PCB Design and Functionality

ASRock X58 SuperComputer mainboard may seem quite ordinary at first glance, but this impression is certainly false. If you take a close look at it, you will notice a lot of unique peculiarities that make this board stand out among the competitors.

Look at the four graphics card slots. Only blue-colored slots can work at full PCI Express 2.0 x16 speed. Orange slots use only half of their contacts, which correspond to PCI Express x8 standard. They share 16 PCI Express lanes, so when there is a graphics card installed into an orange slot, the corresponding blue slot slows down to PCI Express 2.0 x8. ASRock engineers are especially proud about being able to double the space between the graphics card slots, which allows using solutions with large cooling systems and ensures good cooling for regular cards installed into these slots. This is a definite advantage. However, they had to move the chipset North Bridge and processor socket a little higher up in order to fit all seven slots: four PCI Express and three PCI slots. As a result, the LGA1366 socket turned out almost at the edge, which will make it impossible to use the whole bunch of large CPU coolers on ASRock X58 SuperComputer mainboard if your system case is not tall enough, because they will hit against the system power supply located nearby. It is definitely a drawback.

Another drawback surfaced a little later, when we assembled the system. It turned out that electronic components on the reverse side of the PCB located close to one of the retention holes will not let us install the backplate for our Cooler Master GeminII cooler.

The processor socket has been moved to the very edge, while all five fan connectors that can be connected to ASRock X58 SuperComputer mainboard are grouped around the chipset North Bridge in the very center of the board, instead of being spread out closer to the mainboard edges.

By the way, the chipset North Bridge is cooled with an aluminum heatsink with large branched fins.

It is connected with a heatpipe to a heatsink over the processor voltage regulator transistors.

Unlike the chipset North Bridge, that is located a little higher than usual, the chipset South Bridge is situated unusually low. It is cooled with a small heatsink:

Intel ICH10R South Bridge provides support for six Serial ATA ports. Since Intel has long given up Parallel ATA support, the manufacturers have to install additional controllers in order to implement this feature on their boards.

As a rule, these chips provide not only Parallel ATA support, but also two more Serial ATA ports that are often laid out on the connector panel as eSATA. ASRock Company once again introduced a very unique approach: ASRock X58 SuperComputer mainboard uses a VIA VT6330 combination controller. Namely there are two controllers integrated into a single chip: one is responsible for Parallel ATA channel for up to 2 devices, while another provides two IEEE 1394a ports, one of which is available on the mainboard connector panel.

Besides, the back panel also has PS/2 Keyboard and mouse connectors, an optical and coaxial S/PDIF and six audio-jacks working via an eight-channel Realtek ALC890 HD codec with Content Protection, DTS (Digital Theater Systems) and DAC with 110dB dynamic range. There are also two network RJ45 connectors implemented via two Realtek 8111DL chips with Teaming support, six USB and one eSATA ports.