Introduction and Specifications
ASRock shipped us one of their P55 Extreme motherboards to review, which was created for the LGA 1156 crowd and comes bundled with decent features like quad CrossfireX and SLI support, an add-on card for SATA 6GB/s devices, and custom overclocking options that will make newcomers to overclocking foam at the mouth.
ASRock gives users P55-based solution with easy overclocking features
Courtesy of ASRock
ASRock is a relatively new company to the motherboard scene, but their latest P55 lineup includes a few good offerings for both AMD and Intel platforms in the budget and higher-end class of motherboards. ASRock shipped us one of their P55 Extreme motherboards to review, which was created for the LGA 1156 crowd and comes bundled with decent features like quad CrossfireX and SLI support, an add-on card for SATA 6GB/s devices, and custom overclocking options that will make any newcomers to OCing foam at the mouth.
Courtesy of ASRock
ASRock was originally established in 2002 and their company’s main goal was to develop innovative and reliable motherboards. The company states on their website that their engineers pay a lot of attention to “EMI, thermal, acoustics and other details to achieve complete customer satisfaction.” We haven’t had a lot of experience examining their products here at PC Perspective in the past, so this review will serve as a “first date” to see how the P55 Extreme fairs against other P55-based boards during our synthetic benchmark and gaming tests.
The P55 Deluxe was released last year when Intel announced the LGA 1156 platform with the P55 chipset. This new technology was welcomed with open arms by the enthusiast community with hopes the LGA 1156 would match the performance offerings of the LGA 1366, but at a fraction of the cost of that platform. True to form, the LGA 1156 was able to deliver and ASRock has incorporated it into every aspect of the P55 Extreme’s design and feature set.
The P55 Deluxe includes a host of performance-enhancing features like two PCI-E x16 slots and eight SATA 3GB/s ports with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 support courtesy of Intel’s Matrix Storage technology. ASRock also extended the board’s memory support by allowing users to install up to 16GBs of DDR3-2600+ unbuffered memory. They also included two firewire ports and even dropped the cash to add Japanese-made Conductive Polymer Capacitors to help stabilize the board’s 16+2 power phase design.
ASRock P55 Deluxe motherboard specifications (taken from ASRock’s website)
|
General
|
|
|
CPU
|
– Supports Intel® Core™ i7 / i5 / i3 and Pentium® G6950 Processors in LGA1156 Package
|
|
Chipset
|
– Intel® P55
|
|
Memory
|
– Dual Channel DDR3 memory technology
*Due to the operating system limitation, the actual memory size may be less than 4GB for the reservation for system usage under Windows® 32-bit OS. For Windows® 64-bit OS with 64-bit CPU, there is no such limitation.
|
|
BIOS
|
– 16Mb AMI BIOS
|
|
Audio, Video and Networking
|
|
|
Graphics
|
– n/a
|
|
Audio
|
– 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection
|
|
LAN
|
– PCIE x1 Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s
|
|
Expansion / Connectivity
|
|
|
Slots
|
– 2 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (Single at x16 or Dual at x8/x8 mode)
|
|
Connector
|
– 2 x SATA3 6 Gb/s connectors (including 1 x external SATA3 6 Gb/s connector), supported by ASRock SATA3 card
|
|
Rear Panel I/O
|
I/O Panel
|
|
Other Features / Miscellaneous
|
|
|
Unique Feature
|
– ASRock OC Tuner
|
|
Smart Switch
|
– 1 x Power Switch with LED
|
|
Support CD
|
– Drivers, Utilities, AntiVirus Software (Trial Version)
|
|
Accessories
|
– 1 x ASRock SLI_Bridge_2S Card
|
|
Hardware Monitor
|
– CPU Temperature Sensing
|
|
Form Factor
|
– ATX Form Factor: 12.0-in x 9.6-in, 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm
|
|
OS
|
– Microsoft® Windows® 7 / 7 64-bit / Vista™ / Vista™ 64-bit / XP / XP 64-bit compliant
|
|
Certifications
|
– FCC, CE, WHQL
|
