, many CPU coolers require a new AMD Ryzen cooler Upgrade Kit. Meanwhile we have upgraded directly to a socket AM4 compatible Enermax ETS-T50 AXE DFP with ARCTIC MX4 thermal compound. On the following picture you can see the AMD AM4 test system with Enermax cooler and Icy Dock MB171SP-B Turbo Swap removable frame for quick exchange of the SSD and HDD.
Here you can see the complete AMD AM4 test system from above without graphics card for a better demonstration of the lighting possibilities on the chipset and IO cover.
This is what the 8 cores (16 threads) of the AMD Ryzen 7 3800X processor look like in Windows 10 Taskmanager at Prime95 full load.
As you can see on the thermal image of the ASRock X570 Extreme4 test PC, the waste heat of the voltage regulators and coils is well dissipated via the heat sinks.
ASRock X570 Extreme4 BIOS and Overclocking …