ASRock 870iCafe Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

The AMD 870 chipset is a dual-chip solution, using the SB850 south bridge chip. This chip natively supports six SATA-600 ports (with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10). These ports are located on the corner of the motherboard, so the video card won’t block them. This motherboard doesn’t come with an ATA-133 port nor with a floppy disk drive controller, features that could make sense in a value product.

Figure 4: SATA-600 ports

This motherboard has 12 USB 2.0 ports, six soldered on the rear panel and six available through three headers located on the motherboard. This motherboard doesn’t have USB 3.0 nor FireWire ports.

The ASRock 870iCafe comes with six-channel audio, a configuration that is only seen on entry-level motherboards nowadays. The audio is generated by the chipset using a Realtek ALC662 codec. The technical specifications of this codec include 24-bit resolution for the outputs, 20-bit resolution for the inputs, up to 96 kHz sampling rate for the inputs and outputs, 90 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the inputs, and 98 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the outputs. The audio quality is compatible with the market segment this product is located.

Unfortunately the 870iCafe comes with shared analog audio jacks, and you can’t use the rear mic in and line in inputs if you have a 5.1 analog speaker set installed. Once again, this configuration shows that this motherboard is targeted to the value segment.

Another drawback found on the 870iCafe is the absence of an SPDIF header, meaning you can’t have an SPDIF output with this motherboard by simply installing an adapter (you will need to buy an add-on audio card for that), nor you will be able to route digital audio to the HDMI output of your video card. Therefore, this motherboard can’t be used to build home theater PCs (HTPCs).

The ASRock 870iCafe has one Gigabit Ethernet port, controlled by a Realtek RTL8111C chip, which is connected to the system using a PCI Express x1 lane and thus not presenting any potential performance issues. This is a nice feature to find on a value motherboard, since products in this category usually have a Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) port.

In Figure 5, you can see the motherboard rear panel, with keyboard and mouse PS/2 connectors, serial port, six USB 2.0 ports, one Gigabit Ethernet port, and shared analog 5.1 audio outputs.

Figure 5: Motherboard rear panel

As you can see in Figure 5, this motherboard comes with a legacy serial port, a feature that may be useful for some users that still have old external devices that require this kind of connection.

This motherboard also comes with an infrared interface (“IR1” header), allowing you to easily install an infrared sensor to allow your computer to communicate to other infrared devices (e.g., remote control).

Even though this is an entry-level motherboard, it comes with a POST diagnostics display (see Figure 4), allowing you to discover through a two-digit code what is wrong with your computer, if it doesn&
rsquo;t turn on.

It also has a core unlocking feature (called “UCC” by ASRock), which allows you to unlock hidden cores of certain AMD CPUs.

In Figure 6, you can see all the accessories that come with this motherboard.

Figure 6: Accessories