PC Gamer has covered several high-end Z690 gaming motherboards, including ASRock's pricey Z690 Taichi, and there is a new set of exclusive halo boards, led by the $1,400 ASRock Z690 Aqua. What do we call these? Ultra High End. Ultra-Enthusiast Hyper-High-End; whatever you want to call boards that cost well over $1,000, the Z690 Aqua absolutely belongs in this category.

The ASRock Z690 Aqua joins the Asus Maximus Extreme Glacial, Aorus Xtreme WaterForce, and MSI Godlike in this strange family of boards with elaborate names and prices. All of these are priced well above the level that 99.9% of the market deems appropriate.

But these are not simply boards designed for the mass market. Some folks have more money than others. That is the way of the world, and there is clearly a demand for limited edition premium products like Aqua. These motherboards are said by the manufacturer to be "see what it can do" and by the buyer to be "see how much you can splurge."

It's as if the engineers and designers have been handed a blank slate and told to see what they can do and not to worry about price; the designers and engineers at ASRock seem to be very proud of themselves, and I'm sure they're not the only ones.

Once you get past the sticker shock, there is no doubt that the Z690 Aqua is a work of motherboard art. Limited to a production run of only 500 units, our sample does not count as one of them. Instead of a number adjacent to the chipset heatsink, our review sample bears the unique PC Gamer naming. Cool. We are special.

First, let's take a look at the packaging and accessories. The box is large and heavy. The overall design and even the fonts used add a minimalist elegance. Underneath the motherboard tray is an accessory layer divided into four sections: in addition to the usual accessories like SATA cables, Wi-Fi antenna, and manual, there is also a water leak detector with a digital display. Impressively, Asrock also includes thermal paste and a spare thermal pad.

Now, turning to the motherboard itself, what a beauty. All the metal looks space-age, and it is covered with a full backplate, not only on the front, but on the back as well. The board has three M.2 slots, all of which are PCIe 4.0 x4 compatible. One of them is located to the right of the memory slots; the M.2 slots are our preferred location because they are positioned away from the GPU, which dissipates heat.

Given that some boards support up to five M.2 slots, a fourth M.2 slot might have been better. However, to compensate, the board has eight SATA ports.

The board has dual PCIe 5.0 slots, 16x PCIe 4.0 slots (x4 electrical), 1x PCIe 3.0 slot, eight 4-pin fan headers, four RGB headers (three of which are addressable), two USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C headers and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 headers.

Overall, there is a nice amount of expansion support.

One really cool included item is a small OLED display that shows various system information such as temperature and voltage. There are a few RGBs scattered around the rear I/O section and on the chipset heatsink. If you buy a motherboard like this one, be sure to show it off. It is a crime to keep it in the case.

At this price, you would expect Aqua to have a top-of-the-line VRM system; the 105A Stage's water-cooled 20-phase VRM will pose no challenge, even to a heavily overclocked 12900K. This chip will reach its own thermal limits before the motherboard does.

Our outdated 240mm custom water cooling setup is not optimal for a high performance 2022 CPU. A VRM test consisting of a 20-minute Cinebench loop showed a VRM temperature of 55°C. With a better radiator and pump, VRM temperatures would not be so high; 55°C is nothing to worry about.

Regarding VRM, I wish ASRock would bundle some basic VRM heatsinks in case you need to run them with air or AIO cooling. Of course, I realize this is a board designed for custom water cooling, but a few dollars worth of heatsinks at this price would not hurt ARSock's bottom line.

The obvious highlight of the rear I/O is the dual Thunderbolt 4/USB 4.0 Type-C ports. In addition to these, there is one DP 1.4 port for multi-monitor support. Other USB ports consist of two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports and four 3.1 Gen 1 ports; there is also an HDMI port, and the audio port is powered by the Realtek ALC1220 codec. The audio section includes an ESS Sabre 9218 DAC and WIMA audio caps; there is a CMOS clear button and a BIOS flashback button.

As far as networking goes, Aqua is as good as consumer-level boards get. At this price, however, you would expect nothing less; Intel Wi-Fi 6E, Killer E3100G 2.5G LAN, and Aquantia AQC113CS 10G LAN are available as networking options. [Now that the 12th generation platforms have had time to mature, it is not surprising that most motherboards only show performance within 1-2% of each other; the Z690 Aqua is a so-called 1.5th generation board. This means that the BIOS should be mature right out of the box, unlike earlier boards that struggled a bit with memory compatibility.

In system benchmarks, the board performed as expected: the Cinebench R23 test performed quite well, but in practice all boards are within the margin of error.

System Performance

The story is much the same when it comes to gaming performance: the RTX 3080 Ti performed as expected; for one or two frames, there would be no perceptible difference.

Gaming Performance

What we have on hand is standard Aqua, not Aqua OC, but it makes no difference to what the CPU can achieve unless you push memory to the max or use LN2 cooling.

Our CPUs reach their cooling limits before the board is overloaded, so CPU capacity is the determining factor.

However, when it comes to memory overclocking, it is a different story.

To get the most out of RAM, a good board is essential, and Aqua achieves this perfectly. We were able to achieve the devilish 6666 MHz at 1.45V, 36-38-38, which is just shy of what we were able to achieve with the 2-DIMM Asus Z690 Apex; bearing in mind that 2-DIMM boards should be advantageous, this is an outstanding result for Aqua

Overall, the results are very good.

Overall, Aqua feels like a mature board that is ready to really push SK Hynix memory right out of the box. Excellent.

I love the ASRock Z690 Aqua, but let's face it, this is definitely an atrocious motherboard. The idea of paying $1,400 for a motherboard just doesn't add up. But paying $200,000 for a Ferrari to drive around town doesn't make much sense to many people either. After all, it's a buyer's market. If you want it and are prepared to pay for it, you can get a great motherboard.

Technically speaking, the Z690 Aqua is fantastic. It's as sturdy and feature-packed as a tank, and it deserves to show off its glory in a huge windowed case. It is impossible to recommend, hence this score, but with only 500 available worldwide, our recommendation would not mean much anyway. [30 points] [31] This is something of a high-tech showpiece, and if you look at it that way, I can't help but love it.