 So 13 years ago, I ditched the AMD processor in my personal gaming rig and switched to an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600. And since then, I have never looked back. Because quite frankly, while AMD has had some reasonably compelling values on offer, typically my personal rig upgrades were dictated more by who had the top performance versus who had some good bang for the buck stuff in the low end. Well, today is an interesting day because while AMD's Ryzen third gen processors, so I'm holding a 3900X here, aren't exactly brand spanking new, what is is a feature that I sorely need for my setup. For those of you who aren't familiar, this is my gaming desktop, but the key component that's missing is the desktop. It's not here. I run a single Thunderbolt cable through the wall into this server closet where my personal rig, my wife's rig and my home server all reside. This allows me to isolate not just the noise, but also the thermals so that this room doesn't heat up. I don't have central AC in my house. Check this out. The Asrock X570Aqua is one of the first AMD Ryzen third gen supporting motherboards with not one, but two Thunderbolt three ports. And we're gonna take it for a test drive after this message from our sponsor. Vertigear's PL4500 RGB LED upgrade kit wirelessly connects to your PC and features tons of color customization options, including audio and visual sync and more. Check them out at the link in the video description. So why don't we start with taking a look at the board? Oh crap, where'd I put the CPU? Left that in the pocket of my ass, what are? LTT store.com. First I should probably acknowledge the elephant in the room. The keen-eyed among you probably noticed that this is not in fact the motherboard that I claimed to have upgraded to a couple of months ago. This is the new Titan RTX graphics card, but I had to go back to my old motherboard and extreme edition 5960X eight core because I didn't realize when I put the new board in that there were no Thunderbolt three cables long enough to go from my desktop through the wall and then into my server closet. Fortunately, we have a solution for that today and we will get to that later. First, we got to swap out this board. Now those of you who are new to the channel might not know this, but we actually used to do a ton of videos just about motherboards. But the truth is I just got kind of bored of them. I just felt like I didn't really have anything to say. This one, I have a fair bit to say about the X570 Aqua ticks a lot of boxes for me. It's limited to just 999 units, presumably because they figure not too many people are going to be able to afford this monstrosity. It is one of the heaviest boards that I have ever encountered and I don't wanna show it to you guys like this. Let's get this horrible peel off it. Wow, that's, ew. ASRock has some work to do on their peel game. That. But that's fine because everything else about this thing, at least on paper, is basically flawless. It uses a reinforced PCB and reinforced PCI express slots for reduced flexibility. It features an all copper cooling solution. So this is one of the few X570 motherboards that has no cooling fan for the chipset on it because it's gonna be taken care of by your water cooler. They boast support for up to 5,000 megahertz DDR4 memory and the IO is absolutely incredible. So you've got support for SLI and Crossfire, as though that mattered in 2019, with six PCI express slots, including three of them that are rated for Gen 4 operation. Around back, you've got, wait, what? Check this out. Yes, my friends, that is a DisplayPort input. So in ASRock's own lineup of graphics cards, they actually have cards that have an internal DisplayPort connection so that you can plug it right into there and that'll inject the DisplayPort signal that Thunderbolt 3 requires. Pretty freaking cool. I won't be using that feature, but that's okay because they've got me covered too. Around the back is where things get really interesting to me. So we've got AX Wi-Fi, that's Wi-Fi 6, PS2, in case you like really need something to work on an interrupt basis or whatever. There's a second DisplayPort in. So we've got two DP-ins built in for the Thunderbolt 3 ports that are right on the motherboard. And aside from USB 3.1 Gen, whatever they call, whatever, USB 3.10 gig, check this out. We've also got 10 gig networking. So the irony is that this board is loaded up for Mondo expansion. Oh yeah, did I even mention the dual M.2 expansion slots? But it already has everything that most people could ever need built onto it, so. Ah, now that gives us a better look at the board. So there's our X570 chipset. Here's our dual M.2 slots, both of which are Gen 4. Very nice. Our front USB 3.0 type C, our regular front USB 3.0, our other regular front USB 3.0, our front USB 2.0, HD audio. What else we got here that's exciting? Oh yes, that Aquantia 10 gig networking. Oh, and of course, aside from the CPU and the chipset, the VRMs are also cooled by our water block. Pretty sweet. Oh, now that's interesting. If I was gonna install a single M.2 in this board, I would probably go with the top one because it seems to have much better thermal contact with our water block solution compared to the bottom one, which does have a metal spreader on it, but only makes contact with the metal of our mono block right here. So it's probably not gonna do a ton of cooling. I mean, to be clear, even that is gonna be better than nothing, but I'd use this one if you can. All right, let's get this puppy installed. Sorry, I mean kitty, I mean kitty. So I usually find the best way to line up a mono block, rather than laying the board down and then putting the block on top of it is to go the other way around. So lay the block down, plug in all your front leads so that you don't forget, and then line it up from above. So you can kind of guide the holes down onto their corresponding threaded inserts there. Whoa, do you hear that? This loop is not particularly well sealed at the moment. Okay, so we're gonna open her up right here. Okay, there we go. There we go. Water cooling me, this is so much fun. All right, let's drain this. Not too much though. I don't think it's gonna be necessary to completely drain the loop. Why? Because you're literally standing on a Titan. You move. So here's the plan. We're gonna strip out the expansion cards and kind of hang them over here, then swap in the motherboard and then put them all back in. Should be no problem. Oh, I can't believe it. Assuming that the Thunderbolt upgrade works, I am removing my painted motherboard for the final time. Okay, so Andy, the key here is that these tubes have to stay above the water level. Sure. You got that? Yeah. No problem, right? No problem. Easy. Not at all. Piece of cake, piece of crumb cake. No, I don't know. So what's really cool is that even on the Intel side of things, generally speaking, Thunderbolt is added to motherboards with these expansion cards that have a header that plugs into the board and then require the display port signal to be injected from the graphics card outside. So it takes up one of your PCI Express slots, in this case, a Forex slot and, you know, ugly and often quite kludgy because the biosupport for these things, particularly this one, does not have a great reputation. So having it built right into the board this time around is something that I am definitely looking forward to. And out it comes again. Now, these are not spectacular memory modules for the chip that I'm putting in. These are pretty old. They're 2666 C16 Dominator Platinums, but realistically, I don't need the extra five, 10% performance that badly anyway. So I'm gonna stick with them because they look really good. Also, I don't feel like any other memory. It's here already. So this is funny. One of the features for this board, apparently, is the slight leeway in the positioning of this integrated I.O. shield because sometimes the tolerances on the cases aren't perfect. You know, that's actually pretty smart because sometimes you do have trouble with those integrated I.O. shields and actually getting them into the case. Cute idea, Asrock. I like it. Look at that. Perfect fit. Love it. All right, well, that's a little awkward. I've only got one USB 2 header because there's a whole whack of USB 3 ones, and this case only has front USB 2, but I guess two of those ports are gonna be dead now. All right. 8-pin connector. 24-pin connector. Look at this. I barely even have to move anything. It's great. The real test is gonna be seeing whether it just boots up. That would be amazing. Okay. So, one challenge here is that our graphics card is going in one slot lower. Is that gonna make it? That looks really tight. Hold on, let's get this screwed in as high up as possible. So you can see this tube doesn't quite make it to the socket, but we've got about that much room off the fitting. So maybe it'll be good enough. What the heck? Is this leaking? It is. Why is this leaking? Okay, we will deal with that in a moment. First, let's find out if we even have a build here. Gonna make it? Oh, shoot. I don't think so. And every time I pull this up, this drips. Crap, this is bad. For those wondering what a tech YouTuber's attic looks like, basically the same as anyone else's attic, but with more YouTube branded Magic 8-Balls and signed Derbauer CPU IHS. All right, but the most important thing up here for our purposes today is this. This is my old personal rig chassis that was a gift from my wife that I have been through much with and I just didn't have the heart to get rid of it. And it's possible that buried within it is actually some of the same tubing that I'm still using, this blue UV Primochill stuff. I wanted to hold onto this thing in case I ever decided to go back to a tower case. Frankly, they just don't make cases like they used to. And I doubt I would find something on the market that I would like better than this one. So, oh. Now I don't see anything up here, which is actually a pretty bad sign right now. Were you just gonna instruct me? Oh buddy. Oh, jackpot! No wonder I didn't take this out. It's three eighths inch tubing stretched over a one half inch fitting. Oh, that's how stretched that was. Look at the difference in diameter. We got it though. That should be a long enough piece of tubing. So I don't know why. I mean, maybe it was just my block wasn't tight enough from the factory. I mean, could it be that simple? That had a good quarter turn left in it. That one had an eighth plus. So let's have a look here and see if we're still leaking. No drops. Now after journeying to Mount Doom and back, we can finally put on this piece of tubing. Blue cable. This triggered so many people when I put it in and I don't even blame you. Okay. Cleanest build you ever saw? Ah, maybe not. Good enough? Yes. Now, rather than load it back into the server cabinet, I'm just gonna test it right here. All right, that's a good sign. Okay. All 64 gigs of RAM detected, Ryzen 9 3900X, 12 core processor. X570 alpha. Excellent. Oh, I guess we should connect the wifi so at least have a network connection. Which one's Bluetooth doesn't say. I wasn't gonna bother to hook up Bluetooth, but whatever. So this is weird. What I was expecting was some kind of USB4 implementation here, but on ASRock's website, it straight up has an Intel Thunderbolt driver download. I mean, maybe this is just something that I haven't encountered yet where the specs are so similar that you just literally use Intel's own software on an AMD board. Guess we'll find out. All right, speaking of sick, I have updated my BIOS. I have applied my XMP profiles, so my memory is now at least running at 2666 instead of 2133. And I am ready to install my Intel Thunderbolt driver. So I told you guys before, I had a solution to the problem of getting my Thunderbolt signal from the other side of this wall to my desktop setup here, and I do. The problem is that I'm not allowed to tell you what it is and I'm not allowed to show it to you, so. It's a little awkward. So we're just gonna use a PCI slot as a pass through, plug that in, and then plug this into the back. And then plug this into the back of the graphics card, just like that. Not exactly elegant, but hey, if you want elegant, buy a Mac. Hey, G-Sync display connected. Everything is working just effortlessly. It looks like that one was the right one. Wow, my dock's even working and everything. So it's official. I've got AMD. Now we've just gotta run the secret sauce here. Hey, that was it. We good. Oh, fantastic. Everything working exactly as intended. So thanks for watching, guys. I am personally really looking forward to this adventure, at least until I get hit with the buyer's remorse that always comes when something newer and better happens, as we know is happening with the 16 core and then the upcoming next-gen Threadripper and all of that good stuff. So make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any of our videos on that stuff. First, it'll be the review, then me upgrading my stuff. It'll be good.