ASRock X299E-ITX/ac Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. Board Layout and Features4. Bitspower Water Block and G.Skill Ripjaws SO-DIMMs5. UEFI6. Software7. Testing Methodology8. Tests: CPU Related9. Tests: Memory Related10. Tests: Gaming Related11. Tests: Motherboard Features Performance12. Overclocking & Power Consumption13. Closing Thoughts14. View All Pages

A-Tuning, ASRock’s equivalent to ASUS AI Suite, Gigabyte EasyTune and MSI Command Centre, allows you to overclock on-the-fly and tune the fan speeds with the ASRock FAN-Tastic tuning functionality. It’s a reasonably well polished piece of software, is light on system resources and not very intrusive.

ASRock’s App Shop provides the dual role of serving out ASRock’s own software and approved third party software, 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.

 

The ASRock AURA RGB LED software allows you to individually tune the LED regions of the motherboard which is only a single RGB header for this motherboard. It works by selecting the colour on the outer ring first, then the inner ring after and then you can pick the style from the drop down menu, there are currently 7 modes as shown above.

Each zone can be set individually or you can apply the same setting to all four zones. We tested ASRock’s RGB LED system with CableMod strips and used a splitter cable to add the Bitspower BP-WBMASRX299EI waterblock which has baked-in RGB LEDs, and it all functioned without issue. There’s definitely room to add more functionality and features but sometimes the simple implementation is the best.

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