A Closer Look
So moving onto the main course: the motherboard, and I’m liking it. With the black PCB and the black and silver accents on the heatsinks, it looks extremely premium and from the get-go, you can see that ASRock have squeezed a lot into the ATX form factor. Something that other brands have tried to do, but have ended up pushing into EATX territory, which again all adds cost, which is something ASRock were keen to focus on with this “Lite” moniker of board.
Even though this is for the price conscious, coming in at $399, we still have an 8 layer, 2oz copper PCB and there’s a good amount of metal in places to add to the board’s rigidity, styling but more importantly to keep things cool and under control.
Flipping things over, we do find a bare PCB on the rear, which again helps to keep costs down, but also is unlikely to assist in cooling as while this board is high-end, it’s not at the more extreme levels where a backplate to help cool components is needed.
While this board has a lot of features, it doesn’t look too busy, as the space has been utilised very well, and there’s the smallest amount of RGB on the board’s M.2 cover, which just gives it that extra level of design flair, along with that synonymous gear/cog style design on the chipset heatsink, M.2 heatsink and rear I/O cover. This RGB can of course be controlled through the Polychrome software, or can be completely turned off if you’re not into light shows, but of course, that’s all personal preference and down to the individual user.
RGB lighting to one side, though the board does look simple in some aspects, I really like the theme and how clean it looks. At a first glance, it’s hard to believe that this board can take six M.2 drives, and that shows that they’ve really thought about the placement of components on this board to again offer substance over style, but that’s not to say that they’ve completely forgotten about the style part, as I think anyone looking at a board like this wouldn’t be disappointed in the design department.
