P67 Motherboard Round-up: Asus, Fatal1ty, GB, MSI
ASRock Fatal1ty Professional
First up is a motherboard from ASRock. For those of you who aren't familiar with the company, ASRock started off in 2002 and primarily targets the entry-level / budget market, as well as the mid-level / mainstream. It aims to provide consumers with good bang for the buck, and we can definitely appreciate that. But just because the company neglects the high end of the spectrum, don't assume their boards lack style. It has partnered with the Fatal1ty brand to create the P67 Professional Series model that reminds us of the Asus Rampage board at first glance.
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ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional Motherboard
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| Processor LGA-1155 i3 / i5 / i7 Processors Memory Four 240-pin DDR3 SDRAM DIMM sockets Supports DDR3 2133 / 2000 / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz Up to 32 GB max Expansion Slots 3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 slot 2 x PCIe x1 slot 2 x PCI slots |
Form Factor ATX 12 x 9.6 inches ( 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm ) LAN Realtek 8111E Audio Realtek ALC892 Warranty 3 years based on serial number Price $219 |
Carrying a price tag of $219, the Professional is the most expensive P67 motherboard that ASRock manufactures. The next model down is the P67 Extreme, which costs $189. Several less expensive choices are also available, starting at $109 for the Pro3 SE.
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Fatal1ty Mouse Port - After plugging a USB mouse into the port and running F-Stream, gamers can use Fatal1ty's personal preferred mouse polling rate at 500 Hz. F-Stream also provides the flexibility for gamers to adjust the mouse polling rate from 125 - 1000 Hz. ASRock claims this feature is helpful for gamers by providing smoother game play and faster response time to the mouse. |
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Digital PWM Design - By adopting digital pulse-width modulation, this board can provide CPU Vcore voltage more efficiently and smoothly than older analog solutions. |
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Fatal1ty XFast USB Techology - This feature is integrated in the board and claims to deliver the world's fastest USB data transfer speed. |
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PLX PEX8608 Chip - The P67 Professional offers x16 electrical connections to its PEG slots, even when using dual graphics cards, through the use of a PLX PCI Express fan out switch. |
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ASRock packs a substantial bundle along with the P67 Professional. Here we find product documentation, a driver disk, six SATA cables, USB bracket, rear I/O shield, IDE cables, power adapters, and an SLI bridge. The user guide that comes along with this board is the thickest we've ever encountered. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but worth noting.
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On the rear I/O panel, we find three USB 2.0 ports, one Fatal1ty mouse port, four USB 3.0 ports, one 1394 port, one 6Gb/s eSATA port, PS/2 connections for both a keyboard and mouse, an optical S/PDIF out, a coaxial S/PDIF out, a couple of RJ-45 LAN jacks, and 6 analog audio connections.
