With our last look at the X570 refresh, ASRock sent over the PG Riptide earlier in the year just as we were getting swamped by Z690 boards for Intel's new Alder Lake platform. Pushing through that stack of motherboards, we finally got to sit down with the PG Riptide, run it through our testing and give our verdict on this mid-range gamer solution.

The X570S PG Riptide offers support for Ryzen 3000,4000 and 5000 series CPUs all on the AM4 socket. Memory support includes DDR4, 2133MHz to 5000MHz across four slots at a max capacity of 128GB. CPU power design is 10-phase 50A, Dr Mos; plenty for overclocking the likes of the 5600X and possibly 5800X as well.

For connectivity, we have one PCIe 4.0 slot shielded at the top, followed by two additional slots coming off the chipset at Gen4 as well. Storage connectivity includes six SATA III connections and two Hyper M.2 slots for Gen4 NVMe drives. Audio has had corners cut with the ALC897 being deployed on this motherboard. However, LAN has been upgraded to the Killer E3100G platform with 2.5Gbe capability.

External connectivity includes a host of USB ports, two USB 2.0 alongside PS/2 for keyboard mouse, and USB 3.2, both Gen1 with four ports and Gen 2 with two ports on the rear I/O. ASRock has left open a slot for adding Wi-Fi, and you can pick up the Killer AX1650 for around $30 US to have a fully functioning Killer platform that includes Doubleshot Pro, Xtend, etc.

The ASRock X570S PG Riptide comes in at $184.99 with a three-year warranty.

The packaging gives us a large Phantom Gaming logo and subsequent ASRock branding below. Chipset and CPU support ride along the bottom of the box.

The rear of the packaging includes features below and specs above, including a rear I/O layout.

Accessories include a rear I/O plate, ASRock GPU support, and SATA cables.

The Riptide is a basic board not overly done up with heat sink armor and RGB. It offers four memory slots top right, center lined AM4 socket for CPU, and VRM heat sink on the left. The main Gen4 PCIe slot is shielded, and both m.2 slots include heat sinks. Power connections are in the usual places, 24pin for the board and 8+4 for the CPU.

The back of the board is mostly blank, no added armor, etc.

Rear I/O includes HDMI at the top, followed by USB 2.0, USB 3.2 in both Gen1 and two flavors, and audio at the bottom. ASRock includes a bracket for adding an m.2 module for Wi-Fi and antennas.

Front panel audio kicks off our walk around the board. You will find a couple of USB 2.0 headers down here as well.

USB 3.2 sits next to the front panel connections.

Around the corner, we have SATA connections followed by another USB 3.2 header to the far right.

Near the top of the board, we run into a Gen2 header and the 24-pin power.

Across the top, we have two RGB connections and two fan outputs.

Last, we have the 8+4pin CPU power.

BIOS layout has stayed consistent across most ASRock platforms; starting with the easy mode, you will get all information about the CPU and RAM along the top, including frequency and temperature. The boot sequence shows installed drives and fan controls to the right.

Advanced mode is where you will find tweaking tools for CPU and memory, including voltages. AORUS has additional options in the IO Ports menu; these include the ability to disable IGP and configure LAN controls, Thunderbolt, and storage.

Sabrent supports our storage testing with the Rocket 4 Plus.

Cinebench is a long-standing render benchmark that has been heavily relied upon by both Intel and AMD to showcase their newest platforms during unveils. The benchmark has two tests, a single-core workload that will utilize one thread or 1T. There is also a multi-threaded test that uses all threads or nT of a tested CPU.

I decided to show raw results for this review; this includes a 1598 score in 1T and 14765 in nT.

AIDA64 memory gave us 49K read, 28K write, and 44K copy with 67ns of latency.

AES offered 144635 from our 5800X.

PCMark is a benchmark from UL and tests various workload types to represent typical workloads for a PC. Everything from video conferencing, image import, and editing, along with 3D rendering, are tested.

The overall score in PCMark was 7782; the breakdown includes 10520 for Essentials, 9843 for Productivity, and 12352 for Digital Content.

PG Riptide brought in 1639 in CrossMark.

CPU Profile gave us a max thread score of 7531 with 8t moving to 6270 and single-core at 959.

Timespy scored 11122 for the PG Riptide.

We started our storage testing with SATA. Here we picked up 552 MB/s read and 474 MB/s write.

Our Rocket NVMe was able to push 6430 MB/s read and 5243 MB/s write.

Last, the USB 3.2 ports on the rear I/O offered up 1030 MB/s read and 944 MB/s write.

The PG Riptide is a modest motherboard with just enough connectivity for entry-level gamers. The board design is basic with a no-frills approach when compared to much of the market that pushes full armor heatsinking and RGB madness on their boards. This in itself can be a plus for consumers that don't want all the extras, including the additional cost.

In that sense, the PG Riptide is a solid platform, still on X570, so users will get the benefits of enhanced PCIe 4.0 for both GPUs and storage and a more robust profile of USB connectivity, including USB-C and Gen2 technology. Killer LAN has been added, so consumers that want a bit more control over their networking can have that through Killer Control Center, and with the addition of an AX1650 Wi-Fi module, users can gain the full experience.

In testing, the PG Riptide performed without issue. All the numbers from the benchmarks above are within a few percent of top-end X570 platforms, so consumers need not worry about this mid-range board costing them performance.

On the flip side, the power design will undoubtedly leave some wanting more, especially if you get into overclocking with or without PBO, though I had no issues with our 5800X.

PG Riptide represents ASRock's continued commitment to the gamer with a budget platform built on AMD's flagship chipset.

Tyler joined the TweakTown team in 2013 and has since reviewed 100s of new techy items. Growing up in a small farm town, tech wasn't around, unless it was in a tractor. At an early age, Tyler's parents brought home their first PC. Tyler was hooked and learned what it meant to format a HDD, spending many nights reinstalling Windows 95. Tyler's love and enthusiast nature always kept his PC nearby. Eager to get deeper into tech, he started reviewing.