ASRock Penryn 1600SLI-110dB : Penryn on the 650i, are you kidding me?
by Gary Key on February 15, 2008 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
ASRock Penryn 1600SLI-110dB Features -
The current retail pricing on this board is in the $105 range and we fully expect it to drop to right under $100 shortly. ASRock has loaded this board up with the new Realtek ALC890 8-Channel HD audio codec, Firewire 400 capability, a legacy friendly I/O panel, SLI capability, Gigabit Ethernet, a single PCI Express x1 slot, three PCI slots, four SATA 3Gbps capable ports, two IDE ports, and six USB 2.0/1.1 connectors. While light on USB connectivity compared to similarly priced boards, the overall balance of features on this board is impressive for its price range. We also would like to commend ASRock on utilizing a decent on-board audio codec with the ALC890 instead of the ALC883 that we see popping up on the budget boards, especially ASUS's latest uATX boards. While several discrete sound solutions provide significantly better audio output, we would have to rate the ALC890 near the top of current on-board solutions.
ASRock has made a decision to go upscale with several of its boards in recent weeks and this particular sample is one of their first efforts. A good, if not great first effort by a company that historically locked down its BIOS tighter than most banks do their safes. While not approaching the level of customization offered by the likes of DFI or ASUS, this particular BIOS does offer a nice array of features to help the user get the most out of its performance. We have been working with ASRock on a few glitches that we have encountered during testing, the most notable being the lack of a downward multiplier option on non-Extreme Core 2 processors.
Also, overclocking with our 8GB configuration was an interesting experience trying to figure out a stable selection of settings that provided absolute stability. It turned out that setting GTLRef to High and increasing VTT voltages to 1.375V did wonders for us, even at stock settings in some cases. Our only other gripe at this stage is that using the clear CMOS jumper will wipe out the time and date settings. If that is a setting that you generally skip after a clear CMOS event, do not do it on this board as Microsoft Vista does not have a compassionate understanding for this situation, nothing like calling tech support in India at 3 am in the morning to remind one to double check the BIOS settings.
That brings about an interesting point with this board, the BIOS recovery system generally worked unless you set the board way outside its normal capability. Usually after three resets or power on/off events the board would POST with safe settings, but going over the line meant a full shutdown and clear CMOS procedure. The BIOS does not offer saved settings so all options had to be reset. Granted most users will not need this, but if you are trying to dial a board in, it can become frustrating at times.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
29 Comments
View All Comments
assassin8rr - Tuesday, July 22, 2008 - link
got this board and e8400 hoping to reach 4.0 like in review but cant get it stable with same settings so im reaching for 3.6 butt cant figure out right settings ive only got to 3.3 on stock settings while increasing fsb to 375 after that it locks up even adding more vcore tried settings from stock up to 1.3 whith 400 fsb memory at 4-4-4-12 and tried 5-5-5-15 anyone have any idea what i can try nextArnejoh - Tuesday, April 1, 2008 - link
I have recently had 3 top of the line Asus motherboard that has gone into an failed state. Two of this boards "work" a little bit and is based on intel 975x chipsett. The last and most recent board was the p5n32e-SLI. This board worked great with my q6600@3.4ghz and one 8800gt. But when i got the last 8800gt to run SLI it only survived two cod 4 games before i got the bsod and after that it wont work anymore at all. After reading about all the 680i problems i was allmost ready to give up SLI and get my self a god board based on the intel x38 chipsett.But then i read this article. I've only had one Asrock board before and it work well enuff. Since i did not want to wait for the rma of the other board i needed a cheap substitute. So i ordered this board, it looks good enuff, but there is several severe problems i have noticed over the last two days:
1. The volt regulators at the base of the mobo is whining like the old modems we had before when they connected. This is going on all the time, and the high pitch is driving me crazy.
2. This board really sucks regarding to overclocking my q6600, the old p5n32e-SLI could do 425 fsb stable, this board can do 425 with lower fsb, but fails when the cpu is pushed over 2.7ghz. This is the same with higher multi and the same cpy frequenzy. I have now wather cooled both gpus and chipset and temps are very low. Like 45 degree celsius with a lot of chipset volt. Even tried setting all volts on mobo to max just to try. Did not give me more stable speed.
3. Slow poster, after i upgraded to bios 1.3 it got a lot slower to get over post screen.
4. Problems using my to extra sata disks when raid is enabled.
So my rating is very low...it works but so does allmost every normal 650i card at the same price range. And the extra cpu support is the only real charming ting for me as for now, and the fact that sli is stable. But sli on a quad at only 2.4 ghz is waste. It gives me a 4000-5000 point lower score in 3dmark06 then i had with 680i and the same cpu@3.4ghz. So with loosy overclocking this is realy holding me back...if it was not so cheap i would return it instantly.
Arnejoh - Tuesday, April 1, 2008 - link
I have recently had 3 top of the line Asus motherboard that has gone into an failed state. Two of this boards "work" a little bit and is based on intel 975x chipsett. The last and most recent board was the p5n32e-SLI. This board worked great with my q6600@3.4ghz and one 8800gt. But when i got the last 8800gt to run SLI it only survived two cod 4 games before i got the bsod and after that it wont work anymore at all. After reading about all the 680i problems i was allmost ready to give up SLI and get my self a god board based on the intel x38 chipsett.But then i read this article. I've only had one Asrock board before and it work well enuff. Since i did not want to wait for the rma of the other board i needed a cheap substitute. So i ordered this board, it looks good enuff, but there is several severe problems i have noticed over the last two days:
1. The volt regulators at the base of the mobo is whining like the old modems we had before when they connected. This is going on all the time, and the high pitch is driving me crazy.
2. This board really sucks regarding to overclocking my q6600, the old p5n32e-SLI could do 425 fsb stable, this board can do 425 with lower fsb, but fails when the cpu is pushed over 2.7ghz. This is the same with higher multi and the same cpy frequenzy. I have now wather cooled both gpus and chipset and temps are very low. Like 45 degree celsius with a lot of chipset volt. Even tried setting all volts on mobo to max just to try. Did not give me more stable speed.
3. Slow poster, after i upgraded to bios 1.3 it got a lot slower to get over post screen.
4. Problems using my to extra sata disks when raid is enabled.
So my rating is very low...it works but so does allmost every normal 650i card at the same price range. And the extra cpu support is the only real charming ting for me as for now, and the fact that sli is stable. But sli on a quad at only 2.4 ghz is waste. It gives me a 4000-5000 point lower score in 3dmark06 then i had with 680i and the same cpu@3.4ghz. So with loosy overclocking this is realy holding me back...if it was not so cheap i would return it instantly.
miklaszewski - Wednesday, March 26, 2008 - link
Hi guys! I just got one of those with a e8200 and 2x2gb ddr2 800 5-5-5-15. I'm having some difficulty overclocking, since it's my first time at it. I started to increase the FSB, but @2.8, 3.0 mhz, the pc freezes. I thought it might have been the fact that the ram speed also increases and cant handle the clock speed, but again, i'm new at this. I also cant find the memory ratio on the bios (its updated to the last version). Should i look at other things such as increasing or lowering voltages or messing with the memory timmings? I even tried lowering the memory speed to 667 so that it remained at 800 with the increased FSB, but no success. Pc freeze @2.8 and above.(got a thermaltake typhoon cooler, cpu temp aroung 30º)
Thanks a lot, hope you can help.
petran - Friday, March 14, 2008 - link
all those of you who just comment... how many boards have you ever used?well i've used quite a few from every posible brand.tha bigest problems that i have ever come across with whwre with asus boards.regarding asrock and ecs they have always been proved stable and reliable.nowdays prices tend to closely much so my advice to you is to bye what you get more for the same price.YES i ve become an Asrock fanLoghic - Sunday, February 24, 2008 - link
I think, the asrock penryn1600sli-110dB looks very interesting. I’m considering to buy this board, but now I read, that asrock is going to launch a nforce 680i mainboard with Tripe-SLi, Penryn and FSB 1600 Support.http://www.pc-treiber.net/thread.php?threadid=8130">http://www.pc-treiber.net/thread.php?threadid=8130
ap90033 - Friday, February 22, 2008 - link
Great news but where in the world can I get a good SLI board like thsi???rudolphna - Monday, February 18, 2008 - link
Has a very clean layout and look to it. too bad its an ASrock board. i dont trust them. imo they are cheap ripoffs of ASUSEnder868 - Tuesday, February 19, 2008 - link
You are aware that Asrock is a division of ASUS correct?kalrith - Monday, February 18, 2008 - link
It states "Get to the numbers aleady" instead of "Get to the numbers already". This displays on the link at the bottom of page 2 and on the drop-down menu.