so today we will be unboxing a motherboard from asass rock it is part of their true 333 series I'm not sure
who they got that marketing thing from but they mean USB 3.0 SATA 3 and E sat 3
this is the 890 GX extreme so it's part of AMD's latest 800 series chipsets that
means it is six core CPU ready Phenom 2x6 Athlon 2 Windows 7 Crossfire X and
integrated radon HD 4290 Graphics are some of the uh um what am I talking
about some of the Technologies included they also have support for True Blu-ray
as well as unlock coreon unlocking they use Japanese made long life capacitors
and they also have eup Which is less than one watt in off mode very cool so
it's an energy savings feature let's move around to the back where we have
okay they basically reiterate most of what they said on the front already
awesome so let's get this board open first thing we find inside in terms
of accessories is the guide to their instant boot application okay so it
unfolds about like that it comes in different languages then we have a
little a little pamphlet on their intelligent energy saver so this is a
little application that shows you looks like how much power your system's
pulling uh how many power phases are enabled very neat okay and then okay
here we go so we've got included 1 two 3
four included satat 2 cables then we
have an IO Shield which is color coded for your convenience then we have one
Molex to SATA power adapter and and one
e SATA bracket very cool then we have a
users manual which includes a drivers and utilities DVD don't use this
download the latest this is all English holy cow this is oh no it's not oh good
okay the language is Chang cuz I was going to say this thing's like a novel
so the manual shows you all the basics where to plug in your front panel connectors a little oh color picture
Guide to the motherboard that's very nice I don't think I've seen a color
photo inside a motherboard manual before
something every day you know that you encounter for the first time all right
so the motherboard itself is not
sealed let's pull this baby
out now asrock's a bit of a value brand but a lot of the time that doesn't
prevent them from bringing a product to Market at a value price with all of the
high-end features so let's have a look at what they've got included here they've got a typical am3 socket with
support for dual Channel DDR3 memory up to 16 gigs at this time their eight pin
power connectors in its ideal location up at the top left and then I've
actually had questions about what makes it an ideal location the reason is that
that's the easiest place to Route up behind the motherboard tray most of the
time and then their 24 pin power connector is also in its ideal location
along the rightand edge down here we're going to find the S Bridge cooler is
kind of a uh just a tower fin cooler a very standard Affair but it's going to
do a good job you can tell just looking at it you've got our 6 SATA 3 6 gbit per
second ports here as well as a post debug LED thingamajiggy here's your
front panel connectors they've also included onboard power and reset buttons
very high-end features once again despite a more value um image to this
particular brand we have four USB 2.0
front panel headers here's your clear seos jumper and USB
pw3 to be honest I can't tell you what that does okay so here is our slot
layout we have one PCI e1x slot three
PCI 16x slots although this one appears
to be wired for 4X only and then we have three PCI slots so if you're running
Crossfire you're going to want to use these two blue guys in fact this one's
wired for 8X only so you'll be running 8X 8X which does not impact performance
significantly and then if you wanted to run three-way Crossfire I wouldn't
really recommend it CU this is a 4X slot the North Bridge cooling is a pretty
again a pretty standard Affair you've got just a nice little Tower heat sink
here with a little ASRock logo one heat pipe connecting it to the MOs F cooler
which is again very standard very functional let's move around to the back
of the board where we will find all of our IO and uh here what do we got so
first we've got 1 2 3 4 USB 2.0 ports
then we have a PS2 keyboard Port VGA DVI
and HDMI interfaces for the onboard Graphics hey a back panel clear seos
button that's awesome considering that this is a value board then we have an
ESAT Port fire wire USB 3.0 1 GB
Ethernet optical audio out as well as
7.1 audio so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the
ASRock oh shoot you know this doesn't happen to me very often but I forgot
what it's called the ASRock 890 GX Extreme 3