ASRock Penryn1600SLIX3-Wifi Motherboard Review

Long-Term Impressions

Long-term impressions of the ASRock Penryn1600SLIX3-Wifi are mixed. On one hand, the solid capacitors and overall build quality are quite strong, while on the other hand the chipset runs exceptionally hot. High Northbridge voltages are required to get a decent amount of FSB out of the board on the CPUs tested in this review, which leads to excessive heat coming from the heatpipe cooling design, over 80C in some cases. Although the 680i chipset is specified to run at high temperatures, the amount of heat put into a closed case will be high and one must wonder the durability of parts run at those temperatures over an extended period.

The BIOS has had one update since the release which fixed some bugs and enabled settings that should be enabled by default. Hopefully in the next BIOS update ASRock will tweak the BIOS so it allows for higher FSB and change the NB, SB, VTT, GTL voltage to actual voltages instead of settings like “high” which really leave too much guessing room for many users comfort.


Conclusion

Feature-wise this board is a clear winner. ASRock provides its customers with dual 16x SLI slots and a third 8x slot, 7.1 HD audio, WiFi capabilities, overclocking and monitoring software, and many other perks. All the features we tested in this review worked as promised and setup was quite straightforward. As was seen in the tests, the improvements when running SLI and an overclocked system were rather dramatic and really did well to show what we find is a huge selling point for this board. Although the board didn’t clock quite to the point of some others on the market, dual 16x SLI makes up for that quickly in 3D and gaming applications.

The stock BIOS was rather immature, having key options like USB support, audio, and LAN disabled by default and only basic overclocking settings. A novice user that is not very comfortable changing BIOS settings could mistake this for a defective board and this could lead to unnecessary RMAs. ASRock did enable these features in the BIOS update which came out in April though so it shows they are willing to address issues. Some extra RAM secondary timings such as trfc would be nice as well, considering some newer 4GB DDR2 kits require trfc above 52.

For overclocking, the board was really limited by FSB on newer processors. Maxing out at 360 FSB where the same chip clocks over 500 on a P35 board is quite a difference and is something that must be taken into account by enthusiasts looking for a board that will not limit their desired overclocking level. On the other hand, many users would be more than happy running their 2400Mhz quad at 3240Mhz.

The build quality of the board is much improved over older ASRock designs, with all solid capacitors and heatpipe cooling. The 24 pin ATX power connector is still located next to the CPU though, and may be an obstacle for users with bottom mounted power supplies or larger CPU heatsincs. It would also have been nice to have a few extra fan headers and the heatpipe cooling is not really sufficient for the amount of heat produced by the very hot 680i chipset.

ASRock also gets points for innovation being the first to implement tri-SLI on a 680i chipset with a sub-$200 price tag. The only other options for this are very expensive and since the Penryn1600SLIX3-Wifi comes at such an attractive price, it should grab the attention of users that want to run SLI or tri-SLI at a reasonable price. On the flip side however, the 680i is an older chipset that was never very popular in the first place. Many users have gone to Intel-based chipsets for the overclocking ability alone.

So to sum all this up we have to say that this board is quite decent for users who want a solid upgrade for their aging systems. It offers some great features at an attractive price point but things like vdroop, limited overclocking options and an extremely hot northbridge sour the experience somewhat. That being said, if you are not trying to achieve high overclocks and want a motherboard that gives you everything but the kitchen sink for an extremely good price then the Penryn1600SLIX3-Wifi may be the board for you. Thus, we give this product our Dam Good Value Award.


Pros:

- Tri-SLI support with two 16x PCIE slots
- Wifi capabilities
- HD 7.1 audio
- Quality design, with solid capacitors
- 45nm and FSB1600/1333 CPU support with stock BIOS
- Overall stable motherboard


Cons:

- Very hot Northbridge
- Limited FSB overclocking
- Limited BIOS and key options disabled by default in stock BIOS
- New board, dated chipset
- Very limited availability at this time