ASRock 880GXH/USB3 Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

AMD 880G chipset is a dual-chip solution and we’ve already published all the main specs from this chipset on the first page of this article. ASRock 880GXH/USB3 uses the SB710 south bridge chip, but some other motherboards use the SB850 chip instead, which
provides SATA-600 ports and an additional RAID level (5).

ASRock 880GXH/USB3 motherboard comes with five SATA-300 ports, with the sixth port transformed into an eSATA-300 port. These ports support RAID 0, 1 and 10. The five internal ports are installed on one of the corners of this motherboard, so a video card won’t block them.

Figure 4: Location of the five SATA-300 ports.

This motherboard has one ATA-133 port and a floppy disk drive controller, which are features rare to be found on newer motherboards. Therefore if you need these features you may want to pick this motherboard.

From the 14 USB 2.0 ports supported by the chipset, ASRock 880GXH/USB3 offers 11 of them, five soldered on the rear panel and six available through three headers on the motherboard. This motherboard also has one USB 3.0 port, controlled by a Fresco Logic FL1000G chip. The big problem with this motherboard – and this is an unbelievable mistake done by ASRock – is that on the rear panel there are two blue USB ports, but only one of them is USB 3.0 (the bottom one; the top one is USB 2.0). It is simply impossible for the average user to get which of the two is the USB 3.0 port without looking at the manual (page 3).

No FireWire ports are provided.

Audio is generated by the chipset using a Realtek ALC892 codec, which presents eight channels. The chip manufacturer doesn’t not publish detailed technical information about this codec, so we can’t give an opinion regarding the audio section of this motherboard. An optical SPDIF output is available and you can add a coaxial SPDIF connector by installing an adapter on the “HDMI_SPDIF1” header available.

This motherboard provides shared 7.1 analog outputs, meaning that you will have to “kill” either the mic in or the line in jack if you install an analog 7.1 speaker set.

ASRock 880GXH/USB3 has one Gigabit Ethernet port, controlled by a Realtek RTL8111DL chip, which is connected to the system using a PCI Express x1 lane and thus not presenting any potential performance issues.

In Figure 5, you can see the motherboard rear panel with PS/2 keyboard connector, five USB 2.0 ports (the four black ones and the top blue one), VGA output, DVI-D output, HDMI output, eSATA-300 port, Gigabit Ethernet port, USB 3.0 port (the bottom blue one), optical SPDIF output and shared analog 7.1 audio outputs.

Figure 5: Motherboard rear panel.

As you can see, this motherboard comes with three video connectors, but only two of them can be used at the same time.

There is no mouse PS/2 connector so you have to use a USB mouse (or a wireless mouse with a USB receptor).

ASRock 880GXH/USB3 also has a legacy serial port available through a header labeled “COM1” near the last PCI slot. In order to use it you will need an I/O bracket that doesn’t come with the product.

This motherboard also has an infrared interface. If you want to use it you will need to buy the optical components and install them on the “IR1” header available.