The ASRock Z490 PG Velocita Motherboard Review: It Means SPEED

Board Features

The ASRock Z490 PG Velocita is an ATX-sized offering catering to the mid-range which is targeting gamers. The PG stands for Phantom Gaming which is one of ASRock's premium gaming series, with the Velocita coming from the Italian word for speed. It uses a typical mid-range feature set which includes dual PCIe 3.0/SATA M.2 slots, with eight SATA ports, six from the chipset with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 support, and two from an ASMedia SATA controller. The board has four memory slots with supported speeds of DDR4-4666 and a total capacity of up to 128 GB. In the middle section of the board are two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots that run at x16/+x4, with three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. Located around the board are seven 4-pin fan connectors, with one dedicated to a CPU, one for an optional CPU fan and water pump, and five for chassis fans.

The ASRock Z490 PG Velocita omits any form of a wireless interface, which is a little disappointing given some models it competes with include Wi-Fi 6. Focusing on what's included, is a pair of USB 3.2 G2 ports (Type-A and Type-C, with four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports. Users looking to use integrated graphics can make use of the HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.4 video output pairing, while the board includes a premium Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec with a TI NE5532 headset amplifier to bolster the quality of the front panel audio. Networking wise, the PG Velocita has two Ethernet ports, with one powered by a Realtek RTL8125BG 2.5 G Ethernet controller and the other by a standard Intel I219-V Gigabit controller.

Test Bed

As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.

Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.

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