ASRock X570S PG Riptide Motherboard Review, Can This $185 US Board Handle A $799 US AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU?

July 26, 2021 OSTN Staff

The ASRock X570S PG Riptide is styled in grey and black. The motherboard comes with the standard ATX form factor so compatibility won’t be an issue on a wide range of PCs. The PG ‘Phantom Gaming’ theme is apparent from the logos and labels over the various heatsinks.

The board packs a better overall design scheme that allows for faster connectivity, memory support, and storage options compared to X470 motherboards. The PCB is of matte black color. The PCB itself is made of high-density glass fabric and uses a 2oz Copper design.

The board uses the AM4 socket to support AMD CPUs and APUs. The socket is compatible with both AMD Ryzen processors and APUs. There’s no chance of error while installing a CPU since the socket is keyed, has a 1331 pin layout, and won’t support any other chips aside from the ones mentioned by AMD and AIB partners.

Right next to the socket are four DDR4 DIMM slots that can support up to 128 GB (dual channel) memory. These slots are rated to support DDR4 DIMMs with frequencies all the way up to 5000 MHz (OC+).

The motherboard packs a 10 phase Digital PWM which powers the socket. The PCB is outfitted with a long lifespan, durable black solid-state capacitors that have an endurance rating of over 12,000 hours. Each phase is delivered 50A of continuous current through the Dr.MOS power stage solution & 60A Power Chokes.

The VRMs are covered by a single heatsink which is made of aluminum and part of the XXL Aluminum Alloy heatsink design. The heatsink is colored in grey and has cuts within them to add to the aesthetics.

One thing the motherboard severely lacks is the pre-installed I/O cover. That should have become standard by now but it looks like motherboard vendors are avoiding that feature on sub-$200 US offerings.

The CPU is supplied with power through an 8 + 4 power connector. This will feed the CPU with up to 225 Watts of power. Most AMD CPUs will be shipping with TDPs of up to 105W but that changes when users overclock since that changes the power limit based on applied voltages and clock speeds.

Expansion slots include three PCI Express 4.0 x16 (x16/x8/x4 electrical), three PCI Express 4.0 x1, & dual hyper M.2 slots. The board can support 3-way multi-GPU (CrossFireX / SLI). The M.2 slots are rated to support NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD.

The ASRock X570S PG Riptide motherboard adopts the latest PCIe steel slot design which is built with more solder points on the PCB for better performance and preventing any signal interference with graphics cards. This allows your graphics cards to be fed with better quality signals and to be safely and securely installed in the PCIe slots.

There are two Hyper M.2 slots on the motherboard that operate through PCI Express 4.0 x4 link at speeds of 64 GB/s. Both slots are ideally placed. One of them is located at the top of the first PCIe 4.0 x16 slot while the other is situated under the second PCI-e 4.0 x16 slot with ample room for up to 110mm M.2 drive/memory support. The topmost Hyper M.2 slot features the M.2 armor heat-sink for better cooling.

In addition to these two, there’s a third M.2 Gen 4 x4 slot which is used as a mount for a WiFi module (not included with the motherboard).

The X570 PCH is housed beneath a large heatsink with the ‘PG’ logo embedded on it. The PCH comes also utilizes Polychrome Sync RGB which is fully user-customizable. Do note that there’s no active cooling solution on the PCH heatsink.

Storage options include six SATA III ports rated to operate at 6 Gb/s. These can support a total of 8 different storage devices at the same time.

ASRock is using the ALC 897 audio codec audio system on this motherboard that has its own audio PCB isolated from the rest of the board. This is part of the Purity Sound 4 system which includes a combination of hardware and software audio solutions such as the use of surge protection and Nahimic Audio.

The motherboard has a single onboard USB 3.2 Gen 2 port which can be used to connect the front panel. There’s also two USB 3.2 Gen 1 front-panel header which can allow for up to four USB 3.2 Gen two ports. A list of connectors available internally on the motherboard include:

1 x Power LED and Speaker Header
2 x RGB LED Headers
2 x Addressable LED Headers
1 x CPU Fan Connector (4-pin)
1 x CPU/Water Pump Fan Connector (4-pin) (Smart Fan Speed Control)
5 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
1 x Thunderbolt AIC Connector (5-pin) (Supports ASRock Thunderbolt 4 AIC Card only)
2 x USB 2.0 Headers (Support 4 USB 2.0 ports) (Supports ESD Protection)
2 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Headers (Support 4 USB 3.2 Gen1 ports) (Supports ESD Protection)
1 x Front Panel Type C USB 3.2 Gen2 Header (Supports ESD Protection)
1 x Clear CMOS Button

The I/O on the motherboard includes a WiFi module with 2 antenna ports, 1 PS/2 port, 1 HDMI port, 1 optical SPDIF out port, 1 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, 1 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, 4 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 1 RJ 45 LAN port (Intel Gigabit LAN), 1 BIOS Flashback button and a 7.1 channel audio jack.