Asrock 890GX Extreme3 890GX CrossfireX Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
942 words · ~4 min read
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so today we will be unboxing a motherboard from asass rock it is part of their true 333 series I'm not sure
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who they got that marketing thing from but they mean USB 3.0 SATA 3 and E sat 3
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this is the 890 GX extreme so it's part of AMD's latest 800 series chipsets that
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means it is six core CPU ready Phenom 2x6 Athlon 2 Windows 7 Crossfire X and
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integrated radon HD 4290 Graphics are some of the uh um what am I talking
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about some of the Technologies included they also have support for True Blu-ray
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as well as unlock coreon unlocking they use Japanese made long life capacitors
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and they also have eup Which is less than one watt in off mode very cool so
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it's an energy savings feature let's move around to the back where we have
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okay they basically reiterate most of what they said on the front already
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awesome so let's get this board open first thing we find inside in terms
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of accessories is the guide to their instant boot application okay so it
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unfolds about like that it comes in different languages then we have a
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little a little pamphlet on their intelligent energy saver so this is a
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little application that shows you looks like how much power your system's
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pulling uh how many power phases are enabled very neat okay and then okay
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here we go so we've got included 1 two 3
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four included satat 2 cables then we
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have an IO Shield which is color coded for your convenience then we have one
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Molex to SATA power adapter and and one
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e SATA bracket very cool then we have a
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users manual which includes a drivers and utilities DVD don't use this
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download the latest this is all English holy cow this is oh no it's not oh good
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okay the language is Chang cuz I was going to say this thing's like a novel
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so the manual shows you all the basics where to plug in your front panel connectors a little oh color picture
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Guide to the motherboard that's very nice I don't think I've seen a color
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photo inside a motherboard manual before
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something every day you know that you encounter for the first time all right
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so the motherboard itself is not
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sealed let's pull this baby
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out now asrock's a bit of a value brand but a lot of the time that doesn't
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prevent them from bringing a product to Market at a value price with all of the
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high-end features so let's have a look at what they've got included here they've got a typical am3 socket with
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support for dual Channel DDR3 memory up to 16 gigs at this time their eight pin
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power connectors in its ideal location up at the top left and then I've
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actually had questions about what makes it an ideal location the reason is that
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that's the easiest place to Route up behind the motherboard tray most of the
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time and then their 24 pin power connector is also in its ideal location
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along the rightand edge down here we're going to find the S Bridge cooler is
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kind of a uh just a tower fin cooler a very standard Affair but it's going to
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do a good job you can tell just looking at it you've got our 6 SATA 3 6 gbit per
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second ports here as well as a post debug LED thingamajiggy here's your
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front panel connectors they've also included onboard power and reset buttons
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very high-end features once again despite a more value um image to this
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particular brand we have four USB 2.0
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front panel headers here's your clear seos jumper and USB
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pw3 to be honest I can't tell you what that does okay so here is our slot
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layout we have one PCI e1x slot three
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PCI 16x slots although this one appears
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to be wired for 4X only and then we have three PCI slots so if you're running
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Crossfire you're going to want to use these two blue guys in fact this one's
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wired for 8X only so you'll be running 8X 8X which does not impact performance
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significantly and then if you wanted to run three-way Crossfire I wouldn't
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really recommend it CU this is a 4X slot the North Bridge cooling is a pretty
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again a pretty standard Affair you've got just a nice little Tower heat sink
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here with a little ASRock logo one heat pipe connecting it to the MOs F cooler
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which is again very standard very functional let's move around to the back
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of the board where we will find all of our IO and uh here what do we got so
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first we've got 1 2 3 4 USB 2.0 ports
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then we have a PS2 keyboard Port VGA DVI
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and HDMI interfaces for the onboard Graphics hey a back panel clear seos
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button that's awesome considering that this is a value board then we have an
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ESAT Port fire wire USB 3.0 1 GB
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Ethernet optical audio out as well as
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7.1 audio so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the
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ASRock oh shoot you know this doesn't happen to me very often but I forgot
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what it's called the ASRock 890 GX Extreme 3