ASRock Penryn1600SLIX3-WiFi Unveiled

[Jimmy 2004]

ASRock looks set to continue its drive towards reaching the higher end of the motherboard market with its upcoming Penryn1600SLIX3-WiFi. The board comes equipped with an nForce 680i chipset and three PCI-E x16 slots, which makes it capable of running a 3-way SLI system. It supports the newest Yorkfield and Wolfdale processors with up to 8GB of DDR2-800 RAM, and features onboard gigabit LAN, WiFi, Realtek ALC890 HD audio, six SATAII ports and eSATA support. There's no official word on pricing or availability yet, but this board is likely to be one of the more affordable options when building a 3-way SLI system.



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[v-zero]

Orgasmic.

 

[JoJoe]

I love ASRock... got a 939DUAL-SATA2 mobo with AM2 upgrade board, runs great, never had a single problem.

ASRock may make budget boards, but they cut costs by cutting high-end features, not by cutting on quality.

 

[ktr]

Wtf is with the location of the 24pin power connector...

 

[Assimilator]

WTF, when I first saw that board I thought it was an X48 design! How the hell have ASRock managed to get the hot and power-hungry 680i chipset to work with such a small cooling system?

If the cooling system hasn't crippled the overclocking potential, this will be the 680i board to have. 45nm CPU support + SLI + passive cooling = WIN. It even has all-solid caps!

Also, I believe the news article is incorrect in one respect - AFAIK, only the nForce 700 chipsets support Triple SLI. The board has 3 PCIe slots but only the 2 white ones will support graphics cards at 16x; the green one will be for physics cards running at 8x.

@ktr: I don't really see where else they could have placed the main power connector. At least they've placed it out of the way of the major components, although it could interfere with some CPU coolers.

 

[tkpenalty]

Isnt asrock supposed to be low end?

Very nice looking board indeed.

 

[Jimmy 2004]

Also, I believe the news article is incorrect in one respect - AFAIK, only the nForce 700 chipsets support Triple SLI. The board has 3 PCIe slots but only the 2 white ones will support graphics cards at 16x; the green one will be for physics cards running at 8x.

Yeah, I got that impression. But OCW definitely seems to think it will do 3-way SLI, so I guess we'll just have to wait for the official word from ASRock. It would be nice if they have managed to get 3-way SLI on a 680, that should make it considerably cheaper.

 

[Solaris17]

that is amazing!

 

[cdawall]

Yeah, I got that impression. But OCW definitely seems to think it will do 3-way SLI, so I guess we'll just have to wait for the official word from ASRock. It would be nice if they have managed to get 3-way SLI on a 680, that should make it considerably cheaper.

its not the first time a 680 mobo has had 3x PCI-e

the ASUS L1N64-SLI WS/B has 4

 

[X-TeNDeR]

Gotta love those highly informative motherboard names!

Customer:
"does the Penryn1600SLIX3-WiFi support FSB1600 Penryn processors?"

Asrock guy:
"Duh!"

 

[Wile E]

Yeah, I got that impression. But OCW definitely seems to think it will do 3-way SLI, so I guess we'll just have to wait for the official word from ASRock. It would be nice if they have managed to get 3-way SLI on a 680, that should make it considerably cheaper.

If you look at some of their other boards, they innovate a lot by supporting a lot of features that are generally thought of as incompatible. Like DDR1 on 775, AGP on AM2 or Core 2 boards, and things of that nature. I wouldn't be surprised if they manager Tri-SLI on a 680 board.

 

[DrunkenMafia]

Wtf is with the location of the 24pin power connector...

haahaaaa that will do wonders for your wire managment...

"lets see.... hmmmm. We need to put the main power connector somewhere on here.... hmmmm. Should we put it on the edge of the board.... nah, everyone does that. Let's put it smack bang in the middle right amongst everything... yeah that will do it.... "

 

[candle_86]

that was a common spot a few years back, but its moved since the SocketA days, no idea why we want to revist the power cable snakeing of old

 

[candle_86]

If you look at some of their other boards, they innovate a lot by supporting a lot of features that are generally thought of as incompatible. Like DDR1 on 775, AGP on AM2 or Core 2 boards, and things of that nature. I wouldn't be surprised if they manager Tri-SLI on a 680 board.

as for that, its chipset support actully. To use AGP on AMD you only need to use the Nforce3 Pro or the KT800 or a version there of, and same for intel, the i865 will run 1066 and the PT800 as we have seen go go as high as 1066 also. All that has to be done is program the bios to support the new chips and voltage requirements which are done with the voltage regulators not the chipset, but bring Tri Sli from a 680i now that should be interesting, even Nvidia says its not possible. As for the QuadFX platform you showed, it only support SLI, not quad or Tri. Now in thery you can run dual SLI setups and run to diffrent games, but that board is actully two Nforce 590 SLi chipsets on the same board, one per CPU and linked via HT. So only regular SLI works on it as well, though all 4 slots function at 16x.

 

[Wile E]

as for that, its chipset support actully. To use AGP on AMD you only need to use the Nforce3 Pro or the KT800 or a version there of, and same for intel, the i865 will run 1066 and the PT800 as we have seen go go as high as 1066 also. All that has to be done is program the bios to support the new chips and voltage requirements which are done with the voltage regulators not the chipset, but bring Tri Sli from a 680i now that should be interesting, even Nvidia says its not possible. As for the QuadFX platform you showed, it only support SLI, not quad or Tri. Now in thery you can run dual SLI setups and run to diffrent games, but that board is actully two Nforce 590 SLi chipsets on the same board, one per CPU and linked via HT. So only regular SLI works on it as well, though all 4 slots function at 16x.

I think you have me confused with someone else. I don't remember bringing up QuadFX. Tho I could just be losing it. lol.

 

[TheGuruStud]

Isnt asrock supposed to be low end?

Very nice looking board indeed.

Asrock = Asus BTW

Asus didn't want to sell budget boards (And now mid-range) boards under their name.
They thought it would hurt their reputation as uber leet high end.
I think they're idiots.

 

[btarunr]

its not the first time a 680 mobo has had 3x PCI-e

the ASUS L1N64-SLI WS/B has 4

You cannot technically run 4-cards, you can run two arrays of SLI, first+second and third+fourth and that 1+2+3+4 never came up. Architecturally, the NForce 680a is 2x NForce 570 SLI super-glued. The L1N64 user I personally know isn't able to SLI two cards with each in the blue slots. Strange but true.

 

[btarunr]

On the topic:

Honestly, this is one of the better 680i boards in terms of layout. I'm not sure on the FSB 1600 part though. Also it's to be noted that 680i boards that claim they could do tri-SLI won't be able to run all three cards in x16, x16, x16 mode. The 780i boards themselves have a NForce 200 chip so as to run the second slot in PCI-E 1.1 x16.

 

[Kasparz]

AsRoock has always been one of the cheapest and worst boards in market with low built quality, large RMA rate and weird features like those non working upgrade boards, Conroe on i865, PCI-E + AGP on one board etc. I would never ever recommend those boards to ANYONE.

 

[btarunr]

Oh some of those features do work though FSB 1600 on a NForce 680i seems unreal. Maybe NVidia was doing a clearance sale for surplus 680i and ASRock happened to catch hold of that. Late entry.