Introduction

ASRock came on board in 2002, not long after I started building my own rigs. In those six short years, they have come up with some remarkably innovative designs for economy motherboards. Their DDR2/DDR3 motherboards last year were easily the most stable of all of the brave attempts at that design, at about half the cost of the other manufacturers' DDR2/DDR3 motherboards.

Today I will be looking at the ASRock Penryn 1600SLIX3-WiFi motherboard. ASRock has taken the nVidia 680i SLI chipset, given it the capability of running the new Core 2 Extreme 1600mHz FSB processors, added WiFi, and placed that in an economy-minded board.

Specifications/Features:

CPU - LGA 775 for Intel Core 2 Extreme / Core 2 Quad / Core 2 Duo / Pentium Dual Core / Celeron, supporting Penryn Quad Core Yorkfield and Dual Core Wolfdale processors
- Compatible with all FSB1600/1333/1066/800MHz CPUs
- Supports Hyper-Threading Technology
- Supports Untied Overclocking Technology
- Supports EM64T CPU

Chipset - NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI

Memory - Dual Channel DDR2 memory technology
- 4 x DDR2 DIMM slots
- Supports DDR2 800/667/533 non-ECC, un-buffered memory
- Max. capacity of system memory: 8GB*

BIOS - 8Mb AMI BIOS
- AMI Legal BIOS
- Supports "Plug and Play"
- ACPI 1.1 Compliance Wake Up Events
- Supports jumperfree
- SMBIOS 2.3.1 Support
- CPU, DRAM, NB, SB, VTT Voltage Multi-adjustment

Audio - 7.1 CH Windows Vista Premium Level HD Audio with Content Protection
- DAC with 110dB dynamic range (ALC890 Audio Codec)
- DTS (Digital Theater Systems) support

LAN - Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s
- Giga PHY Realtek RTL8211B
- Supports Wake-On-LAN

Wireless LAN - ASRock WiFi-802.11g module
- 54Mbps IEEE 802.11g / 11Mbps IEEE 802.11b
- Supports Software Access Point mode (AP mode) and Station mode (Infrastructure mode and Ad-hoc mode)

Expansion / Connectivity Slots - 3 x PCI Express x16 slots (white @ x16 mode, yellow @ x8 mode)
- 2 x PCI Express x1 slots
- 2 x PCI slots
- Supports NVIDIA SLI and 3-Way SLI

Other Features / Miscellaneous Unique Feature
- ASRock OC Tuner
- Hybrid Booster
- CPU Frequency Stepless Control
- ASRock U-COP
- Boot Failure Guard (B.F.G.)

Support CD - Drivers, Utilities, AntiVirus Software (Trial Version)

Accessories - 1 x ASRock WiFi-802.11g Module
- 1 x Antenna
- 1 x ASRock SLI Bridge
- 1 x ASRock 3-Way SLI Bridge
- Quick Installation Guide, Support CD, I/O Shield
- Floppy/ATA 133 Cables
- 4 x SATA Data Cables
- 1 x SATA 1 to 1 Power Cable
- 1 x HDMI_SPDIF Cable

Hardware Monitor
- CPU Temperature Sensing
- Chassis Temperature Sensing
- CPU Fan Tachometer
- Chassis Fan Tachometer
- CPU Quiet Fan
- Voltage Monitoring: +12V, +5V, +3.3V, CPU Vcore

Form Factor
- ATX Form Factor: 12.0-in x 9.6-in, 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm
- All solid capacitor design

Packaging

The motherboard comes in a simple box covered front and back with the features and specs. Inside, the typical two section piece of cardboard separates the bundle and board. There is a piece of foam behind the mobo, and it is inside of a static-free bag.