ASRock, i680, and *Official* Yorkfield Support

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

Did a search for ASRock and didn't see this so:


ASRock Penryn1600SLIX3-WIFI
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2008/asro...x3-wifi/g1.htm

Pic of Board:
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2008/asro...036%20copy.jpg


ASRock is the company to officially support Yorkfield on i680. I guess being a little bit late to the party does have its advantages

Specs

* LGA 775 for Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme / Core™ 2 Quad / Core™ 2 Duo / Pentium® Dual Core / Celeron®, supporting Penryn Quad Core Yorkfield and Dual Core Wolfdale processors
* All Solid Capacitor design
* NVIDIA® nForce 680i SLI Chipset
* Compatible with all FSB1600/1333/1066/800MHz CPUs
* Supports Dual Channel DDR2 800/667/533 x 4 DIMM slots, maximum capacity up to 8GB
* Supports NVIDIA® SLI™ and 3-Way SLI™
* 3 x PCI Express x16 slots (white @ x16 mode, yellow @ x8 mode)
* Supports Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s
* Supports 2 x IEEE1394 ports (one port on back panel, one header on board)
* 6 x SATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, JBOD and RAID 5), NCQ and "Hot Plug" functions
* 1 x eSATAII 3.0 Gb/s connector, supports NCQ and "Hot Plug" functions
* 1 x WiFi/E header
* 7.1 CH Windows® Vista™ Premium Level HD Audio with Content Protection, supports DAC with 110dB dynamic range (ALC890 Audio Codec), DTS (Digital Theater Systems)
* Supports ASRock OC Tuner
* Windows® Vista™ Premium 2007 Logo Ready
* Bundle: 1 x ASRock WiFi-802.11g Module 1 x Antenna, 1 x ASRock SLI Bridge and 1 x ASRock 3-Way SLI Bridge
* ASRock WiFi_eSATAII I/O Plus : 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port with LED, 1 x IEEE 1394 port, 1 x eSATAII port

Conclusion

ASRock's entry into the high end market is really a pleasant surprise for us here. This new board based on an aging chipset does give us a surprise in it's performance and ability to support the newer processors out there. Not only that, it is also the first ASRock board to incorporate a heatpipe to cool the north south bridges.

In terms of features, the board supports supports Dual Channel DDR2 800/667/533 x 4 DIMM slots, maximum capacity up to 8GB. As it comes with 3 full length PCIe x16 slots but electrically wired at 8+16+16. This enables one to run in Full SLI with Dual PCIe x16. With 3 8800GTX cards, 3 way SLI can be achieved by installing the third card into the PCIe x8 slot. Two type of SLI connectors are bundled in the package.

Other than that, the board has a complete feature set, it includes as Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s, 2 x IEEE1394 ports (one port on back panel, one header on board). In terms of expansion, it has 6x SATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, JBOD and RAID 5) and NCQ functions. Plug in the WIFI card and you can transform the system into a Access Point or use it plainly for accessing wireless networks.

Performance wise, this board wins some and lose some when compared to the Gigabyte P35T-DQ6 mainboard paired up with 2GB of DDR3-1066 modules. The graphics performance improved further when we pair up another 9600GT to the board for SLI. The interesting observation is that it's brother the Penryn1600SLI-WIFI does pretty well too in SLI (dual 8x). This is probably due to the fact that both 9600GT isn't able to fully tap the power of dual 16x.

In terms of overclocking, the BIOS comes pretty complete with large range of FSB and voltage options available. You can see the BIOS options here. In our o/c test, we used a E6550 processor that clocks at 7x333 and o/c it by lowering the multiplier to 6x and increase the cpu clk to 469MHz. The memory is set to DDR2-533 so that it won't be the bottleneck in our o/c test. Voltages are also increased to ensure more stability. Vcore is set to 1.46v, Vdimm to 2.2v, Vtt to 1.33v, Chipset voltage to 1.382v. We also used the OC tuner and managed to get it up to 469x6. See diagram below.

During our test, we find that the north bridge and south bridge heatsink is exceptionally hot. We have enquired about this and the official reply was that the chipset is able to withstand high temperatures. Although it is hot, the heatpipe seems to help a lot in contrast to the heatsinks only solution on the Penryn1600SLI-110db board.

In conclusion, ASRock has impressed me with this new product. The specifications is comparable to boards from the 1st tier manufacturers. If you are looking for a LGA775 board that support the Wolfdale/Yorkfield processors and wants SLI performance, this board is definitely worth considering as it will be priced very competitively against the new boards out there.

Anybody have a price on it yet? Any results here in house?




Mods feel free to delete if I missed the previous thread.

[massman]

Got the board on my desk, but before I start testing it, I need to finish some other articles

[Frank M]

For the longest time Asrock was a budget brand, with most of their boards
based around the cheap integrated graphics chipsets (865G, 945G, etc).
Then came the P35 and 650i, which were already a bit shocking.
And now 680i? The end is near!

Interesting.
I see they have kept one "feature": horrible power connector placement.
Also, as they said in the review, that heatsink is inadequately small for
such a hot chipset.
But apart from these, it does have a really nice feature set and seems to
perform ok.

[boqonx]

I would say much like Foxconn, in which they are trying to capture high-end, OC-ers segment of the market.

[imapwnu]

sweeeeet!!

i love ASROCK

they are such an awesome budget board company

[NickS]

Looks good. For a $100 SLi board that supports Wolfdale, it'll make a lot of users happy

[[XC] gomeler]

That PWM scares me. Damn shame they didn't line up the mosfets and sink them. Wonder how efficient this board will be.

[r1ch]

That tiny NB+SB heatsink scares me!

Like they said in the review - it gets "exceptionally hot", and whe you think of the substantial heatsink's that previous 680i boards had, this looks like nothing more than laziness on ASRock's part.

[hecktic]

$100 ???

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

I like the idea of having a higher end board without that much cooling on it. Few people here use the stock chipset cooling; far fewer use the stock cpu cooler. Less crap to take off when you mod the board

[cky2k6]

like raven said, who cares if it has subpar chipset cooling, are those ridiculous copper rollercoasters more appealing? they're just more annoying to take off when trying to put a decent cooler on...

[irev210]

That tiny NB+SB heatsink scares me!

Like they said in the review - it gets "exceptionally hot", and whe you think of the substantial heatsink's that previous 680i boards had, this looks like nothing more than laziness on ASRock's part.

it isnt laziness

it is cost


Look at the P5N32-E SLI, it has a small NB heatsink also.


Buy a 40mm fan, problem solved. Bottom line is the 680i chipset runs hot. For stock, who cares? Wanna overclock? Buy a lil fan or a thermalright NB heatsink.

Im glad that ASROCK is one of the few companies that puts out pretty cool stuff at rockbottom prices.

Some of the stuff people have done with ASROCK boards is VERY impressive considering the price.

[Neova]

Looks like a great bang for the buck board for SLI or even upgrade guys. Too bad it won't allow CFX!

Would love to see SLI, 3xSLI and Quad SLI action comparison against the bigger and more expensive boards.

[Biker]

Yayy!

Cheap 45nm quad board + SLI goodness!!

I am NOT paying £300 just to get SLI support (790I).....

I mean, the 790I boards dont even have an updated Southbridge!

Just junk the crappy hs and hopefully this board will be good for 24/7 400 fsb....

Now all I need is some UK stock...

[KTE]

Any reviews or updates by someone owning one?

[massman]

Setting up the rig right now (Q9300 + 9600GT), you need something special KTE?

Pictures cannot be taken right now, parents took the digicam.

[massman]

First impressions:

Stock - works excellent
Northbridge gets hot, hot, hot, hot
Out-of-the box overclocking is not that easy.

[kiwi]

But most asrock boards have very poor oc options. Just fsb and a very slight if any cpu/NB/RAM voltage increase

If they made something like biostar did with Tforce series now that would be awesome

[massman]

I tried going from 333 to 350 on first boot and set all timings quite aggressive, but that didn't work, so I'll have to test each option seperatly.

The options are not that extensive, but it's better than I've seen on the 4CoreDual series. By the way, Asrock included a OC Tuner in which you can set the MP manually. Too bad you can't change the MP in the bios, though.

(I have received a new bios which I haven't tested yet)

[XSAlliN]

For the longest time Asrock was a budget brand, with most of their boards
based around the cheap integrated graphics chipsets (865G, 945G, etc).
Then came the P35 and 650i, which were already a bit shocking.
And now 680i? The end is near!

It still is a budget brand.

[KTE]

Thanks for the feedback massman. You know.. the basic drill.

Top speed OC
FSB OC
MEM OC
RAM/SPi Performance
GPU Performance
Temps/Vdrops/Vdroops
BIOS

333-350 stock not doable isn't good but then again you have a non QX Yorky which have their own share of problems. Have you had a chance to try any DC 65nm/45nm yet?

How hot does that NB get by a rough estimate?.. 60C?

[massman]

Forgot about this ... haven't overclocked the board yet, first the Phenom review.

The NB gets untouchably hot outside a case with no airflow over the board. Inside a case, it's still hot, but doable.

Will try to try 65nm/45nm DC and 45nm QC :p.

[Eldonko]

How hot does that NB get by a rough estimate?.. 60C?

Yep, 58C at 100% stock settings and 45nm CPU. Measured HS with fluke, actual chipset is likely a bit hotter than that.

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

Yep, 58C at 100% stock settings and 45nm CPU. Measured HS with fluke, actual chipset is likely a bit hotter than that.

Any more info? Tried overclocking it yet? Any input appreciated. Thanks.

[Eldonko]

Yeah, testing in progress now. I have the board for a review so Ill give the link once Im finished.