ASRock Z790 PG Sonic Motherboard Assessment

Introduction, Specs, and Pricing

With a lot of our AMD motherboard overview inventory now wrapped up, we shift our focus to Intel’s 700 sequence motherboards, the primary out of the gate being the Z790 PG Sonic from ASRock. This board is constructed on their mid-tier Phantom Gaming platform that’s centered on players.

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On the high, this board incorporates a 14+1+1 energy section design and is a Socket LGA1700 providing, supporting each twelfth and thirteenth Gen Intel processors. Reminiscence assist comes over 4 slots permitting for 128GB of capability. Most speeds are as much as 6800MHz with an overclock, and this motherboard helps XMP 3.0.

The enlargement consists of three PCIe slots. The highest slot operates at x16 with Gen5 know-how, the second slot runs at x8 at Gen4, and the underside slot grabs chipset lanes x1 at PCIe 3.0. Storage lives on the PCIe bus with a single PCIe 5.0 slot for the most recent SSDs and 4 extra M.2 slots working at Gen4. SATA is offered with eight ports for legacy drives.

Connectivity on this board is kind of good, beginning with USB connectivity that features two USB 2.0 ports, three USB 3.2 Gen 1, and two extra USB 3.2 Gen 2. We end the rear I/O with DP, HDMI, and a couple of.5Gbe supplied by Intel Killer.

Pricing

Pricing on the ASRock Z790 PG Sonic is available in at $249.99 with a one-year guarantee.

Packaging, Equipment, and Overview

The field artwork on this motherboard has actually been dressed up. The entrance has Sonic branding, whereas the underside proper particulars the reminiscence, chipset, and CPU.

On the bottom, we now have specs alongside the underside and board structure throughout the highest.

Included with the board are SATA cables, the consumer guide, and a Wi-Fi antenna.

Motherboard Overview

PG Sonic is designed based mostly on the Riptide in the identical sequence. Heatsinks cowl the key factors on the board, together with the VRM, M.2 slots, and chipset.

The again of the board is silk-screened with extra Sonic branding.

The rear I/O begins on the high with DP and HDMI show outputs for built-in graphics. We then shortly transfer into the USB ports talked about above, adopted by 2.5Gbe and audio.

Beginning our tour, this board provided entrance panel audio backside left adopted by a Thunderbolt 4 AIC enter, RGB, and a number of USB 2.0 headers.

We run into SATA ports and entrance panel chassis connections on the far proper.

Across the nook, we now have six extra SATA connections.

Shifting up the aspect, we run into USB 3.2 inside headers for Gen1 and a couple of, 24-pin energy, and fan headers.

Throughout the highest, we now have extra fan headers sitting subsequent to our reminiscence slots.

Final, we wrap this board up with two eight-pin energy connections.

UEFI, Software program and Take a look at System

UEFI

The BIOS for the PG Sonic is appropriately themed for the board, together with the primary menu providing {hardware} data in a number of home windows. Alongside the left aspect, we now have CPU, reminiscence, and storage configuration, whereas the best aspect permits you to change the ability settings, handle followers and alter the boot precedence.

Going into superior mode, we now have one more {hardware} window to start out us off, adopted by Tweaker, which permits us to vary settings for the CPU and reminiscence and save profiles. Superior strikes extra into the configuration for the onboard elements; this consists of CPU energy and chipset choices, storage config inside NVMe, and USB setup.

Instruments provide you with entry to configure RGB on the motherboard. That is alongside Safe Erase and NVMe Sanitization.

Motherboard Testing Supporters

Sabrent helps our storage testing with the Rocket 4 Plus.

TweakTown Intel Motherboard Take a look at System

Cinebench R23, Crossmark and AIDA64

Cinebench R23

Cinebench is a long-standing render benchmark that has been closely relied upon by each Intel and AMD to spotlight their latest platforms throughout unveils. The benchmark has two assessments, a single-core workload using one thread or 1T and a multi-threaded take a look at that makes use of all threads or nT of a examined CPU.

The PG Sonic began off with a 2078 single thread and 28881 multi-thread rating with our 13700K.

CrossMark

CrossMark pushed and landed us a 2521 total rating for the Sonic.

AIDA64

In AES, we picked up 223963, which was in keeping with earlier motherboards.

SHA3 tapped in with 6421 for the PG Sonic.

Reminiscence latency landed at 66.9ns on BIOS 3.05.

UL Procyon and 3DMark

UL Procyon Suite

The UL Procyon Workplace Productiveness Benchmark makes use of Microsoft Workplace apps to measure PC efficiency for workplace productiveness work.

The Picture Enhancing benchmark makes use of Adobe Lightroom to import, course of, and modify a choice of pictures. Within the second a part of the take a look at, a number of edits and layer results are utilized to {a photograph} in Adobe Photoshop.

Our Procyon outcomes landed with 10319 for Workplace and 11271 for Picture, each on par with different boards.

3DMark

Stepping into our 3DMark workloads, we choose up with CPU Profile. This offers us 1149 single thread and 10821 at sixteen threads.

Timespy landed at 21841 total with our 3090 Ti.

Shifting over to Velocity Means, we picked up a rating of 5921.

Storage Benchmark on the PG Sonic was a bit decrease than regular. Our Sabrent drive pulled a rating of 3672.

Gaming Benchmarks and Closing Ideas

Gaming, we use Cyberpunk 2077 at three resolutions. On the high, we now have 1080p, the place PG Sonic grabbed 201 FPS. 1440p, we picked up 162 FPS, and at 4K, we managed 91 FPS.

Closing Ideas

In testing, we spent a number of days with the PG Sonic, coming away from testing fairly stunned by the board total. I anticipated extra options to be reduce from this board to hit the value level, however ASRock has performed fairly effectively, solely nipping Wi-Fi from the construct specs. That mentioned, Wi-Fi might be added to this board with out a lot problem, although you’ll have to buy the proper antenna and Wi-Fi module your self. These wanting to do that will probably need to choose up one of many extra trendy Killer Wi-Fi modules since this method already has Killer integration with the two.5Gbe.

Shifting away from construct high quality, we switched gears to check outcomes and our charts, the place for essentially the most half, the PG Sonic was on par with our different Z790 motherboards. R23 confirmed this with stable ends in single and multi-thread, and Crossmark, this board was a mere 40 factors from being the most effective we now have examined. AIDA64 can be tough on boards, although the Sonic had no points in both AES or SHA3, and latency ended up fairly good at 66.9ns.

Gaming eventualities did fairly effectively on PG Sonic, too, with Timespy giving us our second-highest rating up to now, whereas Velocity Means put the board in keeping with previous platforms. Operating our Cyberpunk benchmarks, we famous the PG Sonic had no points maintaining with our different Z790 motherboards, producing 201 FPS at 1080p.

Pricing for this board is kind of affordable, with the MSRP set at $249.99 at launch. Purchasing round, we now have seen the PG Sonic as little as $209.99 at a number of retailers, at present making it one of many more cost effective motherboards for these wanting to construct on Intel Z790.