Quickly to the right hardware equipment …
Layout, Design and Features
ASRock X470 Gaming K4 RGB lighting
ASRock X470 Gaming K4 Equipment and other features
ASRock X470 Gaming K4 Voltage Regulator and Heat Sink
ASRock X470 Gaming K4 Expansion cards
ASRock X470 Gaming K4 Memory
ASRock X470 Gaming K4 Hard disk drive connectors
ASRock X470 Gaming K4 USB and Firewire
ASRock X470 Gaming K4 Network
ASRock X470 Gaming K4 Sound
ASRock X470 Gaming K4 ATX back panel connectors
ASRock X470 Gaming K4 PC System
Layout, Design and Features …
So that no detail is missed, here you can see a 360 degree view of the ASRock X470 Gaming K4 ATX motherboard.
The differences between AMD X470 and B450 chipsets for the AMD Ryzen 2000 series are, as with the X370, B350 and A320 chipsets of the AMD Ryzen 1000 series, in the possible connection and thus also in the equipment. Furthermore, the hard disk caching tool StoreMI is now supported and the power consumption in idle mode has been reduced. The fact that older processors of the first AMD Ryzen generation run on the newer motherboards is also very advantageous for the consumer. If you only want to upgrade the motherboard to be up to date, you can do so after a short look into the list of supported CPUs.
The ASRock X470 Gaming K4 High Density Fiber Sapphire Black PCB board supports AMD Pinnacle Ridge, Summit Ridge and Raven Ridge processors and makes an excellent impression. The motherboard features Premium 45A Power Chokes, Nichicon 12K Black Caps capacitors, 12 Power Phase Design and 7.1 HD Audio over the ALC1220.
The motherboard features Premium 45A Power Chokes coils, Nichicon 12K Black Caps capacitors, Digi Power and 7.1 HD Audio via the ALC1220 audio codec with Creative Sound Blaster Cinema 5 support and Nichicon Fine Gold Audio Caps. It also features a fast Ultra M.2 slot for a PCIe Gen3 x4 module with up to 32 Gb/s connection and a standard M.2 slot for a PCIe Gen2 x2 module with up to 10 Gb/s connection.
As you can see here, we tested the Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4 with a Crucial MX500 M.2 SSD 1TB SSD.
RGB lighting …
RGB lighting has certainly already become a selling point for many and ASRock has done a lot to improve that too. Conventional 5050 RGB strips can be connected to the white 4-pin 12V RGB headers to illuminate the housing, for example. There is even a 3-pin 5V Polychrome RGB connector which supports individually addressable LEDs when using addressable RGB strips via the WS2812B. Additionally, the Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4 has a second 4-pin 12V RGB LED connector in the middle board area.
On the ASRock X470 Gaming K4 there are several RGB LEDs below the stylish chipset cooler, at the audio area and in the I/O cover, which can be controlled as desired. The 7-segment display always lights red, but can of course be deactivated – either always or only after the boot process.
The RGB headers and the integrated RGB LEDs can be controlled again via UEFI or via the supplied ASRock Polychrome RGB LED software, which even updates the RGB controller firmware at the first start.
In the ASRock Polychrome RGB 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 below the chipset cooler and the IO cover. The lighting can of course also be completely deactivated.
You can select many effects in the ASRock RGB LED menu, for example whether the LEDs should light continuously, breathe, randomly or be controlled to music and with the addressable RGB connection you even get completely new RGB features like Spring, Meteor, Stack, Cram, Rainbow, etc..
A total of up to 100 addressable LEDs can be addressed individually via the WS2812B at the 3-pin 5V polychrome RGB connector.
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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But let’s get back to the equipment and the features. On the far left you can see the second RGB connector, next to it the two internal USB 3.0 and USB3.1 Gen1 connectors, the 24-pin ATX power connector and some of the high quality Nichicon 12K Black Caps capacitors.
Voltage Regulator and Heat Sink …
The picture shows the side view of the mainboard with the two large XXL heat sinks made of aluminium alloy on the Intersil MOSFETs.
Equipment and other features …
The ASRock X470 Gaming K4 has many features like the ASRock F-Stream Tool, ASRock Instant Flash, ASRock Internet Flash, ASRock Easy RAID Installer, ASRock Easy Driver Installer, 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 3.0 x16 slots for a graphics card with x16 Lanes bandwidth or two graphics cards with x8 Lanes connection. Additionally there are four PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots.
Memory …
The ASRock X470 Gaming K4 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 64 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 the BIOS with a Ryzen Pinnacle Ridge processor for DDR4-2933 Dual Channel Modules or a Ryzen Summit Ridge or Raven Ridge processor for DDR4-2667 Dual Channel Modules. The UEFI still offers adjustments from DDR4-1866 to DDR4-3466.
Thanks to XMP support (Extreme Memory Profile), XMP memory modules are set correctly with a mouse click in UEFI and there are of course many more memory adjustments and even more OC options, but more about this later. Which exact RAM modules are officially supported, one should read before the purchase with ASRock on the memory support side, because this is straight (but not only) with AMD Ryzen systems very important.
Hard disk drive connectors …
The ASRock X470 Gaming K4 offers a total of six 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 X470 Gaming K4 has six USB 3.0 ports (USB 3.1 Gen1) and two USB 3.1 Gen2 ports on the IO Panel. On the picture you can see the USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A in the middle on the right and the USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port which can be plugged in on both sides below.
Internally two USB 2.0 ports for up to four optional USB ports and two USB 3.0 ports for up to four optional USB 3.0 ports (USB 3.1 Gen1) are available. The 20-pin header can be connected either to an optional USB3.0 front panel or to a housing with USB3.0 support.
Network …
The ASRock X470 Gaming K4 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 X470 Gaming K4 motherboard features the simpler Realtek ALC1220 audio codec with content protection and Creative Sound Blaster Cinema 5, 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, 2x USB 3.0 ports and 1x PS/2 connector for PS/2 keyboard or PS/2 mouse, 2x USB 3.0 type-A, 1x USB 3.1 Gen2 type-A and 1x USB 3.1 Gen2 type-C, RJ45 Gigabit LAN and 2x USB 3.0 type-A, optical SPDIF output and 5x 3.5mm jacks for the sound.
Test system …
Now we come to the AMD AM4 CPU socket. We have tested the Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4 motherboard with the AMD Ryzen 5 2400G processor, which has an integrated graphics unit and offers a great solution for inexpensive PCs.
AMD Ryzen processors support Dual Channel Mode. The two memory modules are used on the AMD X470 motherboard to provide Dual Channel support.
Here you can see the memory modules 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. 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 again the complete AMD AM4 test system from above without graphics card for a better representation of the lighting possibilities on the chipset, audio part and IO cover.
This is what the 4 cores (8 threads) of the AMD Ryzen 5 2400G processor look like in Windows 10 Taskmanager at Prime95 full load.
As you can see on the thermal image of the ASRock X470 Gaming K4 test PCs, the waste heat of the voltage regulators and coils is well dissipated via the XXL heat sinks.
ASRock X470 Gaming K4 BIOS and Overclocking …