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ASRock’s App Shop provides the dual role of serving out ASRock’s own software and approved third party software (some of dubious value), but also includes a MSI Live Update-style function which scans for certain BIOS and driver versions and informs the user when a newer version is available. It’s reasonably useful for both of its provided functions and isn’t too intrusive, but does pop up the occasional notification in Windows 10.
F-Stream, the Fatal1ty-branded A-Tuning, is ASRock’s equivalent to ASUS AI Suite, Gigabyte EasyTune and MSI Command Centre. This software allows you to overclock on the fly (OTF) and tune the fan speeds with the ASRock Fan-Tastic tuning. It’s a reasonably well polished piece of software, is light on system resources and not very intrusive.
In our experience the fan tuning is still better off carried out within the UEFI environment, the same applies for OTF overclocking, but there’s no harm in ASRock offering the software equivalent for those that prefer.
Restart to UEFI does exactly what it says on the tin and is handy if you’re not quite quick enough on the F2 or Delete keys.
ASRock Polychrome RGB seems to be a rebranding of the previous ASRock AURA RGB, perhaps due to naming similarities with the ASUS AURA RGB solution. The new software is a little bit slicker with handy visualisations of each of the available zones that can be altered – on this board it's those two RGB headers only. The way the colours and modes are changed is the same as predecessor software. It works by selecting the colour on the outer ring first, then the inner square after and then you can pick the style from the drop down menu, there are currently 7 modes as shown above.
At some point in the future we expect ASRock may integrate RGB into its graphics cards though at the moment there are still a range of other computer hardware products that are compatible with ASRock’s Polychrome RGB Sync, as listed on ASRock’s microsite.
When a mouse is plugged into the Fatal1ty mouse port its polling rate can be manually adjusted up to 1000Hz in the ASRock Mouse Polling software. In many cases gaming mice have their own software for polling rate adjustments but where they do not this offers a functional solution.
ASRock Key Master is similar to the ASUS ROG Keybot, except it is a purely software-based implementation, ASUS implements a specific IC to control its key macro functions. This means the ASRock solution has a little bit less functionality and in practice the software is a bit clunky. The lack of user experience and usability testing for software development with ASRock's customers is evident, though other motherboard vendors are equally guilty of this.
