A Closer Look at the X48TurboTwins-WiFi


Similar to the box design, the ASRock X48TurboTwins-WiFi is consistent with past designs in terms color scheme and overall design. The PCB is the trademark blue with yellow RAM slots for DDR2 memory, and green and pink RAM slots for DDR3 memory. The main SATAII connectors are red and the eSATAII ports are orange providing a noticeable difference for the user.

In spite of past user complaints, ASRock stuck with an oddly placed 20/24 pin ATX connector situated up near the I/O panel instead of the typical location on the right side of the board, near the RAM slots. This strange placement is found in other ASRock boards and remains on the X48TurboTwins-WiFi: likely because it would be quite expensive to move from a manufacturing standpoint. The cabling issue one may face is with a bottom mounted power supply where the ATX power cable would have to stretch past and above the GPU, making hiding wires very difficult. It could also interfere with larger aftermarket CPU coolers.


A key feature on the X48TurboTwins-WiFi is the addition of hybrid DDR2/DDR3 memory. This means the user can use either two sticks of DDR2 memory or four sticks of DDR3 memory. The memory slots are color coded and clearly labeled so adding memory to the correct slots is simple, pink and green for DDR3 and yellow for DDR2. For dual channel, use the two slots of the same color. The two types of memory also only fit into the appropriate slots to prevent mistakes during installation.


Since this board is a RAM hybrid and uses both DDR2 and DDR3, ASRock included a group of jumpers that must be altered if DDR2 is used. If the user installs DDR3 memory, the jumpers remain in the default position, but if DDR2 is installed the jumpers must be modified according to the Front Side Bus (FSB) speed of the processor installed. Selections include 1066, 1333, and 1600 FSB CPUs. Jumper configuration for DDR3 and the three configurations for DDR2 are illustrated above.


One other potential design issue is the PCIE 2.0 slots are quite close together, leaving users a touch over four centimetres between two video cards. Some other boards put a PCI slot between the PCIE slots to provide clearance for water blocks or after market air cooling. In the testing for this review, two water blocks were used for cooling, however, the cards were so close together, the top of one block rests on the second video card.


For Northbridge and Southbridge cooling, ASRock uses aluminum heatsinks on this board. These may not look as fancy as some of the more expensive competitor designs which use tons of copper, but the X48 chipset runs so cool that the NB temperature never exceeded 42C even at the highest available NB voltages.


The VIA Fire IIM VT6308S 1394 Host Controller is a IEEE 1394 high-speed serial bus used for PCI peer-to-peer interconnections. More popularly known as "Firewire", it is commonly used for transferring large audio and video files from various devices.

The board uses the Realtek ALC890B codec chip for onboard sound, with eight audio channels (7.1 surround) and 110db rated signal-to-noise ratio. This is a DTS (Digital Theater Systems) supported codec and is a great onboard audio solution.


Meanwhile, the BIOS chip is removable on this board which makes it nice if the BIOS becomes corrupted during a flash. If this happens, the BIOS chip can be easily removed and a new one put in without having to RMA the entire board. To avoid this issue it is a good idea to always flash from a floppy or a USB drive and not in Windows.


Similar to the Penryn1600SLIX3-WiFi, ASRock stuck with all solid capacitors on this board. Solid caps seem to be becoming the standard on motherboards these days even if this does represent a somewhat groundbreaking change away from ASRock's past boards. These caps are said to be of higher quality and more durable than the older electrolytic style capacitors which have often been a source if trouble on older electronics.

The 12V connector is in a typical spot, next to the CPU socket. There is enough distance between this connector and the CPU socket to ensure there were no clearance issues even with a large aftermarket heatsink.


The Wifi card found on the X48TurboTwins-WiFi is the Realtek RTL8187L. According to Realtek, this is a budget IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Network Interface Controller with USB 2.0 Interface. Also included with the Wifi card is the wireless LAN module. ASRock provides an 802.11g Wifi module supporting 54Mbps IEEE 802.11g / 11Mbps IEEE 802.11b. This module also supports Software Access Point mode (AP mode) and Station mode (Infrastructure mode and Ad-hoc mode). The benefit users will find with this feature is avoiding stringing LAN cables if the PC is in an area with no accessible connections.


The rear panel inputs and outputs are quite complete on this board and include two interesting additions: a dual eSATA port and High Definition audio outputs (Coaxial SPDIF Out Port, Optical SPDIF Out Port) for your Home Theatre needs. Other I/O ports include: PS/2 Mouse Port, PS/2 Keyboard Port, 6 x Ready-to-Use USB 2.0 Ports, RJ-45 LAN Port with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED), IEEE 1394 Port, and HD Audio Jacks. Six USB ports are a step up from the four found on the Penryn1600SLIX3-WIFI and a PS2 mouse port is also a convenient feature that seems to be disappearing from many boards.