A Closer Look at the P45R2000-WiFi


The board layout, color scheme, and design of the P45R2000-WiFi are almost an exact replica of the ASRock X48 board. 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 for a noticeable difference for the user.

Not surprisingly, ASRock stuck with an oddly placed 20/24 pin ATX connector situated up near the I/O panel instead of typical location of the bottom of the board near the RAM slots. This strange placement is found in other ASRock boards and remains on the P45R2000-WiFi likely because it would be quite expensive to move from a manufacturing standpoint. The 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 P45R2000-WiFi is the addition of hybrid DDR2/DDR3 memory. This means the user can use either two sticks of DDR2 memory or up to four sticks of DDR3 memory (max 4GB and 8GB respectively). The memory slots are color coded and clearly labelled 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.


Due to the nature of the P45 chipset and strap changes, ASRock included a group of jumpers that must be altered to change the Northbridge strap. These four configurations are useful if users want to use different RDAM frequencies and for overclocking. Jumper configurations for default, FSB1066, FSB1333, and FSB1600 are illustrated above.


To switch between CrossFire and single video card modes, users are required to switch around a Switch Card. The card is simply turned around if 8x/8x mode is desired instead on 16x mode for a single card. In terms of spacing, the PCIE2.0 slots are quite close together, leaving users a touch over four centimetres between two video cards. Some other boards we have tested put a PCI slot between the PCIE slots to provide clearance for water blocks or after market air cooling; however, all of the PCI slots are located below the PCIE slots in this case. In the testing for this review, two water blocks were used for cooling and they did fit, but the cards were very close together.


For Northbridge and Southbridge cooling, ASRock uses aluminum heatsinks on this board. The heatsinks are painted a goldish color and are reasonably nice looking. The northbridge and southbridge heatsinks may not look as aesthetically pleasing as some more expensive heatpipe designs, but the P45 chipset runs so cool that the NB temperature never exceeded 36C even at the highest available NB voltages and full CPU load.


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. For onboard sound, the board uses uses the Realtek ALC890B codec chip, 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 previous two ASRock releases, the P45R2000 uses all solid capacitors. 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 there were no clearance issues even with a large aftermarket heatsink.


The Wifi card on the P45R2000-WiFi is located near the bottom of the board and 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.

Two RJ-45 LAN Ports are a first for recent ASRock boards and provides users with two LAN options. The LAN ports are ran by Realtek RTL8111C Ethernet controllers. The RTL8111C controller combines a triple-speed IEEE 802.3 compliant Media Access Controller (MAC) with a triple-speed Ethernet transceiver, PCI Express bus controller, and embedded memory.


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 S/PDIF Out Port, Optical S/PDIF Out Port) for your Home Theatre needs. Other I/O ports include: one PS/2 Mouse Port, one PS/2 Keyboard Port, six Ready-to-Use USB 2.0 Ports, two RJ-45 LAN Ports with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED), and one IEEE 1394 Port.