ASRock X570 Aqua

Starting off alphabetically with ASRock, we open our X570 chipset overview with one of the most impressive and talked about models displayed at Computex, the ASRock X570 Aqua. ASRock's product stack is well varied with models focused on gaming, content creators, professional, and enthusiasts, the X570 Aqua certainly positions itself as high-end with a solid feature set, an elegant aesthetic which resembles that of Robocop's armor, and offers users an element of exclusivity due to that fact ASRock will only make 999 pieces of the X570 Aqua available to consumers.

The first thing that stands out about the ASRock X570 Aqua is the full-cover PCB armor covering the vast majority of the PCB and the large CPU water block. The ASRock X570 Aqua is an E-ATX board which has a large water block which is designed to keep the CPU cooled, and also extends to cool the X570 chipset. The armor, and the backplate on the rear makes the board much heavier than other premium models we've come to see in recent times. 

The feature set underneath the aesthetics is equally premium with an Aquantia AQC107 10 G LAN port, with an additional Intel Gigabit port included. Its Wi-Fi 6 capabilities come due to a Killer AX1650 802.11ax interface which also adds support for BT 5. A Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec provides the onboard audio, while the rear panel also uses two Thunderbolt 3 Type-C ports. This limits the boards other USB 3.1 G2 capabilities and as a result, the X570 Aqua has six rear-panel USB 3.1 G1 type-A ports, but users can add an additional four with two USB 3.1 G1 headers, and four USB 2.0 ports with a pairing of USB 2.0 headers.

One of the main features of X570 is PCIe 4.0, and the ASRock X570 Aqua makes use of three full-length PCIe 4.0 slots which run at x16 x8/x8 and x8/x8/x4; also present is three PCIe 4.0 x1 slots. Storage includes two PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots and a total of eight SATA ports. ASRock gives the X570 Aqua some impeccable memory support which is listed as DDR4-4666. 

The ASRock X570 Aqua is currently ASRock's flagship X570 motherboard in terms of features, and aesthetics. We know that the ASRock X570 Aqua will be limited to just 999 pieces worldwide, making its exclusivity one of its attracting features. The Aqua moniker signifies the targeted consumer of this board, in that only users looking to run a custom water cooled system with high-end components, will likely consider this model. This is likely to be a favorable model for case modders, or perhaps users looking to create an elegant water-cooled system with a form of exclusivity and individuality.

With an element of exclusivity, the ASRock X570 Aqua has an MSRP of $1000. This makes it the most expensive X570 model at launch, but this is expected due to the limited nature as it is limited to just 999 pieces worldwide. A heavy-set construction, the PCB covering armor and coupled with a top quality feature set make this a top option for modders, and water cooling enthusiasts.

X570 Power Delivery Specification & Comparison ASRock X570 Taichi
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  • isthisavailable - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    The industry needs to make up its mind when it comes to USB C. Laptops are launching with only USB C and meanwhile $700 motherboards only have 1 USB C port and 8+ "outdated" USB A's
  • The_Assimilator - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    It's almost like there's a huge amount of peripherals with USB-A connectors that people who use PCs expect to continue to work when they upgrade! Isn't backwards compatibility a funny feature?

    Meanwhile, the only peripherals that laptops generally use are docks, hubs, and storage devices - all of which have USB-C versions out the wazoo.
  • naris - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Why are memory speeds and channels show & discussed when talking about chipsets when the memory controllers are in the CPUs? Memory controllers have not been in chipsets for many years now!
  • halfflat - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    ECC support can be hard to verify for mere mortals; collating (or even better, verifiying) ECC capability on these motherboards would be an extremely useful addition to the article.
  • ishkatar - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    Does any of the boards support Raid 5? I only see 0, 1 and 10.
  • Zibi - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    You don't want to use RAID 5 without proper RAID Controller with cache.
    That means dedicated card.
    Actually from performance / security perspective RAID 10 is pretty OK.
  • The_Assimilator - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    AMD dropped RAID-5 support upon introduction of the AM4 socket (remember, chipset functionality like RAID is now a CPU function). I don't have an issue with that, since -5 is a very uncommon use-case in consumer workloads and if you want to do -5 right, you really want a hardware RAID card with a BBU.

    But -5 is pretty much dead anyway due to ever-increasing drive sizes - the rebuild time on anything over 1TB is horrendous, what you really want in such a scenario is RAID-6, and no consumer motherboard every has or will support that.

    And please don't tell me you're using RAID-5 for data integrity, because invisible corruption is a thing that I have experienced personally. If you want *actual* data integrity, use Windows Storage Spaces or RAID-10, and as a last resort RAID-6.
  • Arbie - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    There must be something you left out of this roundup. Whatever it was, please go back and put it in, and next time get it right. Thanks.
  • Korguz - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    huh ????
  • Gastec - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link

    That $700 must be an error right, perhaps of judgement?

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