ASRock X58 Extreme6 Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

The Intel X58 chipset is a dual-chip solution, using the ICH10R south bridge chip. This chip supports six SATA-300 ports (with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10). One of the highlights of the X58 Extreme6 is the presence of six SATA-600 ports, controlled by one Marvell 88SE9128 and two Marvell 88SE9120 chips – each one controls a pair of SATA-600 ports. Only the Marvell 88SE9128 chip supports RAID (0, 1 and JBOD), meaning that only two of the six SATA-600 ports support RAID. The problem is that all SATA-600 ports are white, and there is no easy way to know which of the six SATA-600 ports are the ones that support RAID (we assume that the ports that are controlled by the RAID chip are the first two, SATA3_1 and SATA3_2). We think ASRock should have used a different color on the SATA-600 ports that supports RAID.

All SATA ports are located on the motherboard edge, rotated 90°, so video cards won’t block them.

Figure 4: SATA-300 and SATA-600 ports

An eSATA-600 port is available, sharing the SATA3_6 connector, so if you connect an eSATA device you can’t use the internal SATA3_6 connector.

This motherboard also has an ATA-133 port and a floppy disk drive port.

This motherboard has “only” six USB 2.0 ports, four soldered on the rear panel and two available through one header located on the motherboard. But this isn’t a problem, since it has six USB 3.0 ports, controlled by three NEC μPD720200 chips. Four of these ports are soldered on the rear panel, and two are available on a front panel header. This motherboard comes with an adapter for you to install these ports on an external 3.5” bay. If you don’t want to have these ports on the front panel of your case you can install them on an available expansion slot, using a bracket that comes with the product.

Figure 5: Front panel with two USB 3.0 ports

The X58 Extreme6 comes with two FireWire (IEEE1394) ports, one soldered on the rear panel and one available through a header, controlled by a VIA VT6315N chip.

The portrayed motherboard comes with eight-channel audio, generated by the chipset using a Realtek ALC892 codec. Unfortunately Realtek doesn’t publish technical specifications for this codec at their website. The X58 Extreme6 comes with on-board optical and coaxial SPDIF connectors, and you can route digital audio to your video card to have digital audio in the HDMI connector using the available “HDMI_SPDIF1” header.

The analog audio jacks are independent, meaning that you won’t need to “kill” the mic in or the line in jacks if you install an analog 7.1 speaker set.

This motherboard 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, optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs, four USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports (blue), one Gigabit Ethernet port, one FireWire port, one eSATA-600 port, and independent analog 7.1 audio outputs.

Figure 6: Motherboard rear panel

Other smaller features available on this motherboard include on-board power and reset buttons, POST diagnostics display (which allows you to identify, through a two-digit code, what is wrong with you computer if it doesn’t turn on), one legacy serial port (you need to buy an adapter in order to use it), and an infrared interface (you need to buy the optical components to use it).

Figure 7: POST diagnostics display, and power and reset buttons

In Figure 8, you can see all the accessories that come with this motherboard.

Figure 8: Accessories