ASRock – Coming Out of the Parent Company’s Shadow

No one will dispute that ASUS has become one of, if not the, preeminent brands out there for computer mainboards. Now, the company’s ‘economy’ brand, ASRock, is coming into its own as a purveyor of quality motherboards with many of the features of the ‘high priced spread’.

AnandTech has an article detailing the new offerings from the ASRock designers, shown at the CeBIT show, in Germany.

First up is a revised AMD 780G motherboard from ASRock. We have been fans of their current series based on value to performance ratios and ASRock has listened to some of our requests for changes. The A780GXH/128M features the 780G Northbridge and the updated 710 Southbridge. This is the first 780G board to feature this combination and along with it comes full support for AMD’s OverDrive (AOD) application and Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC) technology. In early testing, this combination has worked flawlessly with our older Phenom 8750BE/9950BE processors along with the new Phenom II X3 720BE. In fact, it allowed us to unlock the fourth core on a couple of our retail 720BE (0904 lot code) processors.

The board features four DDR2 memory slots, two PCI Express x16 (x16/x4 electrical), one PCI/e x1 slot, and two PCI slots. Also included is the VIA VT1708S 8-channel HD audio codec with QSound capability, Realtek RTL8111DL Gigabit LAN (PCI/e), six SATA II connectors featuring RAID 0,1,10 capability, 128MB Side Port memory, and D-Sub, DVI, and HDMI video output. Compared to previous board designs, ASRock now includes four fan headers but only the CPU fan header has BIOS/Windows control features.

A pretty good start for the rabid builder, on a budget. If that was not enough, there is an AM3 board, which is further proof that ASRock is not going to be kept down with the bargain basement boards much longer.

This board features the AMD 790GX Northbridge and 750 Southbridge. The board includes four DDR3 memory slots with support up to DDR3-1600 (higher when overclocking) and 16GB, three PCI Express x16 (x16/x8/x4 electrical, dual x8 for CrossFire operation), one PCI/e x1 slot, and two PCI slots. Also included is the Realtek ALC890 8-channel HD audio codec with DTS support, Realtek RTL8111DL Gigabit LAN (PCI/e), six SATA II connectors featuring RAID 0,1,5,10 capability, 128MB Side Port memory (DDR3-1333), IEEE 1394A, and D-Sub, DVI-D, and HDMI video output. Compared to previous 790GX board designs, ASRock now includes four fan headers but only the CPU fan header has BIOS/Windows control features.

ASRock also includes their Instant Boot (full resume in 6.2 seconds on this board) technology, OC Tuner application, and Intelligent Energy Saver (IES) system that reduced idle and load voltages around three to five watts on average. ASRock has introduced a enthusiast friendly BIOS that includes a significant number of options to designed to get the most out of this board, including a several auto OC options (5%~50% range) that worked perfectly.

So here is another mainboard with high end features, which is going to allow a few more dollars to be placed in the kitty for that Black Edition processor, or perhaps two more sticks of memory.

ASRock also has developed a mainboard BIOS for allowing a 740 chipset board to use either 2 nVidia or two ATi video cards in lockstep. This kind of flexibility is something that buyers really like, and will further ingratiate the name ASRock to those not already enamored.

As a long time ASUS user, I have been keeping an eye on the ASRock offerings, because of the feature sets, which in the past couple of generations, have tended to be more adventurous, and also sporting certain anti-obsolescence items, which is always good.

§

•