ASRock Z590 PG Velocita review - Introduction

Asrock Z590 PG Velocita review 
A High-Velocity motherboard?

In this review, we present the Asrock Z590 PG Velocita motherboard. This is a product from the Phantom Gaming range, which includes the Phantom Gaming 4 mATX, the 4/ac, and the Phantom Gaming ITX boards. Asrock has also the Taichi, Extreme, Steel Legend, and Pro series, so you can choose whichever tier suits you. The PG Velocita is a higher-end product line within the Phantom Gaming family. “Velocità” is Italian for “Velocity”, and here it’s supposed to tell you that this is the top product in the PG range. Still, if we compare it with the rest of the Asrock line-up, this is actually more of a mid-tier Intel socket 1200 board. It should give you the most important features, while also providing a level of stability and extras you won’t find in the cheaper models. The design is very attractive. Dynamic, yet stylish, the Asrock Z590 PG Velocita uses a black-and-silver design, on an all-black PCB. This is a 30.5 x 24.4 cm product, and that’s typical of the ATX form factor. It’s equipped with the Z590 chipset, and it offers such features as a 14-phase power design, 2.5 Gigabit ethernet (also 1 Gigabit), and a built-in Wi-Fi receiver. Priced at about € 299.00 USD, it’s not one of the cheapest boards out there.

Te features that would make it stand out from the crowd of other Z590 products (from other manufacturers), well, there just aren’t too many.

• CPU Direct Source LAN (Patent Pending) - the Killer E3100 2.5G LAN chip architecture on Z590 PG Velocita can be chosen to be controlled directly by the CPU. Hence, it can benefit a new gaming experience in lower latency, faster internet network, and the overall performance a huge boost.
• Lightning Gaming Ports (Patent Pending) – that is aimed at die-hard gamers and enthusiasts. Lightning Gaming Ports are sourced from two different controller interfaces that allow gamers to connect the high-speed mice/keyboard with the lowest jitter latency and win the best performance.
• ASRock Graphics Card Holder (Patent Pending) – this allows installing your heavy graphics card on the holder; connect it to your motherboard and chassis with screws. Flexible slide up and down to perfectly adjust the height required for your graphics card in place.

The ASRock Z590 PG Velocita includes three full-length PCIe slots with ASRock Steel Armor protection. The top two slots support PCIe 4.0 x16, and x8/x8, the third slot is PCIe 3.0 x4, and there’s also a single PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. You can find two Ethernet controllers on this board, namely a Killer E3100 2.5 GbE and an Intel Gigabit. Wireless is provided by the new Killer AX1675 Wi-Fi 6E CNVi with support for BT 5.2 devices. There are three M.2 Sockets for your SSDs: one of them supports PCIe Gen4 x4, and the rest is PCIe Gen3 x4. You also get six SATA ports. As for the audio, you get the Realtek® ALC1220 codec. The power section is really good, as it’s a 14-phase design that should really help handle even the most demanding CPUs, such as the 10-core i9 10900K or the upcoming 8-core i9 11900K. There are four memory slots with support for up to 128 GB total of DDR4-4800. There is some good information for RGB fans here as well: two regular RGB LED headers and two addressable RGB LED headers. On-board power and reset buttons are located in the top-right corner, while a two-digit LED debugger sits at the bottom right. Lighting can be synchronized across a range of ASRock Polychrome RGB-certified accessories. So what does Z590 mean in reality? It'll be in the short form here, more information you'll find on the next page. These are the differences between the new Z590 and the previous flagship, Z490:

• First up is the CPU-to-chipset link, which has been doubled, going from DMI x4 to  DMI x8 link (but only with the Rocket Lake CPUs). 
• The second difference is that the processor uses PCIe 4.0, 20 lanes of it, which will allow a full x16 link for add-in cards, as well as another PCIe 4.0 x4 for storage. 
• The third update is native USB 3.2 G2x2 (20 Gbps) Type-C support from the chipset.

For this review, we'll rock this Z590 motherboard (which is priced at 299 USD) with a ten-core, twenty-thread Core i9 10850K, and take it through our benchmark paces. The board, as stated, is positioned in the high end of what is considered the mainstream segment, and it does look very nice. Let’s have a closer look then, shall we?