ASRock B650 LiveMixer Motherboard Overview
It has been quite a while since we’ve seen a motherboard with really vibrant colors. Well, ASRock is changing that with their LiveMixer series. Here on the B650 LiveMixer we have very bright and vibrant colors. The graffiti style has a lot of different shades of orange with some while mixed in as well. I have to say this is definitely one of the more visually appealing motherboards I’ve seen in a while!
For those wondering this is an ATX motherboard. ASRock has designed the board with sort of paint splatters with “LiveMixer” across the bottom half of the board in a graffiti style.
Starting with the CPU socket we have AMD’s new AM5 socket. You will notice the same AMD retention brackets on the top and bottom of the CPU socket, so older AM4 CPU coolers will work on these new motherboards. The big change of course is that Intel went from a PGA socket to an LGA socket, so the pins are actually on the socket itself. I honestly like this as I’ve accidently bent pins on a Ryzen processor before!
Surrounding the CPU socket we have our power delivery components. ASRock is making use of a 14 + 2 + 1 power design with smart power stages as well as Nichicon 12K capacitors. Covering these power delivery components are two large heatsinks, which are actually orange as well.
The larger heatsink actually has a top piece (made of aluminum) that acts as a rear I/O cover. It really brings the top part of the board together. It has some paint splatters on it as well as a smaller LiveMixer logo. Hiding in the top corner of the board you’ll find two 8-pin EPS connectors.
Moving across the top of the board you’ll find two 4-pin fan headers. The one closest to the CPU socket is the CPU fan header, while the other one is the CPU Fan 2 / WP header. On this side of the board we have our four DDR5 DIMM slots, which support dual-channel DDR5 memory up to 6400 MHz.
Along the front edge of the board you’ll find two 3-pin ARGB headers, 24-pin ATX power connection, a USB 3.2 gen 1 header, USB 3.2 gen 2×2 header, another USB 3.2 gen 1 header, two SATA 6GB/s ports, and a Thunderbolt header. The two SATA ports and one of the USB 3.2 gen 1 headers are set at a 90-degree angle so they do not get in the way of your graphics cards and other expansion cards.
Coming to the bottom edge of the board you’ll find the rest of your headers and connections. From left to right you have your HD audio header, two 3-pin addressable RGB headers, a single standard RGB header, three 4-pin fan headers, a clear CMOS jumper, two USB 2.0 headers, and your front panel headers.
When it comes to expansion slots we have three PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots. The top slot is metal reinforced and supports x16 mode, while the bottom two slots are just normal and support x4 mode. In between the top and middle slot is an M.2 slot that allows you to install a WiFi module if you wanted to add WiFi to the board.
The rest of the bottom of the board is made up of heatsinks, two of these are removable. The top larger heatsink covers a single M.2 slot, which is PCI-Express 5.0 x4. Right by this slot is another 4-pin fan header, which is great for a rear case fan. The bottom heatsink covers two M.2 slots, these are PCI-Express 4.0 x4 slots. Both heatsinks do have thermal tape on them.
Moving on to the rear I/O we have a nice integrated I/O shield which has the same type of design as the motherboard. As far as connections go from left to right we have DisplayPort, HDMI, four USB 2.0 ports, a BIOS flashback button, four USB 3.2 gen 1 ports (2 are Lightning Gaming ports), 2.5G LAN, and two USB 3.2 gen 2 ports (1x Type-A, 1x Type-C, and your audio connections. ASRock has made cut-outs in the I/O shield for WiFi antennas if you planned on adding a WiFi card to the board later on.
