Asrock "future CPU port" AM2 upgrade

[Darksaber]

HKEPC has some nice pictures of the upcoming upgrade board for all the Asrock mainboards with the "future CPU port". The board sports four DDR2-800 slots, the usual AM2 socket, power connector and heatsink bracket. I have to say, a nice way to upgrade. I wonder how well this part will perform.


View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[josechow]

hehehe. thats awesome

 

[Darksaber]

yea my bro has a board with that slot...maybe I will get him a cpu & mem for his B-day in august

 

[zekrahminator]

muah ha ha and I actually have the ASRock board that you can plug that card into...I might just think about upgrading!

 

[Aevum]

i wonder about the phisical stability of that board being held up just by the slot on the motherboard, with the ram, CPU and HSF on it, anyone actually tried it with the 754 to 939 upgrade series from asrock ?

also, its quite smaller then an actuall motherboard, i wonder about the proximity of the memory modules to the HSF

 

[Darksaber]

well the proximity is the same as on other boards just look at the newspost about the Albatron: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=9288

About being held up, the card actually plugs into the top most slot, and is held up by a screw by the PCI slot. a normal heatsink from AMD should not weigh more than 500 grams (I do not know how much the max weight sanctioned weight is), a graphiccard cooler may weigh just as much, and we still do not have any problems with breaking parts

So I think this should be fine! but if this part costs more than 40€s there is no point in buying this...might as well buy a new AM2 based board from Asrock for the same amount of money.
cheers
DS

 

[zekrahminator]

yeah, thats a good point, unless you have an AGP card. then it will probably be the only AM2 board with AGP

 

[Darksaber]

true, true...good point as well

 

[Thermopylae_480]

I would like to see if the performance is comparable to a true motherboard. It seems like using a slot in this manner would degrade performance.

 

[FLY3R]

I would like to see if the performance is comparable to a true motherboard. It seems like using a slot in this manner would degrade performance.

Yeah i was wondering the same thing but will have to wait.

Great idea especaily for buget person!!

 

[MDK22]

Is there enough room for 2 cpu fans??

 

[Dynamic]

Why would you even think about hooking up two cpu fans? If you're running AMD64 Socket 939 then just leave the AM2 expansion slot out. If you're going to run the new AM2 socket then take out the old AMD64 cpu along with HSF out of the socket 939 and that's it. Wonder when this expansion card would be available, probably around June? Good to know....still got my ASRock Dual939-SATA2, hehe.

 

[chame]

Why would you even think about hooking up two cpu fans?

Yeah, seems that there is not enought space to fit two standard size coolers, and if you put the second CPU in the other size of the card you dont have space for the gfx card ...

 

[Pheonix_789]

ahhh what slot is that AMD 2 plugged into? Is that the PCI-E X16 slot?

 

[wazzledoozle]

ahhh what slot is that AMD 2 plugged into? Is that the PCI-E X16 slot?

Its a special slot on ASRock boards.

 

[Frick]

The yellow one at the top that says: "Future CPU slot" or something like that.

As I'm kinda satisfied with my 3000+Venice and dual-sata2, I don't think I'm bying this one, unless it's incredible cheap and performs quite well. I think the biggest issue is the cooling.. It seems it's not a lot of space there.. Not downwards anyway.

 

[Aevum]

heres a cute idea, use the socket 939 retention mecanism to lock in another fan or a support unit for a large heatsink,

 

[MDK22]

Doenst look like it has room for both heatsinks and fans

 

[zekrahminator]

even if you wanted to put 2 CPU fans in, there would be no point...the board will only run 1 CPU at a time. jumper settings tell the board which CPU to run off of, and people tried this before with the other ASRock "dual" series (754 to 939) with no success.

 

[dvocalist]

http://www.accessories2you.net/newshop/product.php/590/0
there u will find the upgrade. ive just found out today what that yellow slot was, now im on a mission to upgrade lol
and ive emailed asrock to c if i can use the motherboard processor and ram and the AM2 with processor and ram on there all together, so ill let u no asap

 

[suraswami]

hmm.. Idea - Should there be a board created with socket flexibility, like you can choose what socket and proc you want to go with, AM2, 775 etc keeping just one board and no permanent socket, just that slot type socket. Will it be cool?

AM2 to AM2+ to 775 to 77? and so on......

 

[Morgoth]

wont be posible... tons of tons of bottlenecking
oh yea and chipset

 

[candle_86]

actully it can be done in the card fasion, a few requriements have to be meet first, what ever card you use must contain the approiate chipset, the chipset with the mobo in this case is worthless. Along with the ram and cpu socket. If you made a board like this with no chipset on it, the interface connect would have to be largers to handle PCIe, but yes its possible. As for preformace it should be drastic, the old one didnt give a large hit at all

 

[theandyone]

I am wondering if anyone has actually tried upgrading with this future cpu port. I've built a few computers, but by no means consider myself an expert. I saw a deal for a pretty nice dual core AM2 processor for $40 and am thinking of getting it. I have the ASRock 939 Dual Sata board and figure if this future cpu port works it would be a decent upgrade from my AMD 64 3200+ cpu. I know it's probably best just to buy a new board, but my laptop is my primary computer now and I would have to upgrade almost everything on my desktop since my gfx card is agp. I use my desktop mostly just for storage, but a performance boost for $40 doesn't sound bad at all. I also see this is a news forum so I'm sorry to ask questions and bump an old thread, but it looks like somebody already did a few days ago. So I have no shame and didn't feel like searching google anymore

 

[cdawall]

yeah, thats a good point, unless you have an AGP card. then it will probably be the only AM2 board with AGP

wrong


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138038

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130064


oh and the MSI isn't a terrible oc'r either just low ram volts only 2v :shadedshu