Asrock deviates from the mainboard mishmash and with the X670 Xpansion Kit is reminiscent of earlier days when manufacturers designed all sorts of gimmicks for their boards. Without further ado, Asrock packs a complete AMD chipset onto a PCI Express card (PCie 4.0 x4) for a range of additional connection options: 10 Gbit/s Ethernet, three USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbit/s), two SATA 3 and two M.2 slots with PCIe 4.0 x4 connection.
The soldered AM5 chipset is a Promontory 21 for the Ryzen 7000 processor family – a single one is usually on B650 and B650E mainboards, two in combination are used on all X670 (E) models. In a way, the expansion card turns a B650 mainboard into an X670 board.
Same limitations as chipsets
This isn’t rocket science, as nowadays chipsets are basically just PCIe switches with additional I/O functions. In the case of the Asrock card, the same limitation applies as with mainboard connections that are attached to the chipset: If you load many connections at the same time, for example by copying data, the PCIe 4.0 x4 connection forms with a maximum transfer rate of just under 8 GB/s a bottleneck. In everyday life, however, this is rarely noticed.
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Asrock itself hasn’t officially unveiled the X670 Xpansion Kit, but sent a copy to the Youtuber Level1Techs. Although the expansion card does not look like a typical prototype, but like a fully designed product including a radiator cover, Asrock says it is a one-off that should not go on sale. Doubly curious: The B650 Live Mixer mainboard is prepared for a J2 connector intended for the X670 Xpansion Kit.
According to the manufacturer, the X670 Xpansion Kit should only work with certain Asrock mainboards. A test of what happens when used with other mainboards, especially with Intel models, would be exciting.
(mma)
