ASRock Intros B550 Rock WiFi Socket AM4 Motherboard

Socket AM4 is here to stay as long as DDR4 memory remains affordable, and AMD resurrected the Ryzen 7 5800X3D to restore a flagship gaming processor and upgrade path for this platform. Motherboard vendors are trickling out a new crop of AM4 motherboards. ASRock recently debuted its Rock brand of entry-mainstream motherboards and recently a new product to its lineup, the B550 Rock WiFi. Built in the ATX form-factor, this board features a modern product styling from the Rock series, with its blocky chipset/VRM heatsinks. It draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and single 8-pin EPS connectors; and uses an 8+2 phase CPU VRM.

The Socket AM4 is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots, supporting a maximum of 128 GB of DDR4-3200 memory; the board’s PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slot, and an M.2 NVMe Gen 4 x4 slot with an included heatsink. Besides this M.2 slot, the board offers a second M.2 Gen 3 x4, and four SATA 6 Gbps ports. Networking options include a 2.5 GbE wired Ethernet driven by a Realtek DragonLAN RTL8125BG controller; and a Realtek RTL8852CE WLAN module in an easy to upgrade M.2-2230 E-key slot that offers Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 interfaces. The onboard audio solution is an entry-level one, driven by a Realtek ALC897 HDA codec.