ASRock X870 LiveMixer WiFi Review - Connect all your devices and more with up to 25 USB ports

TweakTown Rating: 96%

Our Verdict

If you value expansion potential and I/O, the ASRock X870 LiveMixer WiFi has little - if any - competition in its price range.

Pros

• Up to 25 USB ports, including dual USB 4
• Dual PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots
• Solid performance
• Attractive new design
• Excellent value for money

Cons

• Only two SATA ports
• Lacks 320MHz WiFi 7
• Dated BIOS design

Should you buy it?

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Buy at Amazon for $220.54 USD

Buy at Amazon for $332.85 CAD

Buy at Amazon for £226.18

Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

When ASRock launched its LiveMixer sub-brand with last-gen chipsets, the designs were - how shall we say it - bold, particularly the orange-themed ones. They were love them or loathe them affairs. Maybe ASRock felt the same internally, as this time around, the X870 LiveMixer WiFi is a lot more subtle.

ASRock targets the LiveMixer series to content creators. To that end, the X870 LiveMixer WiFi is packed with expansion options and I/O. The highlight is up to a massive 25 USB ports, including dual USB4. Add to that dual PCIe 5.0 SSD support, a thoughtful slot layout, and 5Gb LAN, and it's a board that can handle a vast amount of speedy connected devices.

The X870 LiveMixer supports AMD AM5 Ryzen 7000, 8000, and 9000 series CPUs. It will happily sit at the heart of a system with a massive array of connected devices, up to 256GB memory, and the most demanding CPUs and GPUs money can buy.

It has a capable VRM, large heatsinks, and, like all AM5 motherboards, there is the potential for a long lifespan. Pending confirmation, the X870 LiveMixer WiFi is all but certain to support next-gen Zen 6 CPUs, and possibly Zen 7 as well.

On top of an excellent feature set, the board offers great value for money. ASRock set the price of the X870 LiveMixer at $229. That's a lot of motherboard for your money.

Further Socket AM5 Reading – Our Latest Reviews

• MSI MPG B850I Edge Ti WiFi Motherboard Review
• ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Apex Motherboard Review
• ASUS TUF Gaming B850-Plus WiFi Motherboard Review - A board with lots of expansion potential

Best Deals: ASRock X870 LiveMixer WiFi Motherboard

	Today	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$220.54 USD	$228.84 USD	$229.99 USD	Buy
	$332.85 CAD	$388.39 CAD	$333.83 CAD	Buy
	£226.18	£228.14	£227.17	Buy
	$220.54 USD	$228.84 USD	$229.99 USD	Buy
* Prices last scanned 11/13/2025 at 5:17 pm CST - prices may be inaccurate. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. We earn affiliate commission from any Newegg or PCCG sales.

Packaging, Accessories, and Overview

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The X870 LiveMixer comes in a box that's a lot more subtle than its paint-spattered predecessors.

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The rear of the box provides a complete list of all the key features and specifications.

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X870 LiveMixer comes with a standard set of accessories. There are a pair of WiFi antennas, two SATA cables, two cable ties, a thermistor cable, and a case sticker. A quick setup guide and regulatory notices join these.

You will be prompted to download the board's drivers and utilities upon connecting to the internet for the first time. Alternatively, you can visit the ASRock website to obtain the board's drivers and utilities. Apart from the usual system drivers, useful apps include the simply named motherboard utility for essential controls, the Polychrome RGB app, and perhaps the Nahimic3 utility if you fancy tweaking your audio settings.

Motherboard Overview

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The ASRock X870 LiveMixer WiFi features a revamped design. It's a far cry from the graffiti-emblazoned style of its predecessors. The new design shares similarities with the Steel Legend series of boards. The new grey metal on black look is a dramatic improvement in my opinion.

The board features a row of RGB LEDs at the bottom of the lower M.2 heatsink. We have definitely passed the peak RGB era! But, if you wish to build a system with ARGB, you have three onboard headers available, plus an additional 12V/3A RGB header that can supply up to 36W for RGB strips.

The X870 LiveMixer includes a total of six fan headers. Apart from a thermistor header and the usual case headers, the header complement is unremarkable.

The USB header complement is strong, with support for a 20Gbps Type-C port, plus up to four 5Gbps ports and four USB 2.0 ports. Combined with the ones on the back panel, the X870 LiveMixer supports up to 25 USB devices! That's the standout highlight of the board.

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Four DIMM slots support speeds of DDR5-8000+ with a maximum capacity of up to 256 GB. However, AMD says the speed sweet spot is around the DDR5-6000-6400 mark, where the memory controller can run in a 1:1 configuration. Running faster memory can result in a latency penalty, which is generally not beneficial for gamers.

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The X870 LiveMixer features a 16+2+1 (VCORE, SOC, MISC) phase VRM with 80A stages. It's more than enough to handle a Ryzen 9 9950X with PBO enabled.

It's also worth noting that ASRock has responded to user complaints of damaged CPUs, claiming that such issues have been addressed with extensive BIOS tuning and testing.

AMD Ryzen processors are not particularly demanding on the VRM system, at least compared to what we got used to with Intel 13th and 14th Gen systems. The X870 LiveMixer features a large heatsink assembly with a substantial surface area. Our test with a 10-minute loop of Cinebench R24 resulted in a peak VRM temperature of 57 degrees Celsius, which is absolutely fine given modern VRMs are usually rated for 100 degrees or more.

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The ASRock X870 LiveMixer has four PCB-mounted M.2 slots. The primary M.2 slot supports PCIe 5.0 drives and has its own beefy screwless heatsink. The slot immediately underneath also supports PCIe 5.0 drives. It shares a screw-in heatsink with the X870 chipset.

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The bottommost pair of slots support PCIe 4.0 drives. A single long screw-in metal plate cools the drives in these slots.

Perhaps it's a sign of the times with SATA gradually losing favor, but the X870 LiveMixer supports just two SATA ports. That leaves the board with support for six storage devices. That should be enough for most, but for a board aimed at creators, you'd think four, if not six, SATA ports would be present.

The board includes three PCIe slots. The primary slot supports PCIe 5.0 x16 devices and is reinforced for heavy graphics cards. The other pair of slots support PCIe 4.0. Both are x16 physically and support x4 electrically.

It's a good layout, as even with a massive graphics card, you won't lose access to the bottom pair of slots. Creators with devices like an external capture card can place it with some space between it and a nuclear hot GPU.

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The X870 LiveMixer WiFI's rear I/O panel is exceptionally well-equipped. The USB complement is a real highlight! It begins with dual USB4 Type-C ports with DP support. These are joined by eight 5Gbps ports and six 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 derive their power from the 12V PSU rail, which reduces the burden on the 5V USB rail.

A Realtek RTL8126 controller controls the single 5G LAN port, while a Realtek RTL8922AE controller provides 160MHz WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

Next are the audio ports, which consist of 3.5mm line-in and line-out ports and S/PDIF. A 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 Zen 6 CPU without needing to update the BIOS with a currently available chip. The tiny cutout to the right of the button houses an LED that indicates the status of the flash.

For a board that costs under $230, you really do get a lot of expansion potential.

UEFI and Test System

UEFI

Here is where I would place a few screenshots of the LiveMixer's UEFI design and features; however, for some reason, the BMP screenshots I took had a 0Kb file size. I tried formatting a flash drive with both FAT and NTFS file formats, but to no avail.

However, anyone familiar with an ASRock BIOS from the last few years will find it easy to navigate. ASRock really needs to give some love to the fan control page. It looks like something that you'd see from a BIOS page from the 1990s. It shouldn't be too difficult to give it an overhaul to bring it up to the level of its competitors.

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 is a long-standing render benchmark that Intel and AMD have relied on to showcase their newest platforms during unveilings. The benchmark consists of two tests: a single-core workload that utilizes one thread, or 1T, and a multi-threaded test that uses all threads, or nT, of the tested CPU.

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A result of 2,302 in the nT test and 141 in the 1T test puts the ASRock at the top of the list.

Blender

A rendering application like Blender is one of many reasons a user will consider a high-core-count CPU. We use the Whitelands demo file to record the time it takes to render the image.

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While the motherboard makes little difference in our Blender test, the result of 437 seconds is enough to see the X870 LiveMixer squeak ahead by a whisker again.

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 value indicates that the task will take less time to complete.

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Handbrake relies far more on the CPU and memory than the motherboard, so it's no surprise to see the boards fairly close together. Still, the ASRock performs well again.

Benchmarks - File Compression and Memory Latency

7Zip

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

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A result of 230.12 BIPS in this memory-sensitive benchmark is a strong result for the X870 LiveMixer.

AIDA64 Memory Latency

Memory latency has traditionally favored Intel and its monolithic designs. A nanosecond or two here or there is not noticeable, but more significant margins, mainly when the memory is frequently accessed, will result in more undesirable and cumulative idle cycles.

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This one is a little curious. The X870 LiveMixer returned the slowest result, which is puzzling given that Handbrake and 7zip in particular respond well to strong memory performance. It's important not to overstate something like this, though. Bandwidth matters too.

Benchmarks - PCMark and 3DMark

PCMark 10 Productivity

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

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The LiveMixer is towards the rear here, though the differences between the boards are not significant. This test can also vary if run several times.

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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It's another strong result for the X870 LiveMixer.

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 X870 LiveMixer is tops again, even if the margins between boards are not large, as is expected.

Benchmarks - Gaming

Cyberpunk 2077

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

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The tested boards all deliver essentially identical results in this GPU-limited game.

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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Here's another gaming result that shows the motherboards are all within a small percentage of one another, at least in terms of average FPS.

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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Metro Exodus, along with the other gaming results, shows that the motherboard usually makes little difference in gaming performance when all other components and settings are equal.

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 10-minute Cinebench loop, while the SSD test records the peak temperature recorded during the lengthy 3DMark Storage test.

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The X870 LiveMixer's large VRM heatsinks keep VRM temperatures well under control.

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The ASRock boards all do quite well thanks to the large surface area of their primary M.2 heatsinks. As always, good case airflow is a must to keep a Gen 5 SSD cool, particularly if there is a hot GPU dumping heat onto it.

Final Thoughts

The ASRock X870 LiveMixer WiFi really stands out in its price range. At under $230, it offers a lot for your money. Gone are the garish graffiti designs of last-gen. In its place is something a lot more subtle. As a board aimed at mainstream users, it's a welcome change.

The highlight is support for an incredible 25 USB devices. Few will use that many, but some users will appreciate having all those ports available. Consider the basics. A keyboard, mouse, printer, headset, external SSD, a DAC, printer, scanner, etc. But think of a user, such as a sim enthusiast with lots of controllers. Perhaps a high-end microphone setup, or a user with capture cards. Having all those ports free for everyday things like multiple flash drives or phones could really come in handy. It's better to have too many USB ports than not enough, right?

Then there are the well-placed pair of expansion slots. Even with a monster GPU, they are still accessible. ASRock didn't even need to use the dual chipset X870E option. You still get four M.2 slots; two of which support PCIe 5.0, plus 5G LAN, and 160MHz WiFi 7. You could even use those rear USB4 ports for triple monitor support with integrated graphics if you wanted.

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The X870 LiveMixer WiFi proved to be a solid performer, too. Though in reality, the motherboard makes little difference when all other components are equal. The AM5 platform continues to mature.

No board is perfect, though. Two or four more SATA ports would be welcome. The BIOS could use a graphical overhaul, and some competing boards offer 320MHz WiFi 7. Unless you have lots of SSDs or HDDs, those are things that can be overlooked, given what is on offer.

At under $230, the X870 LiveMixer WiFi appears to be the most feature-rich of any board in its price range. I can't see any that offer that many USB ports, with dual PCIe 5.0 M.2 support and 5G LAN. It's got a strong VRM and heatsinks to go with it. And it'll have a good few years of usefulness ahead of it. It's an easy one to recommend.