ASRock Z790 LiveMixer Motherboard Overview
The Z790 LiveMixer definitely stands out with its graffiti-style design. As I mentioned ASRock has gone with a purple design that also has white and black accents. It is really cool how many of the elements on the board not only are on the heatsinks but extend on to the PCB.
This includes the large “LiveMixer” that goes across the bottom half of the board. For this wondering this is a standard ATX motherboard.
Starting at the CPU socket we have Intel’s LGA 1700 socket, which will support both 12th and 13th generation Intel core processors. Surrounding the CPU socket are our power delivery components. ASRock is going with a 14 + 1 + 1 power phase design with smart power stages and Nichicon 12K capacitors. The Intersil ISL99360 SPS MOSFETs are rated for 60A so you are going to get 840A of power for your CPU, which is more than enough for stock and most overclocked situations with an i9-12900K or i9-13900K.
Covering the power delivery components we have two large heatsinks. The larger heatsink also connects to the rear I/O cover, which really brings the top half of the board together. Hiding in the top corner of the board are your two 8-pin EPS connectors.
Moving over to our memory slots we have four DDR5 slots that support memory as fast as 7200 MHz (OC). Right before the memory slots you’ll find your CPU fan header, with your optional CPU fan header towards the top corner of the board. Moving to the edge of the board you’ll find two 4-pin fan headers, 24-pin ATX power connection, a USB 3.2 gen 2×2 header, and a USB 3.2 gen 1 header.
As we move down the board we find another USB 3.2 gen 1 header, four SATA 6GB/s ports, and two 3-pin addressable RGB headers. The USB header and SATA ports are at a 90-degree angle so they do not get in the way of your graphics card. At the bottom of the board you find the rest of your headers and connections. From left to right you have your HD audio header, Thunderbolt header, another 3-pin addressable RGB header, 4-pin standard RGB header, two 4-pin fan headers, two USB 2.0 headers, a clear CMOS jumper, TPM header, and your front panel headers.
On the bottom half of the board you’ll find a handful of heatsinks. Two of these cover M.2 slots. The top heatsink covers both a PCI-Express 5.0 x4 slot (M2_1) and a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 slot (M2_2). Of course you can only run either a Gen5 drive or Gen4 drive here, not both. The bottom heatsink covers two more slots which are both PCI-Express 4.0 x4.
There is also another M.2 slot in the middle of the board which is also a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 slot, it does not feature a heatsink though. So in total you have five M.2 slots, but you can only use 4 at the same time, which should be more than enough for most people. Towards the edge of the board there is a M.2 WiFi slot if you wanted to add WiFi to the board and an eDP slot for connecting something like an external display.
As far as expansion slots go you have a single PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slot, two PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots (x4 electrical), and a single PCI-Express 3.0 x1 slot. The top slot features ASRock’s Steel Slot metal reinforcement.
When it comes to the rear I/O you have an integrated I/O shield, which also has the same type of graffiti design as the rest of the board. As far as ports go you have HDMI, DisplayPort, Two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.2 gen 2 (1 Type-A, 1 Type-C), four more USB 2.0 port, for USB 3.2 gen 1 ports, 2.5G LAN, two more USB 3.2 gen 2 (1 Type-A, 1 Type-C) and your audio connections. With 14 available USB ports on the back, plus plenty of internal headers you aren’t going to run out of ports anytime soon!
