ASRock Phantom Gaming X870 Riptide Wi-Fi Motherboard Review

TweakTown's Rating: 88%

The Bottom Line

The ASRock X870 Riptide won't win the battle of the spec sheets, but it has got it where it counts, while offering great bang for your buck.

Pros

• Affordability
• Solid VRM
• Quality VRM and SSD heatsinks
• Attractive design

Cons

• Only three M.2
• Not the greatest in benchmarks

Should you buy it?

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Buy at Newegg for $249.99 USD

Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

ASRock's Riptide sub-brand is relatively new. It forms part of the larger Phantom Gaming range. It slots below the Nova series of boards and is positioned as ASRock's affordable gaming-themed motherboard.

The ASRock X870 Riptide Wi-Fi is priced in the lower mid-range of X870 motherboards and well below that of X870E boards. However, referring to it as such does it a disservice. Like most competitively priced ASRock motherboards, the X870 Riptide Wi-Fi doesn't sacrifice too much in the way of features.

Like all X870 motherboards, the X870 Riptide Wi-Fi can be considered an evolutionary update over X670 predecessors. Despite its affordable price, it includes the all-important mandatory X870 features, including USB4, Wi-Fi 7, a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, and a PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 SSD slot. That means it's got a forward-looking core feature set that will appeal to users looking to build a system with a single GPU and an SSD or two while gaining the ability to add speedy peripherals thanks to the twin USB4 ports.

Alongside the X870 mandatory features, the X870 Riptide Wi-Fi incorporates an improved heatsink design, ALC 4082 audio, and support for DDR5-8000+. Thanks to ongoing socket support from AMD, the Riptide Wi-Fi is sure to support upcoming Ryzen 9000 X3D processors and, pending confirmation, Zen 6 and maybe even Zen 7 processors, too.

Looks are always subjective, but the X870 Riptide Wi-Fi is a good-looking motherboard. As the name suggests, it's got a wave-like theme, with flowing lines and attractive splashes of blue and purple. These highlights might prevent it from blending into some RGB-colored builds, but then an aqua/blue/purple-themed build would look pretty good anyway.

The ASRock X870 Riptide WIFi carries a recommended retail price of $279.

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Packaging, Accessories, and Overview

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Apart from its purple color, the X870 Riptide Wi-Fi box is unassuming, with only a select few highlights.

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If the front of the box is a little bare, the rear is anything but. The board's key features and specifications are highlighted.

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The ASRock 870 Riptide Wi-Fi bundle is good for a board in this price range. The Wi-Fi 7 antenna has a sticky pad on the bottom to keep it upright. You get two SATA cables and a thermistor cable to measure the temperatures of anything you wish to attach it to. If you want to give your rig and keyboard an additional ASRock flavor, there's a Phantom Gaming keycap and case badge. A 3-in-1 ARGB splitter cable will be helpful for those owning triple ARGB fan cases.

Whether for cost-saving or environmental reasons, the days of physical printed manuals appear to be at an end. The Riptide Wi-Fi does include a quick start guide and a regulatory notice, but there's no flash drive, so you have to download the manual and drivers from the ASRock website. Luckily, the board's 2.5G LAN controller was detected by Windows, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Motherboard Overview

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With the exception of the color flourishes, the X870 Riptide Wi-Fi features an understated look. It's an ATX board, and as an X870 option, it doesn't need a large chipset heatsink as there's only one Promontory 21 chip to cool.

There's actually quite a bit of empty PCB space, as a board in this price range doesn't include expensive auxiliary controllers and their associated circuitry.

A row of RGB LEDs runs along the length of the bottom SSD heatsink. For additional RGB support, the board includes three addressable RGB headers plus an additional 12V/3A RGB header for things like LED strips. If you factor in the three-in-one bundled cable, the board gives you a lot of RGB control potential for a well-lit system.

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Alongside the common case connector headers, the X870 Riptide Wi-Fi includes an atypical set of headers. You get six 4-pin fan headers, a thermistor cable header, and a decent USB complement, including four USB 2.0 ports, four 5Gbps ports, and a welcome Type-C 20Gbps port.

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Four DIMM slots support speeds of up to DDR5-8000+, with up to 256GB supported. Of course, you won't be able to run 256GB at those speeds, nor will any X870 board.

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Compared to X870E boards, X870 boards tend to be limited in terms of storage. The X870 Riptide Wi-Fi includes just three M.2 slots, one of which supports PCIe 5.0. The other two run at PCIe 4.0 speeds. Four SATA ports give you a maximum capacity of seven drives. That'll be more than enough for most consumer-class and gaming systems, but it is on the light side.

There are two PCIe expansion slots. The topmost one supports PCIe 5.0 x16 devices, such as a future graphics card, while the second one is 16x physically and runs at PCIe 4.0 electrically.

Overall, the storage and expansion card potential is about the minimum expected of an X870 board.

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The primary M.2 PCIe 5.0 slot above the topmost expansion slot has an easily detachable heatsink. It has a welcomely large surface area. The other two slots are cooled by a plate attached with screws.

As the board has only three M.2 slots, ASRock wisely opted against placing one or both of the secondary slots in the area below the graphics card. Their location will definitely assist in keeping them cool.

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The X870 Riptide Wi-Fi features a VRM that's befitting of a board in its class. Ryzen 9000 series processors are not overly demanding, at least compared to Intel 14th Gen K SKUs, and a 14+2+1 phase design with 80A stages is more than adequate for powering a Ryzen 9 CPU with PBO enabled. The number of users using the X870 Riptide Wi-Fi for extreme overclocking will amount to around zero, and normal users will find their cooling is a limiting factor when overclocking, and not the board.

ASRock didn't cut back on the board's VRM cooling. Unlike some boards, which feature something like a 'vanity panel' atop the rear I/O, this section of the Riptide is actually part of the heatsink, and it certainly adds a lot of surface area.

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The X870 Riptide Wi-Fi's rear I/O panel is well-equipped. The USB complement begins with dual USB4 Type-C ports with DP support. These are joined by two 10Gbps ports, three 5Gbps ports, and four USB 2.0 ports.

The yellow-colored USB ports are what ASRock refers to as Lightning Gaming ports. These have their own interfaces, which aim to reduce latency and jitter. The Ultra USB Power ports support PD 3.0 and provide up to 15W charging capability.

A Killer E3100G controller controls the single 2.5G LAN port. Like all X870 boards, it includes Wi-Fi 7, offering a 160MHz connection, and Bluetooth 5.4.

Next are the audio ports, which consist of 3.5mm line-in and line-out ports and S/PDIF. A current generation Realtek ALC4082 codec drives these.

Finally, there's a single HDMI 2.1 port and a BIOS flashback button. The latter means you'll be able to install a future X3D chip and, more than likely, a Zen 6 CPU without needing to update the BIOS with a currently available chip. The little cutout to the right of the button houses an LED that indicates the status of the flash.

UEFI, Software and Test System

UEFI

The ASRock X870 Riptide WiFI's BIOS follows the same layout and theme of recent ASRock UEFI designs. It's simple, with few graphical flourishes. Anyone familiar with an ASRock BIOS from the last few years will find it easy to navigate.

As noted in our X870E Taichi review, ASRock's X870 fan control page could be updated. The fonts resemble those of a 1990s Gateway PC.

Visiting the ASRock website allows you to download things like the ASRock motherboard control utility, Norton 360 trial (if you really must), and Polychrome RGB control software. All of the relevant drivers are available, too, though it's worth checking the AMD website for newer versions of things like the chipset and integrated graphics drivers.

Test System

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X - Buy from Amazon
• GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X - Buy from Amazon
• RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo RGB 2x16GB DDR5-6000 CL30 - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux - Buy from Amazon
• OS Storage: Teamgroup T-Force Z540 2TB - Buy from Amazon
• Power Supply: Super Flower Leadex Titanium 850W - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro - Buy from Amazon

Benchmarks - Rendering and Encoding

Cinebench 2024

Cinebench 2024 is the latest version of Maxon's reliable and frequently used benchmark that measures single and multi-threaded performance. Note that all our benchmark testing used the latest available Windows updates and a BIOS that includes AGESA 1.2.0.2, which features improved inter-core latency for AMD Ryzen 9000 series processors.

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The X870 Riptide came in a touch behind the other boards, though not alarmingly so, with a result of 2,249 in the nT test and 137 in the 1T test.

Blender

A rendering application like Blender is just one of many reasons a user will consider a high-core-count CPU like a Ryzen 9 9950X. We use the Whitelands demo file and record how long it takes to render the image.

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A result of 433 seconds for this test puts the ASRock right in the middle of the boards we've tested so far.

Handbrake

Handbrake is a simple-to-use video encoding and transcoding application. Here, we convert a 4K movie trailer to 1080p. The results below show the average FPS, where a higher result means the task will take less time to complete.

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The X870 Riptide trails a bit here, but not by a worrisome amount. Handbrake performance is affected by memory performance, so we'll see if some slightly looser sub-timings lead to a small loss of performance.

Benchmarks - File Compression and Memory latency

7Zip

7Zip is a commonly used free file compression and decompression app. It's susceptible to memory speed and latency changes and scales with the number of CPU threads.

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A result of 222.93 BIPS in this memory-sensitive benchmark again points towards some looser memory timings.

AIDA64 Memory Latency

Memory latency is an area that currently favors Intel. AMD's chiplet architecture and the Infinity Fabric link inevitably add some latency compared to Intel's monolithic chips. The real-world benefits aren't that important, though.

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Although the margins are small, a result of 72.1 nanoseconds indicates the X870 Riptide Wi-Fi doesn't set very aggressive memory sub-timings. Your results, whether tweaked or with another XMP kit, may vary. In the end, though, the real-world differences will not be noticed.

Benchmarks - PCMark and 3DMark

PCMark 10 Productivity

We'd love to use our PCs purely for leisure, but some of us have to work, too! The PCMark 10 productivity test performs a series of tests using office productivity applications.

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All the AM5 boards are close enough to each other, but again, the Riptide trails ever so slightly.

3DMark Storage

UL's newest 3DMark SSD Gaming Test is the most comprehensive SSD gaming test ever devised. It is superior to testing against games themselves because, as a trace, it is much more consistent than variations that will occur between runs of the actual game. This test is the same as running the actual game without the inconsistencies inherent in application testing.

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Interestingly, the X870E and X870 boards are behind the X670E Taichi. The whole field is relatively close, though.

3DMark Time Spy Extreme

Time Spy Extreme is losing favor as a graphics benchmark in favor of Speed Way and Steel Nomad, but its CPU test is still a good measure of multi-core performance.

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The differences between the boards are minor.

Benchmarks - Gaming

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is brutal on graphics cards, but when things like ray tracing are removed, it becomes more sensitive to CPU and memory performance differences.

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Here's a good result for the X870 Riptide. It's near the top of the chart.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn can achieve high frame rates with powerful graphics cards when using the' favor performance' preset.

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This is another solid gaming result for the X870 Riptide.

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition

Metro Exodus received an update that added improved DLSS support, enhanced ray tracing features, and variable rate shading, among other things. Still, with a powerful graphics card, it is affected by CPU and memory performance at 1080p, though less so with a card like the RTX 4070 Ti Super.

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All the tested motherboards performed essentially identically.

VRM and SSD Temperatures

These tests are performed to show off the differences between each motherboard's cooling assemblies. In the case of VRM testing, each board is subjected to a 20-minute Cinebench loop, while the SSD test records the peak temperature recorded during the lengthy 3DMark Storage test.

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As one of the more affordable X870 and X870E boards we've reviewed, the ASRock X870 Riptide Wi-Fi earns a solid result. Fifty-six degrees compares well to some boards at around twice the price, and it does not have the active cooling the ASRock Taichis have.

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It's another good result for the X870 Riptide. A load temperature of 55 degrees sees it beat out the much more expensive ASUS and MSI X870E boards.

Final Thoughts

When the prices of X870E boards were revealed, many potential buyers would have been rather shocked. Motherboards that cost over $500 aren't going to appeal to mainstream buyers, but there is some value to be had with X870. At $279, the ASRock X870 Riptide WIFI is not a cheap board according to historical standards, but relative to competing X870 boards from other manufacturers, it is well priced.

The X870 Riptide Wi-Fi's focus is its core feature set. You get USB4, PCIe 5.0 GPU and SSD support, and Wi-Fi 7. These four things are requirements for all X870 and X870E motherboards, and they don't require that you spend well over $300 to get them.

If you want 5G or 10G LAN, 320MHz Wi-Fi 7, five M.2 slots, or an I/O-mounted display, you'll have to pay up, but users looking to install a next-gen graphics card, an SSD or two, and 32GB or 64GB of memory won't really need more than what the X870 Riptide Wi-Fi offers. It has a good audio codec, an attractive design, and a VRM that can power a Ryzen 9 CPU and heatsinks to keep it running relatively cool. Put simply, it's got it where it counts.

When it comes to its performance, the Riptide Wi-Fi loses out on the last one or two percent of CPU performance in memory-sensitive benchmarks. There's no real cause for concern, though. Real-world noticeable differences are non-existent. When it comes to gaming under a graphically limited load, the Riptide Wi-Fi performs exactly as expected.

If you are looking for a board that offers good value with a solid core feature set and care little for expense-adding bells and whistles, the ASRock X870 Riptide Wi-Fi is a solid option worth considering.