ASRock Logo

ASRock was founded on May 10, 2002, in Taipei, Taiwan, as a spin-off of ASUS. Its founder, Ted Hsu, a co-founder of ASUS, created the business for the mass OEM market. It aimed to compete with manufacturers such as Foxconn in the budget motherboard market for system integrators and PC builders.

The company began with limited resources, but its first motherboard became a strong seller in the low-cost segment. ASRock focused on a market that larger brands such as ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte treated as secondary. Its early reputation came from boards that helped users upgrade older systems without replacing every component.

In its first years, ASRock released several unusual compatibility products. These included a motherboard with a K8 Bridge Port that let users run Socket 754 processors on an older Socket 462 platform, a board supporting both PCI Express x16 and AGP 8X, and another model supporting both DDR and DDR2 memory. In 2005, ASRock became one of the first makers of RoHS-certified motherboards. In November 2007, it was listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange under the ticker 3515.

In 2008, Pegatron Corporation acquired ASRock and completed the purchase in 2010, keeping the brand operationally independent. In January 2011, ASRock was recognized as the world’s third-largest motherboard maker. That year, it worked with esports player Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel on gaming motherboards. In 2013, ASRock Rack became a separate server unit. In 2018, the company entered the graphics cards market with AMD-based ASRock Radeon models. By 2020, revenue reached about NT$17.9 billion, with sales channels in more than 90 countries.