14 DAY TRIAL // ASRock is an Asus division well known around the computer market business for its entry level mainboards which are nonetheless well made and are offering a solid performance at a low cost while being even a little overclockable. Well, it looks like ASRock engineers just got tired at working at entry level hardware components and finally announced the launch of a mainboard fully loaded with all the possible options which are typically expected from a high end product.
Featuring a socket AM2, the ASRock AliveNF5SLI-1394 mainboard is compatible with the latest generation of AMD central processing units like the dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2, the Athlon 64 FX, the Athlon 64 and the low end Semprons. The latest ASRock mainboard features a frontside bus of 1000MHz or 2GT/s and it implements a number of innovative Advanced Micro Devices patented technologies like the AMD Live!, Hyper-Transport and the AMD Cool 'n' Quiet technology which allows the scaling of the processor speed according to the workload in order to achieve an optimal running temperature and a low fan noise. On the memory department the AliveNF5SLI-1394 mainboard is able to house a maximum of 8GB of DDR2 random access memory using a dual channel configuration. The memory is packed in four DIMMs and the mainboard offers support for running frequencies between 533MHz and 800MHz and because of the ASRock patented AM2 Boost technology, the overall performance of the DDR2 memory is enhanced with up to 12.5 percent.
The latest ASRock motherboard is based on a Nvidia chipset which offers support for a multi graphics card setup thanks to the presence of the two PCI Express x8 slots as well as one PCI Express x16 expansion slot. On the storage department, we found four Serial ATA II ports with an integrated RAID controller which offers standard configurations like RAID 0/1, RAID 0+1, RAID 5, JBOD while also supporting NCQ and Hot Swap. For users needing to connect an external storage hard disk drive, the AliveNF5SLI-1394 also has an External SATA II port which is shared with one of the internal SATA connectors, while also offering NCQ and Hot Swapping capabilities. One 1395 port is present on the rear panel of the mainboard, while one FireWire header is integrated directly on the board. Local area networking needs are addressed by the presence of a Gibabit 10/100/1000 Mb/s network interface.
While lacking the integrated graphics solution which is commonly found on most ASRock mainboards, the AliveNF5SLI-1394 nonetheless comes with an integrated sound chip based on the C-Media CM6501 audio codec with UAA architecture which is able to deliver a 7.1 channel audio experience. Other multimedia features of this board are including the presence of a HDMI/ SPDIF header which allows users to connect the host computer system with a HDMI Digital TV or a projector and LCD devices. The ASRock AliveNF5SLI-1394 mainboard is certified as being compatible with Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows XP Media Center Edition.