The Board - A Closer Look

Like many current enthusiast products, the ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 features a socketed 64 Mb Winbond chip that contains its BIOS code, which makes it easy to replace should things go terribly wrong. There's also a set of ON/OFF and RESET switches on the board's bottom edge, so getting this board up and running should only require the bare minimum after you install the ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 into a test bench, or you could simply clock the board on top of its box.


Monitoring duties are provided by a Nuvoton NCT6776D Super I/O, which, of course, manages the PS/2 port on the back panel as well. That is connected to the DIMM VRM, a single phase design that is far more robust than it looks.


The main APU VRM is managed by an International 3565A Rectifier that controls the 8+2 VRM design. The eight phases for the APU's CPU portion are driven by a quad of input drivers found on the rear of the board, while the dual iGPU phases each have their own input driver on the back of the board.


To keep all those phases cool, ASRock has installed a pretty large heatsink on the FM2A85X Extreme6's VRM, and it, as you can see by the image above, makes excellent contact with each and every MOSFET. The AMD A85X FCH is also treated similarly with a wide heatsink that spans the width of nearly five expansion slots.


Audio and LAN controllers are provided by Realtek: audio by a high-end ALC898 chipset, while LAN duties are managed by a RTL8111E chipset - both are pictured above.


Although the AMD A85X provides some USB 3.0 ports on its own, not all of the USB 3.0 ports on the ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 can be provisioned for, which is why an ASMedia ASM1042 controller on top of the rear I/O blocks directly connects to the uppermost USB 3.0 ports on the rear I/O.