The ASRock X570 Aqua: A $1000 Ryzen Halo Motherboard Reviewed
by Gavin Bonshor on December 19, 2019 9:00 AM ESTGaming Performance
For X570 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1903 update as per our Ryzen 3000 CPU review.
World of Tanks enCore
Albeit different to most of the other commonly played MMO or massively multiplayer online games, World of Tanks is set in the mid-20th century and allows players to take control of a range of military based armored vehicles. World of Tanks (WoT) is developed and published by Wargaming who are based in Belarus, with the game’s soundtrack being primarily composed by Belarusian composer Sergey Khmelevsky. The game offers multiple entry points including a free-to-play element as well as allowing players to pay a fee to open up more features. One of the most interesting things about this tank based MMO is that it achieved eSports status when it debuted at the World Cyber Games back in 2012.
World of Tanks enCore is a demo application for a new and unreleased graphics engine penned by the Wargaming development team. Over time the new core engine will implemented into the full game upgrading the games visuals with key elements such as improved water, flora, shadows, lighting as well as other objects such as buildings. The World of Tanks enCore demo app not only offers up insight into the impending game engine changes, but allows users to check system performance to see if the new engine run optimally on their system.
Grand Theft Auto V
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark. The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence, and the title thankfully spits out frame time data.
F1 2018
Aside from keeping up-to-date on the Formula One world, F1 2017 added HDR support, which F1 2018 has maintained; otherwise, we should see any newer versions of Codemasters' EGO engine find its way into F1. Graphically demanding in its own right, F1 2018 keeps a useful racing-type graphics workload in our benchmarks.
Aside from keeping up-to-date on the Formula One world, F1 2017 added HDR support, which F1 2018 has maintained. We use the in-game benchmark, set to run on the Montreal track in the wet, driving as Lewis Hamilton from last place on the grid. Data is taken over a one-lap race.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
84 Comments
View All Comments
Santoval - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
Your analogy is fallacious. You can't compare motherboards to Chanel handbags. They are motherboards ffs, not Hermes handbags.GreenReaper - Saturday, December 21, 2019 - link
I do; I will. The test is whether people are willing to buy them on that basis, in part or in whole.The majority of people don't buy handbags that way either. But some do, and for many it's a factor.
YB1064 - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
The board is far from worthless. It performs on par with other high end boards, without the attendant heat. The feature set is also niche and premium. I think we are spoiled by the massive overclocks from Intel and thus anything offered by Ryzen seems paltry by comparison. I own a Supercarrrier Z270 and it runs a 7700k@5100MHz no problems. Great feature set and stable. ASRock is not trash by any means.DanNeely - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
As someone who watercools his systems I'm theoretically in the market for something like this. A mono-block appeals in that it avoids any potential issues with the VRMs being designed expecting airflow from a CPU cooler (my current haswell system has a board with a factory waterblock on the VRMs). But while I'd be willing to pay a premium over the cost of the mobo and CPU waterblock for it; they're marking up $500 for the waterblock and ~$400ish more than a CPU block is way too much of a premium even if I was willing to pay $500 for a baseline board with TB3 and 10GBE. $150 or maybe even $200 for the monoblock would be tempting.rahvin - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
As someone else that watercools I also had the same reaction. Interesting product, but it's not a serious product at it's price. It was created as a marketing effort which is why they are only making 1000 of them and more than half will probably go to review sites like anandtech.careyd - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
Pushback: I am building a workstation for DaVinci Resolve color grading on this board. 3950x, a pair of 2080Ti's, 64GB RAM. Requirement for me is 10Gbe and Thunderbolt 3 on board. My choice on X570 was down to the AsRock Creator $599 and Aqua ($999) due to this. They are essentially the same board, functionally speaking. I was committed to doing custom watercooling loop this time around...not because I had to but because I wanted to, but I'm happy to have the cooling improvements. So, if you are down to the choice of those two boards, and briefly consider building up the Creator with EK or equivalent quality waterblocks (if you can even find them for the chipset and VRMs on here), you'd be looking at about another ~$250-300 in costs over the cost of the Creator board. So in that situation a $200-ish premium for a well-integrated custom monoblock board is not that big of a stretch.To be clear, I'm not saying it's for everybody, but for a system that will generate revenue 20x it's cost in it's usable lifetime I think it's fine.
PeachNCream - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
If you only generate $50-100K in revenue from your build over its lifespan (assuming 2 years here) then you need to go find a better source of income because that is some low end chump change for all that effort.careyd - Saturday, December 21, 2019 - link
I dont feed trolls. You'll have to get your satisfaction elsewhere.PeachNCream - Monday, December 23, 2019 - link
There's nothing about pointing out that the ROI you quoted is barely scraping out middle income on the high end if your estimates of revenue over costs are accurate that constitutes trolling. However, I do know of people that get offended when the facts of their statements turn out to look a bit silly and then accuse others of trolling in order to feel better.lmcd - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
You're clearly trolling if you can't calculate the cost of that build. $1700 for CPU + Mobo, another 2k for GPUs, over $300 in RAM, $100 for the water cooler, $150 for the case, $150 for the PSU, and assuredly $300 or more of storage. That's a minimum of $4800 without whatever pro monitor he might be including and whatever combination of better cooling, storage, or case he's including.That's already at your "maximum" estimate for revenue, and that's the minimum reasonable for the build.
Then there's the next fallacy: you're assuming there's not a PC this is replacing, which is an absolutely idiotic assumption. ROI is always against the status quo, not against 0. An "aging" machine with a i7-6950X and 2x GTX 1080 would greatly decrease the expected ROI, so you can't project his revenue against the cost of the machine and the ROI ratio.
So yes you're absolutely trolling. Just because you're a regular doesn't mean your head isn't up somewhere it shouldn't be.