ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 - motherboard - ATX - ALi M1695

...Technology, CPU Frequency Stepless control, ASRock U-COP - Overclocking protection, Boot Failure Guard & CPU Multiplier which is helpful for overclocking also.

The Audio supplied on this motherboard is full 7.1 surround sound, supplied via the AC'97 chipset, this is fine for most people but i dont trust the AC'97 chipsets out there so i still opt for my separate soundcard.

It should be noted that this motherboard has ...
...are taken direct from the ASRock website:


CPU - Socket 939 for AMD Athlon 64 / 64FX / 64X2 and Sempron processor
- FSB 1000 MHz (2.0GT/s)
- Supports HyperTransport Technology
- Supports AMD Cool'n'Quiet Technology

Chipset - Northbridge: ULi M1695
- Southbridge: ULI M1567

Hybrid Booster - CPU Frequency Stepless control
- CPU Multiplier
- ASRock U-COP
more

I recently purchased this budget board from an online store for £59.98 including postage and packaging, which i think was a good deal, but it can be found cheaper apparently according to Ciao!

The unit came well packaged, it is in a green box with a close-up od the motherboard on the front, and lots of stickers for the various awards this motherboard has won... lots and lots.

It is a standard ATX size mainboard: 304mm x 244mm and so will fit a standard ATX case. The motherboard features both support for AGP and PCI-express graphics cards which is both unusual and ideal for people looking to upgrade but not fork out for a new PCI-Express card just yet! It supports socket 939 processors up to and including AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 64bit. Used with two identical DDR RAM sticks, it will use the Dual Channel Technology which makes the speed or bandwidth utilisation of theRAM twice as fast - effectively 6 gb/s. This motherboard has an FSB of 1000Mhz (2.0GT/s) which is fast but about half as fast as the current top end boards which are arounf the £130 mark. This motherboard will support up to 4Gb of ram accross four slots, which is enough for anyones needs today, no matter how power hungry you might be.

The Northbridge and southbridge chipset uses ULi M1695, which is different to the very popular NF4 chipsets, and is of the same speed and quality, very little difference indeed. Both the North and Southbridge are passively cooled with heatsinks, no fans which is both good and bad... Not having fan sets for these means that cooling is not so good and may lead to overheating and system stability problems if overclocking your rig, but with passive cooling these chips stay cool under normal conditions and with no noise from the fans that are not there to hum, this also means no breakdown will occur from fans dying out.

This motherboard also sports some othe interesting technology, i will not go into detail as to what each does, as this can be found easily around the internet, i will try and find some links to help you resource these. Anyway the tech includes HyperTransport Technology, AMD Cool'n'Quiet Technology, CPU Frequency Stepless control, ASRock U-COP - Overclocking protection, Boot Failure Guard & CPU Multiplier which is helpful for overclocking also.

The Audio supplied on this motherboard is full 7.1 surround sound, supplied via the AC'97 chipset, this is fine for most people but i dont trust the AC'97 chipsets out there so i still opt for my separate soundcard.

It should be noted that this motherboard has no graphics chipset, so you WILL need a video or graphics card from first use of this board, but then if you didnt want to use your own graphics card then im guessing you are not looking to upgrade your motherboard either!

I should of mentioned before that the contents of the box includes: 1x Motherboard, Manual, 1xIDE Floppy Connector, 1X SATA cable, Driver CD, and I/O Backing Plate. Basically everything that you need which might not be supplied with your other components.

The manual although comprehensive and seems to cover MOST aspects, is a little short of information in places and could be a little clearer. If your a first timer and never played with a motherboard before then you may find yourself a little lost, so i would reccomend that you check out some website to gen up on PC building and motherboard assembly before you attempt to build on this motherboard.

Writing all the various aspects and parts i attached to this board would take forever almost, and im sure would be slightly irrelevant, so i will give you the main points of how i found installation. All the connectors and ports were easily accessable, it fits in my PC snugly and there were no problems installing any of the various components and upgrades, the layout of this board is quite user friendly and so was pleasant to to work with. Upon first booting everthing set itself up for the mainpart and only a little modification was needed in the BIOS, basically it worked from the off and was just what i needed.

The board has so many features and ports and so on that i could quite easily spend the entire day writing just this review. I have listed below the specs for the motherboard below, these are taken direct from the ASRock website:

CPU - Socket 939 for AMD Athlon 64 / 64FX / 64X2 and Sempron processor
- FSB 1000 MHz (2.0GT/s)
- Supports HyperTransport Technology
- Supports AMD Cool'n'Quiet Technology

Chipset - Northbridge: ULi M1695
- Southbridge: ULI M1567

Hybrid Booster - CPU Frequency Stepless control
- CPU Multiplier
- ASRock U-COP
- Boot Failure Guard (B.F.G)

Memory - DIMM slots: 4 supported
- Supports DDR400
- Max. capacity: 4GB

Expansion Slot - 1 x AGP8X/4X slot , 1.5V only
- PCI Express x16 slot
- PCI Express x1 slot
- 3 x PCI slots
* Compatible ATiX300 and X300SE series cards list

Graphics - n/a
Audio - Realtek 850 7.1channel AC'97 audio codec

LAN - Realtek RTL8201CL 10/100 Ethernet LAN PHY
- 802.3u, WOL supported

Connector - 2 x SerialATA connectors support RAID,0,1,JBOD
- 1 x SATA2 connector (based on PCI E SATA2 controller JMB360)
- 2 x ATA 133/100/66 IDE connectors (supports 4 x IDE devices)
- 1 x Floppy connector
- CPU/Chassis FAN connectors
- 20 pin ATX power connector
- 4 pin ATX 12V power connector
- Power LED connector
- CD audio in header
- Front panel audio connector
- 2 x USB 2.0 port pin headers (to support extra 4 USB2.0 ports)

Rear Panel I/O ASRock 8CH I/O
- 4 x USB2.0 ports
- 1 x RJ45 LAN port
- 1 x Serial port (COM1)
- 1 x PS2 Keyboard connector
- 1 x PS2 Mouse connectors
- 1 x Parallel port (LPT1)
- 2 x Audio ports to support 8 Ch audio ( Line In/Out, Mic In)

BIOS Feature - 2Mb AMI BIOS with ACPI, SM BIOS 3.0, PnP

Support CD - Drivers, Utilities, AntiVirus Software
- SATA driver and utility

Accessories - Quick Installation Guide, Support CD, I/O shield
- Floppy/ATA 133 cables
- 1 x SerialATA data cable
- 1 x SerialATA 1-to-1 power cable

Form Factor - ATX, 305mm x 244mm

OS - Microsoft Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP/XP 64-bit compliant
Certifications - FCC, CE, MS WHQL

Basically if you know your PC's most of that will make sense and will be most of what you need to know!

As for overclocking this MOBO, i wouldn't recomend it! Why? well despite the various tech for this motherboard to support and help control overclocking, the actual board does not seem built to be excessively overclocked, it will handle light OC'ing but not much more, the North and Southbridge chipset passive heatsinks see to that largely.

Using this Motherboard for a few weeks has been a delight, it is stable and reliable, it offers future compatability with an optional M2 chip board to add in for future processors, it also supports many old and existing technology i.e AGP and PCI-E, or even for Harddrives i.e IDE through to the new SATA 2 tech in RAID array! It's performance is on a par with many top spec MOBO's out on the market today. Basically a superb component for anyone building a rig or want to upgrade to a 939 socket processor.

Hope this review has been helpful, any questions just ask and i will add it to the review.

For more info about this product and the tech is boasts check out the following:

http://www.asrock.com/product/939Dual-SATA2.htm - Official Site

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/DevelopWithAMD/0,,30_2252_2353,00.html - About HyperTransport Tech

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_9485_9487%5e10272,00.html - To find more about Cool 'n' Quiet Tech

Hope these fill in any blanks.

 

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