ASRock X58 Extreme3

Zitat: The X58 Extreme3 from ASRock is a nice improvement over the last generation. The board looks much better having a black/white/blue color scheme and the cooling got improved on the VRM(newly designed heatsink with fins and active cooling). The VRM cooler is linked with the chipset heatsink with one heatpipe, which gets pretty hot during load. Thanks to the new cooling system, there were no stability problems when running the CPU at 4GHz for a long time; on the previous X58 Extreme, I was sometimes getting system shutdowns, because of the excessive heat on the VRM and X58 chipset. Another useful feature is the extra holes for older LGA775 coolers or water blocks, so if we decide to keep and use the old cooling system, we can without any problems. The PCI Express slot retention mechanism has also been improved compared to the X58 Extreme. The THX TrueStudio Pro application from Creative is a nice addition in the bundle and offered free of charge (registered version). On the installation disk we can also find the X-FI MB application, but this one is offered only as trial and it is functional only for 30 days. The integrated USB 3.0, SATA3 (6GBps) and eSATA3 make this board future proof and it is much better to have the chips integrated instead of installing expansion cards which could take up important space in the case. Price wise this board makes for an affordable USB 3/SATA 600 enabled motherboard, at around $200, which is $30-50 more than the original X58 Xtreme.

Zitat: ASRock is not known as an enthusiast’s dream come true with the motherboards. With the X58 Extreme3 motherboard, they have proved that appearances can be deceiving. With a host of great features that any X58 board would be proud of, including external SATA 6 Gb/second ports, the X58 Extreme offers good performance and a solid bundle. If you are looking for an X58 board for that new Gulftown 980X CPU and want the latest technology, the ASRock Extreme3 motherboard is a great fit. External SATA has hit the mainstream on motherboards and this board has the newest iteration on an external SATA 6GB/second USB Combo port.

Zitat: The Asrock Extreme3 is a very solid motherboard with a solid price. For about $200, you can have a feature-rich motherboard with all the bells and whistles: good overclocking, USB 3.0 and SATA III. In this case, you really can´t argue the fact that you get what you pay for. This motherboard has all the options of one that would cost well over $300 more. The layout of the motherboard is visually stunning. The blue and white slots and connectors flow very well with the black PCB. Everything is nicely placed on the board. This includes fair distance between the two main 16c PCIe slots to the right angle SATA ports to the placement of the front panel pin-outs. This is another area in which Asrock as greatly improved. I remember the days when the aux power connector was placed right in the middle of the motherboard. My only gripe against the Extreme3 is one of the unique of it. The active cooling on the power regulators is a great idea. And it comes in handy when cooling is an important as it is these days. But Asrock made the cooling system too tall making it problematic when trying to use some of the larger coolers like the Cogage Arrow and Thermaltake Frio. Overclocking the Extreme3 is not the hardest thing I have ever done. Asrock makes it a point to make things user-friendly and the BIOS of this board is just that. We were able to eclipse 4.2GHz on good cooling and minor BIOS adjustments. I am sure with more time dedicated to the board we could have gotten more. If you are not into BIOS overclocking Asrock does have the OC Tuner which is Windows based. Or you can simple use the EZ OC function in the BIOS.