Thursday, December 12th 2013
ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Killer Detailed
Here's the first detailed body-shot of ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Killer, which was teased by the company earlier today, and which could end up being one of the most feature-rich socket AM3+ motherboards, if the end is neigh for AM3+. Designed for gaming PCs with up to two graphics cards, although it features three long x16 slots, the Fatal1ty 990FX Killer is a full-size ATX motherboard. It's design appears to be more gamer-centric than overclocker-centric. It draws power from 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors, with an optional 4-pin Molex connection to stabilize power to add-on cards; and conditions it for the AM3+ CPU using a 10-phase VRM that's cooled by an heatsink that's independent from that which cools the AMD 990FX northbridge (i.e. no heat-pipe linking the two). The AM3+ CPU socket is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, which support up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR3-2400 MHz memory; and to the 990FX northbridge over a 5.2 GT/s HyperTransport link.
The AMD 990FX chipset puts out two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots, the third slot is electrical PCI-Express 2.0 x4, and possibly wired to the SB950 southbridge. The southbridge handles five internal SATA 6 Gb/s ports, the sixth port is wired out as eSATA. The Fatal1ty 990FX Killer, as teased this morning, is among the first motherboards to feature an M.2 slot, extended out of a PCI-Express link. PCIe SSDs tend to be faster, as more interface bandwith is on tap. As many as six USB 3.0 ports are on offer, of which one switches between header and internal type-1 port (for those tuck-away software license keys) all of which are driven by third-party controllers. Wired networking is care of a Killer E2200 network controller, that's optimized for gaming. The board features 7.1-channel HD audio, with a high SNR CODEC, PCB ground-layer isolation (to prevent electrical noise), and an EMI shield for the CODEC; which ASRock collectively labels "Purity Sound." The board is driven by AMI UEFI BIOS, with full support for Windows 8 Secure Boot.
The AMD 990FX chipset puts out two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots, the third slot is electrical PCI-Express 2.0 x4, and possibly wired to the SB950 southbridge. The southbridge handles five internal SATA 6 Gb/s ports, the sixth port is wired out as eSATA. The Fatal1ty 990FX Killer, as teased this morning, is among the first motherboards to feature an M.2 slot, extended out of a PCI-Express link. PCIe SSDs tend to be faster, as more interface bandwith is on tap. As many as six USB 3.0 ports are on offer, of which one switches between header and internal type-1 port (for those tuck-away software license keys) all of which are driven by third-party controllers. Wired networking is care of a Killer E2200 network controller, that's optimized for gaming. The board features 7.1-channel HD audio, with a high SNR CODEC, PCB ground-layer isolation (to prevent electrical noise), and an EMI shield for the CODEC; which ASRock collectively labels "Purity Sound." The board is driven by AMI UEFI BIOS, with full support for Windows 8 Secure Boot.
19 Comments on ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Killer Detailed
However, Asrock did miss the news of AM3+ being an inactive platform. Good effort though.
This never said it can run one of the 220W FX-9590, I if can't what's the use to offer it now?
(edit found it finally in the manual... Supports up CPU's up to 140W)
While AM3+ socket builds are fading I want to imagine AMD will keep such CPU’s in the market well into 2015. I also believe (hope) while not doing any new earth-shattering engineering advancements, we might see a couple of new SKU’s still. Perhaps just some slightly higher Turbo clock parts, while holding at 125W (130W?) . Or, a 6 core that is value priced (OEM non-boxed cooler) that's re-arranged in clocks/L3, something that’s like 3.4GHz (4.0GHz Turbo) part while holding to 100W. A part that could keep most AM3 boards on older lower-end Phenom’s a "sendoff" upgrade. They would sell a ton I'd bet-ya... alas this is just wishful thinking.
Gigabyte's AM3+ models have had VRM issues for years and could not run an 8-core FX CPU without VRM overheating when under heavy loads. The newer "XFA" models with revised VRM circuits are the only Giga mobos that I would recommend for the 8-core FX CPUs.
Asrock has upped their game significantly in recent years and offers a better product at a better price with significantly better customer support..
The original 990FX Fatality mobo IS approved to run the FX-9000 series CPUs as is the Extreme9 model.
But anyway, ish MSI would release a "Gaming" series board for FM2+, or even better, ASUS a ROG one...
reviews will only show! it would be nice to be reviewed side by side with the original 990fx fatality, which is just an extreme9
e.g.
16x
-
-
16x
-
-
16x
No prizes for guessing what it'd be used for!