ASRock Z490 PG Velocita Motherboard Overview
The ASRock Z490 PG Velocita is your standard ATX motherboard and has the black, silver, and red color design that we know the Phantom Gaming line for. The board is distinguished by the large I/O cover and heatsinks for the chipset and M.2 slots. These as well as the board itself have streaks going across, which gives the board a unique look.
Starting at the CPU socket we have Intel’s new LGA1200 socket. This socket only supports 10th Generation Intel Core “Comet Lake-S” processors as well as upcoming 11th generation “Rocket Lake” processors. ASRock is making use of a 10+2+1 power phase design that incorporates 50 A DrMOS power stages and 12K capacitors. So with 12 phases all at 50 A the board has a maximum power output of 600 A.
Power into the board for the CPU is by way of two 8-pin EPS connectors. This is the first time I’ve seen dual 8-pin EPS connectors on an Intel board from ASRock!
As I said ASRock has really put an emphasis on VRM cooling with this board. The top section of the board comes together with the I/O cover and VRM heatsinks, which looks quite nice, but at first glance you might not notice the VRM cooling. The two VRM heatsinks are attached with a heatpipe and behind the top heatsink are two active cooling fans, these are designed to push air down through the top heatsink. The third active cooling fan sits embedded in the other VRM heatsink.
Moving over to the memory slots we have four DDR4 DIMM slots which support memory up to DDR4-4666+ (O.C.). These slots are not metal reinforced, but they do not have the locks on the bottom, which make swapping out memory once you have a graphics card installed much easier. Right before the DDR4 DIMM slots is your 4-pin CPU fan header.
Along the edge of the board you have a 4-pin fan header, 3-pin addressable RGB header, 24-pin ATX power connection, 4-pin fan header, a USB 3.2 gen 1 Type-C header, a USB 3.2 gen 1 normal header, and a 4-pin standard RGB header.
Moving down the board you have another USB 3.2 gen 1 header and eight SATA 6GB/s ports, all of which are at a 90-degree angle.. The first six are controlled by the Z490 chipset, while the last two are powered by the ASMedia ASM1061 controller.
Along the bottom of the board is of course where you’ll find the rest of your headers and connections. From left to right you have your HD audio header, Thunderbolt header, two 4-pin fan headers, 4-pin standard RGB header, two USB 2.0 headers, a 3-pin addressable RGB header, TPM header, power and reset buttons, another 4-pin fan header, front panel headers, and a POST code display. I love seeing power and reset buttons on the board as well as the POST code display.
The bottom half of the board is characterized by large heatsinks. There are the two heatsinks on the M.2 slots and the chipset heatsink. ASRock has designed them so the go together, which looks pretty good. As far as expansion slots go there are two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots and three PCI-Express 3.0 x1 slots. The two x16 slots are metal reinforced.
There are technically three M.2 slots on this board, even though at first glance it looks like there are only two. At the bottom you have a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 M.2 slot that supports M.2 drives up to 110 mm. The top M.2 slots are a little weird. The “M2_2” slot is also a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 slot, while the “M2_1” slot is a Gen4 slot for future Rocket Lake processors. The whole idea is that if you upgrade your processor you’ll have Gen4 capabilities on this board. The way the top M.2 slots are designed you can only install a single drive there. There is not a WiFi card included with this board, but there is a dedicated M.2 WiFi slot if you wanted to purchase one.
Audio on this board is located on the bottom left of the board like usual. Here you have the Realtek ALC1220 codec with a 120dB SNR DAC with Differential Amplifier and the NE5532 Premium Headset Amplifier for Front Panel Audio Connector (Supports up to 600 Ohm headsets). The audio hardware has PCB isolation from the other components on the board and individual PCB layers for right and left channel audio.
Moving on to the rear I/O there is an integrated I/O, which seems all but standard these days. As far as connection go from left to right we have DisplayPort, HDMI, a combo PS/2 port, four USB 3.2 gen 1 type-A ports, two ethernet ports, USB 3.2 Gen 2 type-A port, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, antenna holes, and your audio connections. The blue Ethernet port is a 2.5 Gigabit port powered by the Realtek Dragon RTL8125BG. The other is your standard 1 Gigabit port powered by the Intel I219V.
For those wondering about lighting on the board there are RGB lights on the I/O cover and on the chipset heatsink.
