Board Design & Layout

If y'all are coming from a P45 motherboard you lot'll undoubtedly discover that the P55 platform gets a more compact cooling treatment. Although the P55 chipset is yet built using a 65nm process, as was the P45, its TDP rating has been reduced to a mere 4.7 watts compared to the ~22 watts on the older platform.

The P55 is far less circuitous as it doesn't bear a memory controller, which takes up a vast amount of space within the chip's bundle. Much of what the north span traditionally does has been removed and as a result Intel has integrated the functions of the north and south span chipsets into a single bit, which they phone call a Platform Controller Hub (PCH).

The heatsink on superlative of the P55 flake measures vii ten 7cm and is just 1cm alpine. The die surface of the P55 chipset -- or Platform Controller Hub, if you will -- measures roughly 1 x 1cm, so the bodily majority of the heatsink is near iii x 3cm. The larger heatsinks can exist institute cooling the board's power circuitry 8cm long, 3.5cm broad and 3cm tall. There are ii of these heatsinks and each i cools 10 MOSFETs, which are office of the lath's 8 + 2 power phase.

In terms of expansion almost all P55 motherboards will back up at least ii PCI Limited x16 slots, while many will feature 3. In this case the Asrock P55 Extreme4 provides gamers with a pair PCIe x16 slots, though information technology is important to note that using 2 of these with Crossfire or SLI technology will but provide x8 bandwidth each. Additionally, the P55 Extreme4 features 3 PCIe x1 slots and two traditional PCI slots.

The primary and secondary PCIe x16 slots have been separated by a pair of PCIe x1 slots to aid improve air-flow between dual graphics cards, a blueprint that nearly motherboard manufacturers today use.

The only trouble with the Asrock layout is that information technology features the CMOS bombardment between these PCIe x16 slots, making it impossible to access with fifty-fifty 1 graphics carte du jour installed. This is a design flaw that tin can be found on a number of Asrock motherboards and it is something they seem unwilling to change.

The residue of the P55 Extreme4 board design looks quite good. The 24-pin ability connector is well placed in the top right hand corner of the board where it is accompanied by the four SATA 6Gb/south ports. The half-dozen SATA 3Gb/s ports are mounted at the bottom of the motherboard to avoid any conflicts with the graphics cards. All ten onboard SATA ports are mounted vertically rather than angled at 90 degrees, though given the placement we have no problem with this.

We liked the P55 Extreme4's ability to apply LGA775 and LGA1136 coolers by including both sets of mounting holes. This could potentially relieve users some money when migrating from an older platform as they may find their current aftermarket heatsink to work with this motherboard.

Looking at the I/O console nosotros have a pair of legacy PS/two ports, a CMOS reset button, 6 USB ii.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, eSATA port, LAN port, optical and S/PDIF ports along with six audio jacks. All in all, everything the user could desire or need in terms of connectivity will be institute on the back of his computer.

With two of the four available USB 3.0 ports located at the I/O panel the remaining ports tin can be connected using an on-board header. This header is located right next to the USB ii.0 respective connectors on the PCB. With the supplied three.5" forepart console bracket users gain piece of cake admission to these ports.

Although the board's appearance is not necessarily important, information technology does seem to play a role to some consumers. Fortunately, the Asrock P55 Extreme4 is a very cool looking motherboard, particularly when compared to the original Asrock P55 Extreme which had a bit of a crazy colour scheme.

Overall we are pleased with the design and layout of the Asrock P55 Extreme4. The board's cooling is sufficient, the layout caters well for multi-GPU setups, and the I/O panel provides all the necessary connectivity.