ASRock X58 Extreme6 Mainboard Review
Bluetooth 17 Oct 2010
Looking for the most affordable featured pack board. This board is no ordinary X58 chipset mainboard. This board is the first board based on Intel X58 chipset and it support up to 6 USB 3.0 ports on board. ASRock uses 3 NEC USB 3.0 chipsets to control the 4 rear 2 front USB 3.0 portsTo make it Not only that, it also has 6 SATA6Gbps ports on board. That makes it support up to 12 SATA ports (6 SATAII and 6 SATA III – 6Gbps). . In order to supply ample bandwidth, ASRock uses the PLX chip on board.
So how does ASRock achieve that? Basically, we went a bit further to study the block diagram and discovered that ASRock has made one of the better designs. In earlier designs from other manufacturers, the graphics PCIe lanes are hard wired or run at a lower speed. In ASRock’s design, the 3 graphics port lanes are configured as 16x + 8x + 8x. The remaining 4x is split into 2x + 2x, one for the Marvell SATA6Gbps and the other 2 lanes is connected to the PLX PEX8608 chip. The PLX PEX8606 transforms the PCIe x2 to support 3 NEC USB 3.0 (for 6 USB 3.0 ports), 2 Marvell SATA6Gbps chips (for 4 ports of SATA 6Gbps) and 2 PCIe x1 lanes.
Other than this implementation to support the fastest peripherals, ASRock X58 Extreme6 comes with ASRock DuraCap (2.5 x longer life time), 100% Japan-made high-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors. It supports the 6 core processor and supports Triple Channel DDR3 2000(OC). With 3 full length PCIe slots it supports supports ATI™ Quad CrossFireX™,3-Way CrossFireX™ and CrossFireX™, NVIDIA® Quad SLI™,3-Way SLI™ and SLI™. 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC892 Audio Codec), THX TruStudio Pro™ and Premium Blu-ray audio support
Other features include 2 x Front USB 3.0 ports, 4 x Rear USB 3.0 ports, 6 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s connectors, 2 x IEEE 1394ports, Dr. Debug, Smart Switch Design: Power/Reset/Clear CMOS Switch with LED
Supports ASRock Instant Boot, Instant Flash, OC Tuner, IES, OC DNA, Good Night LED, Multi-Speed Fan Control, AIWI, APP Charger.
Free Software : CyberLink DVD Suite – OEM and Trial
Free Bundle: 1 x Front USB 3.0 Panel, 1 x ASRock SLI_Bridge_2S Card, 1 x ASRock 3-Way SLI-2S2S Bridge Card
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