ASRock Introduces W790 WS R2.0 Motherboard for Workstations

ASRock has unveiled the W790 WS R2.0 motherboard designed for workstations powered by 4th Gen Intel Xeon W-3400 and W-2400 series processors in the Socket LGA4677 package. Despite its name suggesting it is a revision of the W790 WS, the new W790 WS R2.0 is actually a lighter version of the original, with some I/O features removed. The fancy I/O shroud has been replaced with bare connectors, and some connectors have been stripped away. The CPU VRM remains the same, but the VRM heatsinks on the R2.0 have a simpler design. These changes were made to make the board more compatible with certain rackmount chassis.

In addition to the design changes, the ASRock W790 WS R2.0 does not include Thunderbolt 4, Wi-Fi 6E, and only has a single 10 GbE interface instead of dual-10 GbE on the original W790 WS. However, the W790 WS R2.0 is still a powerful workstation motherboard. It is powered by a combination of 24-pin ATX, two 8-pin EPS, and a 6-pin PCIe power connectors, and features a 22-phase CPU VRM. The board has four PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slots, one PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slot, and supports quad-channel DDR5 memory with a total capacity of 2 TB and a maximum overclocked memory speed of DDR5-6800.

Storage connectivity on the ASRock W790 WS R2.0 includes four M.2 Gen 5 slots, one U.2 port, and eight SATA 6 Gbps ports. USB connectivity consists of a 20 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 type-C port, two 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 type-A ports, seven 5 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, and three USB 2.0 ports. Networking interfaces include a 10 GbE interface and a 2.5 GbE interface. The board also features 6-channel HD audio. Pricing for the ASRock W790 WS R2.0 has not been disclosed, but it is expected to be lower than the original W790 WS.