ASRock 890FX Deluxe3 Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

As explained earlier, the AMD 890FX 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). If that wasn’t enough, ASRock added two extra SATA-600 ports (controlled by a Marvell 88SE9120 chip, no RAID support), for a total of eight SATA-600 ports.

The SATA-600 ports controlled by the chipset are placed on the motherboard edge rotated 90°, so video cards won’t block them, as you can see in Figure 4. This motherboard has one ATA-133 port controlled by a VIA VT6330 chip (which is also a FireWire controller), which is also placed rotated on the motherboard edge. The two extra SATA-600 ports are located on the motherboard edge near the last PCI Express x16 slot, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 4: POST diagnostics display, SATA-600 ports and ATA-133 port.

Figure 5: Extra SATA-600 ports.

This motherboard also has an eSATA-600 port on its rear panel. How this port is connected to the system is a mystery to us, because there is no extra controller chip available for this port and there are no ports left on the south bridge chip or on the Marvell 88SE9120 chip.

A floppy disk drive controller is present, driven by the Super I/O chip (Nuvoton NCT6775F).

This motherboard has eight USB 2.0 ports, four soldered on the rear panel and four available through two headers located on the motherboard. One very interesting thing ASRock did was to put one of the USB 2.0 headers and the FireWire header close to the power supply main connector, which may facilitate routing the cables coming from the front panel of your case.

One of the highlights of 890FX Deluxe3 is the presence of four USB 3.0 ports. Usually motherboards featuring USB 3.0 ports have only two ports, so this motherboards certainly has a big advantage over competitors. These four ports are controlled by two NEC μPD720200 chips.

Two FireWire (IEEE1394) ports are provided, one standard-sized on the rear panel and one through a header on the motherboard. They are controlled by a VIA VT6330 chip.

The motherboard doesn’t come with I/O brackets for you to use the extra USB and FireWire ports.

Eight-channel audio is generated by the chipset using a VIA VT2020 codec. Unfortunately this component isn’t listed on VIA’s website, but
at least the product manual says that it presents a 110 dB signal-to-noise ratio on its outputs, which is a professional-grade number. 890FX Deluxe3 comes with both coaxial and optical SPDIF outputs and you can route digital audio to your video card if you need digital audio on its HDMI output by installing the appropriated cable one the available “HDMI_SPDIF1” header.

The analog audio connectors are independent, so you won’t have to “kill” the line in or mic in jacks if you decide to install an analog 7.1 speaker set.

890FX Deluxe3 has one Gigabit Ethernet port, controlled by a Realtek RTL8111E chip, which is connected to the system using a PCI Express x1 lane and thus not presenting any potential performance issues.

In Figure 6, you can see the motherboard rear panel with keyboard and mouse PS/2 connectors, clear CMOS button, coaxial SPDIF output, optical SPDIF output, four USB 2.0 ports (black and red ports), one Gigabit Ethernet port, four USB 3.0 ports (blue ports), one FireWire port, one eSATA-600 port, and independent analog 7.1 audio outputs.

Figure 6: Motherboard rear panel.

Other smaller features are available. As you can see in Figure 4, this product comes with a POST diagnostics display, allowing you to discover through a two-digit code what is wrong with your computer if it is not turning on.

This motherboard supports one legacy serial port through a header called “COM1.” It doesn’t come with the I/O bracket that is required to use it. 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).

This board also has on-board power and reset buttons, which are quite handy when debugging your PC.