Review Conclusion of ASRock X58 SuperComputer Intel X58+ICH10R Core i7 Mainboard

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Review Conclusion of ASRock X58 SuperComputer Intel X58+ICH10R Core i7 Mainboard Bluetooth 15 Feb 2009

Conclusion

When we first heard about ASRock having a Intel X58 mainboard, we were all taken by surprise. Being a player in the low-mid range market for the past years, we were wondering what sort of features would ASRock bundled into the package to make ti attractive against the big players that sells that board at a 300 USD.

While we first open the box, we were quite happy to see it has a 4 full length PCIe 2.0 slots. Some boards have the slots squeezed without considering the air flow and the length cards blocking the Front panel connectors or SATA ports. On ASRock X58 SuperComputer it has 4 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (blue @ x8 / x16 mode, orange @ x8 / N/A mode) (Double-wide slot spacing between each PCI-E slot). Thus you can fit in 2 slot design graphics cards on all slots and run Quad CrossFire or 3 way SLI without an issue.

We also liked the package as it comes with all the SLI bridges and CrossFire bridges ready. You would not need to dig your VGA boxes for those bridges. Unfortunately, ASRock only provided two CrossFire bridges, an additional one would be helpful for those who wish to run Quad CrossFire.

The BIOS options are quite substantial for the overclockers. One thing i like is the EZ OC feature. You can just click on it and it will load the necessary tested timings to run the processor at the rated speed e.g. 3.6GHz, 3.7GHz ~ 4.0GHz without you needing to know how to lower the QPI, what is the best voltage, DIMM speeds, DIMM voltage. Of course, you can DIY if you wish. You can also save your own custom settings in the BIOS for different system scenarios.

In terms of overclocking, the BIOS included a large range of FSB and voltage options available. You can see the BIOS options here. We loaded the EZ OC to 4GHz but it seems that our heatsink isn't good enough to handle it. Although the system can POST at 3.9GHz, it is relatively unstable when benchmarking with 4 x Radeon 4850 cards in CrossFire mode. We managed to get it stable and running the processor at 3.6GHz. That is running the board at 20X180MHz (180 being the BCLK). You can also use the OC Tuner to o/c it further.

With Quad CrossFire of 4850, Future 3DMark Vantage scored P19192 while 3DMark06 scored 24137.

In Conclusion, the ASRock X58SuperComputer did not disappoint us. Although it came out later than most other brands, it has, if not all the necessary features you would find on an advance chipset mainboard these days. In our test, we didn't have issues running our older DDR3 modules. It is of course recommended to get the official X58 certified rams to power this monster. This board also support up to DDR3-2000, in fact the BIOS options allow you to select up to DDR3-2133. It is a

BIOS used : P1.40. For beta bios, please visit http://my.ocworkbench.com/bbs

Discuss

Pros

IES
Spacious 4 x PCIe slots
Wide range of FSB
ASRock OC Tuner
Instant Boot

Cons

no debug LED
no WiFI-N
no Clr Cmos switch, Power Button

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10.

Category	Score
Performance	10 / 10
Features	10 / 10
Ease Of Installation	10 / 10
Overclocking Features	9 / 10
Documentation	7 / 10
Packaging	9 / 10
Cost / Performance	8 / 10
Overall Rating :	9 / 10

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