ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Killer Motherboard

On Board Peripherals

The AMD 990FX chipset is a two-chip solution, and it is combined with the SB950 south bridge chip. The SB950 chip has six SATA-600 ports, supporting RAID (0, 1, 10, and 5). The Fatal1ty 990FX Killer offers five of them. The sixth port is shared between an eSATA port at the rear panel and the M.2 slot.

Four of the SATA ports are installed on the motherboard edge and rotated 90°, so the installation of video cards won’t block them.

Figure 4: The five SATA-600 ports controlled by the chipset

The AMD 990FX chipset supports 14 USB 2.0 ports and the ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Killer offers 10 of them, six located on the rear panel and four available through two headers located on the motherboard. It also offers seven USB 3.0 ports, four on the motherboard rear panel, two available through a header on the motherboard, and one in an A-type connector at the motherboard. The USB 3.0 ports are controlled by an ASMedia ASM1074 chip (rear panel ports) and one EtronTech EJ188H chip.

The ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Killer does not support FireWire ports.

This motherboard supports 7.1 audio format, i.e., eight channels. On this motherboard, the audio is generated by the chipset using the Realtek ALC1150 codec, which is an excellent audio codec, providing 115 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog outputs, 104 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog inputs, and up to 192 kHz sampling rate for both inputs and outputs, with 24-bit resolution. These specifications are good even for the user who wants to work professionally by capturing and editing analog audio (e.g., converting LPs to CDs or MP3, converting VHS to DVDs or any other digital format, etc.).

The codec is shielded against electromagnetic interference, and the audio interface is equipped with a TI NE5532 amplifier for the frontal headphone output. The analog audio outputs are independent only if you use a 5.1 analog speaker set. If you install a 7.1 analog speaker set, you will need to use the “line in” jack.

The portrayed motherboard has one Gigabit Ethernet port controlled by an Atheros Killer E2200 chip, a high-performance Gigabit Ethernet controller. Like the codec, this chip is also shielded, as you can see in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Shielded audio codec and Killer E2200 chip