Apparently Intel and others surprised the Linux and FreeBSD communities with the 11th gen onboard-processor graphics and the 2.5gbit ethernet chips. So those operating systems only partially support those chipsets. This is a problem with all of the new motherboards that support the 11th Gen Intel processors with on-chip graphics and also have those new 2.5GB ethernet chipsets from Intel or Realtek. (Intel's new i119 1Gigabit Ethernet chip is also not universally supported yet.)
Because of that lack of adequate software drivers the operating system depends on the BIOS/EFI to properly detect screen size and inform the OS. This board's BIOS tells OS that all monitors are 800x600. So some Linux distros and FreeBSD come up looking like we are back in 1995.
(I've used a lot of ASRock motherboards over the last few years and have always found their BiOS/EFI to be usable but lacking in some rather obvious ways, like not properly drawing the boot menu on the screen.)
I had to install an extra ethernet board to be able to load Fedora 34 and then upgrade to a version that had drivers for the onboard Ethernet.
Overall - the board is OK but if one is thinking of Linux or FreeBSD, I'd advise a wait, perhaps through the end of 2021, for the shock of the 11th Gen Intel processor graphics and the Intel & Realtek 2.5Ethernet chipsets to settle down.
When I contacted ASRock tech support I was summarily dismissed and told that they only supported Windows.
| RAM | DDR4 |
|---|---|
| Memory Speed | 4800 MHz |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
