ASRock X79 Fatal1ty Professional Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

The Intel X79 chipset is a single-chip solution, which is also known as a PCH (Platform Controller Hub). This chip supports two SATA-600 ports and four SATA-300 ports, supporting RAID (0, 1, 10, and 5).

The ASRock X79 Fatal1ty Professional has another four SATA-600 ports, controlled by two Marvell 88SE9172 chips. Both support RAID 0 and 1.

One drawback is that the manufacturer used only two colors to identify the SATA ports: black for the SATA-300 and red for the SATA-600. The manufacturer should have used different colors to identify to where each port is connected. We t
hink they should have used one color for the SATA-600 ports controlled by the chipset (which are the ones to the immediate left of the SATA-300 ports) and another color for the ports controlled by the additional chips.

All SATA ports are located at the motherboard’s edge and rotated 90°, so video cards won’t block them. See Figure 4.

Figure 4: SATA-600 (red) and SATA-300 (black) ports

This motherboard also has two eSATA-600 ports, controlled by another Marvell 88SE9172 chip.

The Intel X79 chipset supports 14 USB 2.0 ports. Unfortunately, support for USB 3.0 ports isn’t integrated in the chipset yet. The ASRock X79 Fatal1ty Professional offers 12 USB 2.0 ports, six soldered on the rear panel and six available through three headers located on the motherboard. It also supports eight USB 3.0 ports, the four located on the motherboard rear panel controlled by a Texas Instruments TUSB7340 chip and the four available on two headers controlled by another Texas Instruments TUSB7340 chip. The motherboard comes with a 3.5” panel containing two USB 3.0 ports for you to use on the motherboard USB 3.0 header if your computer case doesn’t have USB 3.0 ports with an internal connector.

The ASRock X79 Fatal1ty Professional has two FireWire ports, one soldered on the rear panel and one available through a header. These ports are controlled by a VIA VT6315N chip.

This motherboard supports 7.1+2 audio format, i.e., eight channels plus two independent channels for audio streaming. On this motherboard, the audio is generated by the chipset using the new Realtek ALC898 codec, which is an outstanding solution, providing an impressive 110 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. This means you are able to capture and edit analog audio (e.g., converting LPs to CDs or MP3, converting VHS to DVDs or any other digital format, etc.) with this motherboard without adding any background noise. The motherboard has on-board optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs and independent 7.1 analog audio jacks.

The portrayed motherboard has one Gigabit Ethernet port, controlled by a Broadcom BCM57781 chip.

In Figure 5, you can see the motherboard rear panel with a PS/2 keyboard connector, six USB 2.0 ports, a clear CMOS button, coaxial and optical SPDIF outputs, four USB 3.0 ports, one FireWire port, two eSATA-600 ports, one Gigabit Ethernet port, and independent 7.1 analog audio connectors.

Figure 5: Motherboard rear panel

The USB 2.0 port right below the FireWire port is the special “Fatal1ty mouse port,” which has a polling rate that can be manually configured between 125 Hz and 1 kHz. The main problem here is that there is no label indicating the presence of this port. The manufacturer should have used a different color (red) for this port, making it easier for users to identify it.