Asrock wants to ride the AMD wave in 2020 like it did last year

[nanoguy]

In context: AMD has big plans for 2020, which can be summarized as "doubling down" on beefier 7nm CPUs and GPUs. Asrock, who is known for its motherboards and PC hardware offerings, has seen its revenues soar thanks to gamers buying its AMD-based motherboards, so the company is expecting even bigger gains for the year ahead.

Asrock isn't the biggest player in the motherboard market, but the company may have found the perfect opportunity to boost its position within the industry by doubling down on motherboards with AMD chipsets.

Recently, the Taiwan-based manufacturer reported surprisingly strong revenue of NT$13.415 billion ($442.96 million) in 2019, a surge of 31.6 percent when compared to the previous year. According to a report from Digitimes, the company saw relatively poor sales during the first two quarters for its motherboards and graphics cards, followed by a very good third quarter where it registered a 110 percent increase in net earnings.

The improvements stem from AMD graphics cards becoming profitable towards the end of last year, particularly in the US and European markets. Couple that with higher demand for its IPC and server solutions, and Asrock found the right recipe for even better growth numbers in 2020.

Asrock is looking to ride the wave of PC gamers that are increasingly turning to AMD's processors, which is a good bet when you consider how the latter is preparing even more potent hardware for 2020.

AMD CEO Lisa Su recently confirmed that "Big Navi" and Zen 3 are indeed coming this year with a bang, which is why Asrock is going to dedicate more of its attention towards AMD-based solutions.

The motherboard market is valued at almost $13 billion in 2020 and expected to grow in the next five years. Asrock is betting a lot on its DeskMini PCs, particularly the ones based around AMD's A300 chipset. Then it also has the Phantom Gaming Radeon 5000 series of graphics cards up its sleeve. These efforts won't help it overtake the likes of Asus, Gigabyte or MSI, but they'll certainly give it a boost in the right direction.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/83840-asrock-wants-ride-amd-wave-2020-like-did.html

 

[texasrattler]

Let them. They arent even known to be a good company. Decent at best. There are much better companies out there.

 

[bviktor]

Let them. They arent even known to be a good company. Decent at best. There are much better companies out there.

ASRock is the mini ITX king, if you want to build something of that size, you usually don't even have a choice but go ASRock. For example the Intel J5005 is simply the best fanless desktop HTPC SoC in the World, yet there's only one motherboard ever built around it. Guess the manufacturer... but it's not only the low-end, they have awesome i7/i9 boards as well.

You can go even higher. A few weeks ago I had to build a beefy workstation around the 3960X, and I went with the ASRock TRX40 Creator due to availability, features and price. It checked all the boxes. Naturally, every colleague's initial reaction was like "ASRock? You sure bout that?" But no regrets so far, been running buttersmooth ever since the initial setup. Even though we run RHEL on it, not Windows. And not even the latest release of RHEL. That board has everything you could possibly want, and then some. The price is ridiculous for what is offers.

ASRock may be the underdog, but they definitely have a lot of good products. I've had like 10 ASRock boards to date, but none of them failed on me so far (knock knock).

 

[Evernessince]

Let them. They arent even known to be a good company. Decent at best. There are much better companies out there.

Simply not true. AsRock really become well known with their Z77 motherboards, specifically the Z77 Extreme4. They have made many good products over the years. Their boards are typically overbuilt and stable.

 

[Wrath]

Asrock has some really good itx and micro atx AM4 motherboards, on top of that their Itachi and phantom 5700xt GPU's are solid. They have surprised me greatly to the point that I had to purchase a board and gpu for a build recently. I hope they continue with the surprises, maybe with a consumer version of that itx x570 board with 4 ram slots or a big navi gpu with rgb on all fans.

 

[cliffordcooley]

If I were to buy a motherbaord or GPU that is not MSI. It would be an Asrock brand.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Biostar, that's a brand I have bad memories with.

 

[Panda218]

Simply not true. AsRock really become well known with their Z77 motherboards, specifically the Z77 Extreme4. They have made many good products over the years. Their boards are typically overbuilt and stable.

Exactly! Funny enough I have that z77 Extreme4 still running a PC my girlfriend uses to game on once and a while.

 

[scavengerspc]

If I were to buy a motherbaord or GPU that is not MSI. It would be an Asrock brand.

Ah an MSI fan. Same here (and Asus), and I even have an MSI gaming laptop I bought over the holidays.

But back to Asrock. I realize it is just a sample of one, but I bought an Asrock P45R2000-WiFi in early 2008 and it ended up later with a C2Q 9550 that made it to 4 GHz. It filtered through myself and my family and then in 2015 I donated it to the Wrightsville Library in Little Rock and they are still using it.

 

[treetops]

Unless you're ocing who cares what mobo mnfer it is. Get an old 350 370 450 etc, $100 for a bios update is absurd.

 

[hk2000]

Let them. They arent even known to be a good company. Decent at best. There are much better companies out there.

How do you figure? Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better- I had ASUS boards and Gigabyte boards fail on me multiple times- I never had ASROK board fail, and yes, I have several of them in use for many years now.

 

[Irata]

Ah - so giving customers what they want leads to better sales. Who would have thought ?

Could OEM kindly take note ?

 

[BSim500]

ASRock is the mini ITX king, if you want to build something of that size, you usually don't even have a choice but go ASRock.

I'd be more impressed with their M-ITX boards if they stopped crippling Wi-Fi speeds on everything short of X470 premium boards. Even an old ASUS B150I PRO GAMING Skylake board I once had, actually matched 2x2 antenna with 2x2 AC Wi-Fi chips that actually meant 866Mbps + Bluetooth, and not "we cheaped out by attaching a 1x1 module to a 2x2 antenna so you've got half-speed 433Mbps again just to save $0.50". That was fine 7 years ago but fibre speeds have gone up since then and today it feels utterly absurd to buy a shiny new premium form-factor triple-digit price motherboard only to have it run at half the networking speed of a $40 Amazon Fire stick...

ALL motherboard manufacturers - ASRock included - need a huge kick up the rear to stop over-focusing on arr-gee-bee and start getting the basics right like it's 2020 and not recycle 2013-era connectivity for the next 7 years as well...

 

[newstark2042]

AMD is the future

 

[NightAntilli]

How do you figure? Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better- I had ASUS boards and Gigabyte boards fail on me multiple times- I never had ASROK board fail, and yes, I have several of them in use for many years now.

In my case it's the opposite. I always uses Asus boards. My latest motherboard is the Asrock X470 Taichi, and it is the first time I bought an Asrock product, and it is the first motherboard that failed on me through the years, apart from a low tier niche motherboard from Sapphire about 15 years back. That being said, their customer service was fine, and the replacement board has been solid. I guess it was just bad luck, but, I do like the board.

I don't agree that Asrock is any worse than any of the other brands, despite my bad luck with their first product. I am generally not a fan of a lot of their designs though. They are a bit too over the top. The Taichi motherboards are an exception, but if you look at the Taichi 5700XT, that thing looks atrocious. I guess they're trying to appeal to the Cyberpunk crowd, which in itself is quite a small group I imagine.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

And yet they, like the others, refuse to put out a good micro ATX motherboard for AMD. Where is the taichi micro ATX board? All I really want is a proper 6 phase VRM is all........

The pro 4 micro ATX was a pathetic attempt, and sadly was the best of the micro ATX AM4 boards. Evne then it only had a 4 phase VRM. Meanwhile Intel gets 6 and 8 phase VRMs on its micro ATX boards. Cmon asrock, where is that AMD dedication?

 

[rrwards]

And yet they, like the others, refuse to put out a good micro ATX motherboard for AMD. Where is the taichi micro ATX board? All I really want is a proper 6 phase VRM is all........

The pro 4 micro ATX was a pathetic attempt, and sadly was the best of the micro ATX AM4 boards. Evne then it only had a 4 phase VRM. Meanwhile Intel gets 6 and 8 phase VRMs on its micro ATX boards. Cmon asrock, where is that AMD dedication?

Are you sure? Looking at Asrocks AM4 micro boards, all of them have 6-9 phase VRMs.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Are you sure? Looking at Asrocks AM4 micro boards, all of them have 6-9 phase VRMs.

I'd recommend watching Buildzoid's video review of the x570m pro 4 teardown:

TL;DR: the board may have 8 phases, but they are the absolute cheapest way to make an 8 phase board, and running a stock 3900x or PBO+ 3700x the VRMs are going to get very hot indeed, because Asrock couldnt be bothered to put two of their unltra low end, high resistance regulators on each phase like everyone (including asrock) does on their ATX boards, which have the same amount of space for VRMs.

On top of all that, since their VRM is going to be putting out a decent bit of heat, they put a slab of aluminum with little surface area on the VRMs. Few fin cutouts, poor airflow. Its not a heatsink, its a heat soak, will make a great oven for the VRMs. At the least, Asrock should have put a proper VRM heatsink on to ontrol temperatures.

A quality 4 phase VRM is preferable to a crap 8 phase. While a crap 8 phase is preferable to a crap 4 phase like we were getting, its still cheap, and Asrock, being cheap, did everythign they could to make this unapealling to anyoen but budget builders that dont use PBO on a 6 core ryzen chip. This is the kind of thing I hate, mATX has the same amount of room for VRMs as full ATX boards, yet the mATX VRMs are always cut down to the point they are worse then cheap mITX boards.

 

[Irata]

And yet they, like the others, refuse to put out a good micro ATX motherboard for AMD. Where is the taichi micro ATX board? All I really want is a proper 6 phase VRM is all........

The pro 4 micro ATX was a pathetic attempt, and sadly was the best of the micro ATX AM4 boards. Evne then it only had a 4 phase VRM. Meanwhile Intel gets 6 and 8 phase VRMs on its micro ATX boards. Cmon asrock, where is that AMD dedication?

Didn‘t think you were looking at building an AMD based system.

Then maybe Asrock‘s X570 Phantom gaming with its 10 phase VRM, Thunderbolt and Wifi 6 ITX board would be something for you. Let us know how the build goes.

Edit: checked both their Intel and AMD based Pro4 mATX boards - they all seem to have the same Digi power 10 phase VRM design. Is there a difference to that regard between their Intel and AMD boards ?

They also don‘t offer any mATX Taichi boards for Intel.

 

[Evernessince]

I'd recommend watching Buildzoid's video review of the x570m pro 4 teardown:

TL;DR: the board may have 8 phases, but they are the absolute cheapest way to make an 8 phase board, and running a stock 3900x or PBO+ 3700x the VRMs are going to get very hot indeed, because Asrock couldnt be bothered to put two of their unltra low end, high resistance regulators on each phase like everyone (including asrock) does on their ATX boards, which have the same amount of space for VRMs.

On top of all that, since their VRM is going to be putting out a decent bit of heat, they put a slab of aluminum with little surface area on the VRMs. Few fin cutouts, poor airflow. Its not a heatsink, its a heat soak, will make a great oven for the VRMs. At the least, Asrock should have put a proper VRM heatsink on to ontrol temperatures.

A quality 4 phase VRM is preferable to a crap 8 phase. While a crap 8 phase is preferable to a crap 4 phase like we were getting, its still cheap, and Asrock, being cheap, did everythign they could to make this unapealling to anyoen but budget builders that dont use PBO on a 6 core ryzen chip. This is the kind of thing I hate, mATX has the same amount of room for VRMs as full ATX boards, yet the mATX VRMs are always cut down to the point they are worse then cheap mITX boards.

That's factually incorrect. If you watched the video, he specifically states the voltage controller is pretty decent. If they made it the absolute cheapest way possible, they would have used a cheaper controller. In addition, an 8-phase for an mini-ATX, regardless of if it's doubled or not, is pretty good.

Given that the 3900X runs perfectly fine on a 4 phase as tested by HardwareUnboxed:

I don't think the board will have any issue running any current AMD CPU.

"Asrock couldnt be bothered to put two of their unltra low end, high resistance regulators on each phase like everyone (including asrock) does on their ATX boards, which have the same amount of space for VRMs."

If you look at similar products from other vendors you will see the same or worse: https://www.newegg.com/colorful-cvn-x570m-gaming-pro-v14/p/2MG-001S-00004?Description=micro atx&cm_re=micro_atx-_-9SIAGKCAXF2959-_-Product

Micro-ATX board typically have weaker VRMs and sometime make the compromise of reducing ram slots by 2. The only reason there would be for including higher end parts on the motherboard would be for overclocking and there are not many getting mATX for that. Otherwise the board will more then handle anything on the market.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

That's factually incorrect. If you watched the video, he specifically states the voltage controller is pretty decent. If they made it the absolute cheapest way possible, they would have used a cheaper controller. In addition, an 8-phase for an mini-ATX, regardless of if it's doubled or not, is pretty good.

Ok Captian literal, no it is not the ABSOLUTE WORST WAY to build a VRM. It is still a VERY bad way, especially as MOSFETs and FETs are priced in literal cents, it would have cost less then a dollar to make this VRM properly bulletproof, in fact a proper 6 phase with double high and low chips would be far superior to a 8 phase with single high/low.

High phase count =! good. Just ask AM3 MSI motherboard owners how well their 8 phase motherboards held out, if you can find any that havent popped a MOSFET.

Given that the 3900X runs perfectly fine on a 4 phase as tested by HardwareUnboxed:

I don't think the board will have any issue running any current AMD CPU.

>claims a 8 phase is perfectly OK
>links a review of a motherboard that has a doubled 3 phase VRM that has a number of complaints from end users about OVERHEATING when running 8 core CPUs
>claims this motherboard is evidence of a 4 phase VRM being OK

PHEW LAD.

"Asrock couldnt be bothered to put two of their unltra low end, high resistance regulators on each phase like everyone (including asrock) does on their ATX boards, which have the same amount of space for VRMs."

If you look at similar products from other vendors you will see the same or worse: https://www.newegg.com/colorful-cvn-x570m-gaming-pro-v14/p/2MG-001S-00004?Description=micro atx&cm_re=micro_atx-_-9SIAGKCAXF2959-_-Product

This is a strawman argument. Other manufacturers doing the same thing does NOT excuse any of them from doing it. Furthermore, my point was that there are ATX motherboards that, in the same space that a microATX board has for VRMs, sport far more competent VRM designs.

Micro-ATX board typically have weaker VRMs and sometime make the compromise of reducing ram slots by 2. The only reason there would be for including higher end parts on the motherboard would be for overclocking and there are not many getting mATX for that. Otherwise the board will more then handle anything on the market.

Only recently. Unless you were living under a rock, the Asus GENE micro ATX line, the gigabyte sniper mATX line, The MSI line (whose name I cant remember) ece had the EXACT same VRM as high end ATX boards, and they fit perfectly, and ALL had 4 RAM slots, because micro ATX has the SAME amount of space for these connectors (Mini ITX is the size that requires 2 RAM slots, not micro ATX). The only difference between micro ATX and full ATX is reducing the PCI expansion area from 7 to 4, otherwise they have the same depth to play with. Those boards also sold well enough to warrant sucessive generations. Just because the OC market in mATX isnt HUGE doesnt mean the market isnt there, after all, this whole industry is a niche market, and there are far smaller niches that are catered to by these same companies, like Asus' $300 mini DTX board, which incidentlally has a far better VRM then any AMD micro ATX motherboard.

There is also the simple proplem that these same companies produce the same boards for intel processors with significantly better VRMs. What is your excuse there? Is there a reason that AMD users, once again, are given table scraps? Is there a reason that micro ATX boards have worse VRMs then the more cramped mini ITX boards do? They claim its because of low sales, but sales wont go up if you only offer garbage.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Didn‘t think you were looking at building an AMD based system.

Then maybe Asrock‘s X570 Phantom gaming with its 10 phase VRM, Thunderbolt and Wifi 6 ITX board would be something for you. Let us know how the build goes.

Edit: checked both their Intel and AMD based Pro4 mATX boards - they all seem to have the same Digi power 10 phase VRM design. Is there a difference to that regard between their Intel and AMD boards ?

They also don‘t offer any mATX Taichi boards for Intel.

They don't have the same design. Buildzoid also did a breakdown of that mITX board here:

The ITX board uses much higher quality components that put out significantly less heat then the micro ATX board does. If they HAD used the same VRM from the ITX board on the mATX, I'd probably have bought one by now.

I'm not interested in mini ITX, because mini ITX cases dont have drive bays, or a minimum number of drive bays on their cases. My home computer is a workstation, I use all 3 of my 5.25" bays, and I'd love to have even more. I also use a dedicated sound card and SATA expansion card, so mITX is out for obvious reasons.

 

[Evernessince]

It is still a VERY bad way, especially as MOSFETs and FETs are priced in literal cents, it would have cost less then a dollar to make this VRM properly bulletproof, in fact a proper 6 phase with double high and low chips would be far superior to a 8 phase with single high/low.

Yet this motherboard has a better VRM then a good amount of MicroATX boards. FYI no motherboard vendor is paying just the cost of the components. That would be ignoring all the overhead that goes into designing and assembling them and is simply misleading. That's aside from the other constraints, price isn't the only factor.

High phase count =! good. Just ask AM3 MSI motherboard owners how well their 8 phase motherboards held out, if you can find any that havent popped a MOSFET.

And yet buildzoid will tell you any day of the week that a fake 8 phase is better then a 4 phase. It doesn't have load balancing functionality but it does spread out the heat.

>claims a 8 phase is perfectly OK
>links a review of a motherboard that has a doubled 3 phase VRM that has a number of complaints from end users about OVERHEATING when running 8 core CPUs
>claims this motherboard is evidence of a 4 phase VRM being OK

Actually I linked a video from hardware unboxed showing the 3900X working nicely on 4-phase mid range boards.

Here it is again:

This is a strawman argument. Other manufacturers doing the same thing does NOT excuse any of them from doing it. Furthermore, my point was that there are ATX motherboards that, in the same space that a microATX board has for VRMs, sport far more competent VRM designs.

That's not what strawman means...

Comparing ATX motherboards to MicroATX is worthless. MicroATX has space constraints and often target a different market.

Here's a test: If this board is so bad, why don't you link about a dozen microATX motherboards from AMD's or Intel's current lineup that do better? Surely you can prove your own point with factual evidence?

Only recently. Unless you were living under a rock, the Asus GENE micro ATX line, the gigabyte sniper mATX line, The MSI line (whose name I cant remember) ece had the EXACT same VRM as high end ATX boards, and they fit perfectly, and ALL had 4 RAM slots, because micro ATX has the SAME amount of space for these connectors (Mini ITX is the size that requires 2 RAM slots, not micro ATX). The only difference between micro ATX and full ATX is reducing the PCI expansion area from 7 to 4, otherwise they have the same depth to play with. Those boards also sold well enough to warrant sucessive generations. Just because the OC market in mATX isnt HUGE doesnt mean the market isnt there, after all, this whole industry is a niche market, and there are far smaller niches that are catered to by these same companies, like Asus' $300 mini DTX board, which incidentlally has a far better VRM then any AMD micro ATX motherboard.

The Asus GENE Z390 is also double the price and the only mATX Z390 board with that many phases.

ASUS Prime Z390-A LGA 1151 ATX Intel Motherboard - Newegg.com

Buy ASUS Prime Z390-A LGA 1151 (300 Series) Intel Z390 SATA 6Gb/s ATX Intel Motherboard with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

It's literally the most expensive microATX board you can buy for the socket.

Every other mATX board has a worse VRM: https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007627 600009017&d=z390&Order=PRICED

Many of them worse then the one you are complaining about on AMD, only Intel processors use more power so they need a bigger VRM.

FY I the last time the Gigabyte sniper lineup had a mATX motherboard was Z87. You probably shouldn't tell people they are living under a rock when your information is 4 motherboard generations old.

The only difference between micro ATX and full ATX is reducing the PCI expansion area from 7 to 4, otherwise they have the same depth to play with. Those boards also sold well enough to warrant sucessive generations. Just because the OC market in mATX isnt HUGE doesnt mean the market isnt there, after all, this whole industry is a niche market, and there are far smaller niches that are catered to by these same companies, like Asus' $300 mini DTX board, which incidentlally has a far better VRM then any AMD micro ATX motherboard.

You don't seem to realize that on an ATX motherboard, a lot of fan headers, USB headers, FP Header, a portion of the chipset, audio, and wiring is on the real estate that does not exist on a mATX board. Your statement here is flat out wrong.

There is also the simple proplem that these same companies produce the same boards for intel processors with significantly better VRMs. What is your excuse there? Is there a reason that AMD users, once again, are given table scraps? Is there a reason that micro ATX boards have worse VRMs then the more cramped mini ITX boards do? They claim its because of low sales, but sales wont go up if you only offer garbage.

Well for starters, I've already proven your first statement wrong. You can go and look at the list of Intel mATX boards to see they do not sport significantly better VRMs. Second, the worse part is Intel NEEDS the better VRM as it consumes more power. If you are complaining about this 8 phase on AMD, you certainly should be complaining about it on the more power hungry Intel processors. Otherwise the AMD processors are simply putting less waste heat into the VRM.