ASRock QC5000-ITX Motherboard

On Board Peripherals

The AMD A4-5000 CPU supports two SATA-600 ports, and the ASRock QC5000-ITX motherboard brings those two ports, plus two SATA-600 ports controlled by one ASMedia ASM1061, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 5: SATA ports

The A4-5000 CPU supports six USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.0 ports. The ASRock QC5000-ITX offers six USB 2.0 ports, two on the rear panel and four available through two headers located on the motherboard, and six USB 3.0 ports, four on the rear panel (two controlled by the CPU and two controlled by an Etron EJ188H chip) and two available through a header on the motherboard (controlled by the same Etron EJ188H chip).

The motherboard does not support FireWire or Thunderbolt ports.

This motherboard supports 7.1+2 audio format using a Realtek ALC892 codec. The main specifications of this codec include 97 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog outputs, 90 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 specs are good for the mainstream user, but if you are looking into working professionally with audio editing, you should look for a motherboard that provides an SNR of at least 97 dB for the analog inputs.

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 a Realtek RTL8111E chip.

In Figure 6, you can see the motherboard rear panel with a metallic frame for two Wi-Fi antenna connectors, one PS/2 connector for keyboard, two USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, VGA output, DVI-D output, DisplayPort output, HDMI output, Gigabit Ethernet port, optical SPDIF audio output, and the analog audio jacks.

Figure 6: motherboard rear panel