Asrock fatal1ty x470 gaming k4 review in Spanish (full analysis)

The Fatality range is a classic from ASRock, perhaps the mythical player's pull is no longer what it was, but the range continues to offer a series of features and benefits that have made it one of the classics of this brand and one of the references in the market when we look for something cheap and good, for our new processor. We present to you the new ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4.

Wanting to see our review? Do not miss it!

We thank ASRock for the loan of the product for its analysis:

Technical characteristics ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4

Appearance and distribution

One of the classic elements of this ASRock range is the combination of red and black in many aspects of the board. They are the characteristic colors of the range and are fully maintained in this new model.

Black PCB, red accents, expanded support for RGB lighting in different zones, and a powerful processor power supply that includes 12 phases for the processor, with two different types of chokes, for finer final filtering, and two Power Phases for all four memory banks with support for up to 64GB of dual-channel, high-speed DDR4 RAM with support for Intel XMP Profiles.

Its appearance and distribution is that of a simple motherboard but perfectly equipped and adapted to the needs of a last generation PC. I especially like the cleaning and positioning of connectors, especially the M.2 slot above the main graphics slot, which leaves plenty of room to work with these two important components.

Cooling is simple, tailored to the bare minimum of AMD's latest chipsets, with a passive heatsink for the chipset, and gray anodized aluminum heatsinks for the power zone.

We have plenty of room for heatsinks, we have a nice finish in the rear connector area, and all the connectors on the board are where we expect them to be. SATA ports, sufficient and well-placed monitoring elements and sufficient and quality connectivity. It is evident that it is not one of the most powerful models of the brand, it has some shortcomings as we will see throughout this analysis.

Good work done on its 2oz, double-layer copper double-layer PCB is not among those shortcomings. This manufacturing quality is also found in the reinforcements for the graphics slots, with armor to reinforce its mechanical resistance and with connectors with a 15 micron gold plating, the same one that has been used for the contacts of the memory slots.

The ASRock Fatality X470 Gaming K4 also includes Japanese Nichicon 12k 105C solid capacitors, specific capacitors for HiFi systems in dedicated area of ​​the PCB to the sound card, four 45A chokes, etc.

Storage

Like any self-respecting motherboard, always within this price range, this new ASRock model enjoys a storage mount that combines traditional storage with six SATA 6Gbps ports, with RAID capability, and two M.2 ports that are capable of developing PCI Express 3.0 4x speeds, one of them while the other is limited to PCI Express 2.0 2x speeds.

In either case, one supports 32Gbps of bandwidth and the other supports up to 10Gbps of bandwidth. Curiously, both are M-type socket and also have SATA connectivity, which completes the 8 SATA connectors that supports the AMD X470 chipset. The main one, which we can identify because it has an integrated full-size heatsink, supports units up to 110mm long, while the secondary one stays at 80mm long.

The AMD X470 chipset supports RAID modes also on M.2 connectors, adding to the RAID 0, 1 and 10 support of SATA connectors, and also adds compatibility with AMD's StoreMI technology that enables mechanical disks to have a dual system of cache based on SSD drives supported by up to 2GB of RAM, making all this storage behave as a single drive facing Windows but with a cache system that surpasses many others that we find in the market.

Of course, within the support of this motherboard, we have full compatibility with NVMe drives, which will run on it to its full potential, with the possibility of perfectly booting the operating system from them.

Card expansion

The ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4 is a simple motherboard, with no great additions in the form of integrated controllers, but it is also a good motherboard to grow an entire computer.

It has six expansion slots, four of them PCI Express 3.0 1x and two PCI Express PCI Express 16X. These two slots are reinforced with metal armor that increases their mechanical resistance when removing or inserting cards or supporting large and heavy graphics cards.

The first of the slots is of the 16X type and is capable of developing these speeds with any processor or graphics that we install, the second, if we use it in combination, will limit both connections to 8X and in AMD APUs it will see its maximum link decrease. 8x to 4x. The board supports both Crossfire and SLI so we can mount up to two graphics cards in parallel with a maximum of 4 GPUs between both connectors.

The best thing is that the separation of both connectors is two slots, which improves ventilation and allows the use of graphics or higher heatsinks, and in neither case covers any of the two M.2 slots on the motherboard.. An intelligent design that makes everything much more accessible and offers better ventilation.

Front and rear connectivity

The ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4 is a very complete motherboard, but in this aspect we see one of few shortcomings. The front has a good number of connectors, but it lacks a 10Gbps USB 3.1 Gen2 connector like those that we can see in models from other brands, and this one, with somewhat higher prices. It is true that it is not a connector that many boxes integrate today, but that does not justify its lack, especially when this chipset has native support for this technology and, in fact, as we will see now, this board integrates this type of connectors in its rear panel.

The front connector set is made up of five 5Gbps USB 3.0 Gen1 ports, four traditional USB 2.0 ports and the HD Audio connectivity that we can find on any motherboard. The rear connector panel is kind of funny, because it's all very concentrated towards the usual side of the sound connectors, and it looks like it's a sparse connector configuration, however it's just the opposite.

It includes six USB 3.1 Gen1, Gen1 ports, two USB 3.1 Gen2 connectors with 10Gbps speeds, where one is Type A and the other Type C, and a legacy PS2 keyboard and mouse connector is also added (for those who you still use your old IBM mechanical keyboard with dual end of function keys) and also something unusual in X470 boards, such as video connectivity.

The pity is that it is only a 1.4A type HDMI connector so you cannot take advantage of the HDMI 2.0 support that the new AMD APUs have, staying at a maximum resolution of 4k at 30Hz. It is true that these graphics will not be able to move games at that resolution, but video.

The Ethernet connectivity system is signed by an Intel I211A T with 1Gigabit speed and very low latencies. It is a great chipset that will guarantee us an excellent performance, with very low CPU consumption and support for any operating system natively. An excellent choice by ASRock.

Connectivity also includes some cool stuff, like fan connectors specializing in official AMD heatsinks with LEDs, a standard 5-12v RGB connector, and also an "Addressable RGB" connector for more advanced lighting effects systems.

It also has a four-pin molex connector specialized in drive pumps for liquid cooling systems and three more connectors for well-distributed fans located in key areas of the board.

Sound

The sound card integrated in this model combines a DSP of proven quality, such as the Realtek ALC1220, with a noise ratio of 120dB SNR, where components specifically designed for high-quality sound systems have been used, such as its Japanese solid capacitors.

A separate and dedicated PCB and an electromagnetic noise shield, which reaches the rear connector area of ​​the board, combine a mount that speaks volumes about the involvement with the sound that ASRock has also in its midrange.

Connectivity is 7.1 type, with “auto-sensing” and gold plated connectors, also adding SPDIF optical digital connectivity, and comes equipped with the powerful Sound Blaster Cinema5 codec, one of the most recent versions of sound effects signed by a iconic brand in the PC world such as Creative Labs.

ASRock has also mounted an automatic impedance controller in the rear “Line Out” and an NE5532 amplifier for the front connector of the board with headphone support up to 600ohm.

BIOS

The ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4 has a UEFI bios where we can operate with keyboard and mouse. With a minimalist design, it has the basic options perfectly concentrated so that the novice user does not have to break their heads to overclock or take advantage of their high-speed memories.

It also has online bios update wizards, fan manager with graphical environment and automatic calibrator, driver installer generator, and also a powerful manager for AMD processors that includes a large number of advanced settings which can be used if we want to parameterize the detail the operation of the system.

Overclocking with it is easy, as long as we have the proper cooling, and it supports all the power management and overclocking technologies AMD offers for its Ryzen 1000 and Ryzen 2000 range.

software

The ASRock software suite is surely one of the least elaborate, but it has the right and necessary applications as well as one of the most powerful and capable update managers we've tested. It will keep our system up to date, it is easy to avoid “bloatware” and it handles both utilities and programs as well as bios and driver updates.

With F-Stream we can control aspects such as the operation of our fans, or overclocking, in addition to monitoring the system. It is a good addition for those of us who have become used to using the AMD Ryzen Master to “millimeter” the configuration of our system.

The RGB system of this board, in several zones, is controlled by ASRock Polychrome technology that allows synchronization with other RGB compatible systems, from any of its ports, or also synchronizes with the new ARGB systems that allow independent control of all the LEDs of a device with this integrated technology. Produces more complex and rich effects.

In the set of programs we can find utilities for direct entry in the UEFI bios, or the Cinema 5 codecs of Sound Blaster, which is the best we can find in the market, giving new meaning to the custom parameterization of integrated sound.

Overclocking and temperatures

We have not detected on this motherboard any type of improvement or problem in managing the overclocking of the processors that we can mount on the Socket AM4. We have used for our tests a powerful AMD Ryzen 2700X with a sustained overclocking of 4100MHz at 1.34v, a moderate voltage, maintaining the heatsink as standard, the Wraith Prism that is fully compatible with this motherboard, with an RGB connector precisely dedicated to it.

High speed memory support is excellent. Our test memories work at 3400MHz with Command Rate 1T offering 35GBps of bandwidth.

The heatsink has always been kept within its specifications not to produce more than 40dBA with controlled temperatures of 72 degrees, which are perfectly supported by this processor, without any Throttling or frequency oscillation in any of its 8 cores.

This, combined with a large memory support, has allowed us to mount a very solid system with excellent performance and well balanced between processor and memory. Not bad considering that this is an X470 motherboard that is below 175 cost.

In stress temperatures are maintained correctly. We have used the original AMD heatsink. The noise is around 40dBA, which is the objective that AMD set for this heatsink with these processors. The 4100MHz is sustained on all cores, with no turbo mode.

Final words and conclusion ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4

It is clear that this is not the best X470 motherboard in the ASRock catalog, it even has a few minor deficiencies and it does not have important additions such as the Wifi support (there is another variant of this model that does integrate it) but it is a good example that we can mount a new Ryzen 2 processor with a large motherboard, which supports the moderate overclocking that we want for constant use, without having to invest large amounts.

It is a motherboard that offers good levels of quality, an interesting set of software, without much fanfare, and a powerful bios that offers very detailed parameterization for experts, but also simplicity in the basic parameters for those with less experience. ASRock remains in its line of making competitive products at adequate prices.

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ Good price	- No front USB 3.1 Gen2 connector
+ Excellent feeding system	- HDMI port does not support 4k @ 60Hz
+ Double Slot M.2

The Professional Review team awards him the silver medal:

ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4

COMPONENTS - 80%

REFRIGERATION - 77%

BIOS - 79%

EXTRAS - 79%

PRICE - 81%

79%