14 DAY TRIAL // Even though AMD's 800 Series of chipsets is already running rampant, some motherboard makers, or one of them at least, doesn't think it's time to let go of the past just yet. Back in 2007, Advanced Micro Devices released the 480X chipset, which had support for crossfire and AM3 chips. Now, ASRock thought it would let this chipset shine once more by using it in the making of the M3A UCC motherboard.
The mainboard supplier somehow managed to equip the ATX board with relatively up-to-date parts, even though the chip is three years old. For one, four DDR3-1800 memory slots are present, and this ensures that a decent amount of 16GB of RAM is implementable. Additionally, the platform boasts four SATA 3.0 Gbps ports and a PCI-Express x16 slot, for advanced graphics capabilities.
What's more important, however, is the fact that this product can handle not only AMD's dual-core, triple-core and quad-core AM3 CPUs, but also the new line of Phenom II X6 six-core central processing units. The company even threw in a number of overclocking-friendly features, such as OC Tuner, OC DNA, CPU Frequency Stepless Control and Hybrid Booster. Other specifications include Gigabit Ethernet, 5.1 channel audio, the Instant Boot OS and Instant Flash. Nevertheless, the central capability is the UCC technology, which can turn 4-core CPUs into 6-core units, provided they have the unlockable cores built-in.
All in all, the newcomer should turn out to be a fairly competent device once it reaches stores. ASRock wasn't oblivious to the Green factor when it designed this newcomer, of course, so it added the advantages of the Intelligent Energy Saver. Thus, it was possible to gain FCC, CE and WHQL certifications, as well as the ErP/EuP Ready status. Unfortunately, the hardware maker did not say what pricing scheme it has in mind, but availability should ramp up soon.