ASRock X670 Xpansion Kit: Expansion card turns the AMD B650 into an AMD X670

0
87

The ASRock X670 Xpansion Kit, a PCIe expansion card, extends a B650 motherboard designed for the AMD Ryzen 7000 (test) processor family via PCIe 4.0 x4 with an additional chipset to an X670 motherboard and thus offers additional I/O interfaces, more M.2 slots and fast Ethernet with 10 Gbit/s.

B650 board becomes an X670 board

Unlike the X670(E) chipset, whose Platform Controller Hub (PCH) consists of two Promontory 21 chipsets from ASMedia , the B650(E) chipset is based on just one of these PCH chips. A circumstance that the mainboard manufacturer ASRock now wants to take advantage of and tries to eradicate with an expansion card via PCIe 4.0 x4.

< /figure>

ASRock X670 Xpansion Kit (Image: Level1Techs)

Second chipset for M.2, USB, SATA and Ethernet

The classic upgrade expansion card offers a second chipset of the type ASRock Promontory 21 and turns a B650 mainboard into a full X670 mainboard.

In addition, the following extensions in the area of ​​I/O, Storage and network required.

ASRock X670 Xpansion Kit

  • ASRock Promontory 21 Chipset
  • 2 × M.2/M-Key 2280 (PCIe 4.0 x4, 2280/2260)
  • 1 × USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C 10 Gb/s
  • 3 × USB 3.2 Gen2 10 Gb/s
  • 1 × Ethernet 10 Gb/s< /li>
  • 2 × SATA 3.2 6 Gb/s

ASRock provided the expansion card along with an ASRock B650 live mixer to YouTube channel Level1Techs, as the “add-in card” is only compatible with the manufacturer's motherboards. In all probability, this restriction will be implemented via a correspondingly adapted custom BIOS.

ASRock X670 Xpansion Kit (Image: Level1Techs)

In addition to the PCIe slot according to PCIe 4.0 x4, the ASRock X670 Xpansion Kit uses a special cable, which is expected to be responsible for “low-speed” I/Os, I2C and SPI. The manufacturer has also implemented the entire processing of the PCIe signal via the necessary signal driver directly via the expansion card.

No information on price and availability

As Level1Techs pointed out, ASRock has not yet provided any information on the price and availability of the expansion card.

However, the packaging and presentation as well as the overall appearance of the ASRock X670 Xpansion Kit would speak for a finished retail product rather than an unfinished engineering sample.

Recommended External Content YouTube

At this point there is external content from YouTube that complements the article and is recommended by the editors. It can be loaded and hidden again with one click.

Load YouTube embeds I consent to YouTube embeds being loaded. In doing so, personal data can be transmitted to YouTube. More on this in the data protection declaration.

Load YouTube embeds Privacy Policy New: the CB radio podcast! If you've always wondered how the heads behind ComputerBase tick, you've come to the right place. Also on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and as an RSS feed.