ASRock A88X Extreme6+ Review

👤by Tony Le Bourne Comments 📅20-01-14
Closer Look


APU socket area

On the left you can find a dual 4pin PWM fan headers followed by the 8+2 power phases that accompany the FM2+ socket. On the right there is an 8 pin CPU power socket.


The A88X Extreme6+ can take up to 64GB memory

At the top of the motherboard, just above the APU socket, there are 2x 3pin and 1x 4pin fan headers. This motherboard features four memory slots, two of which is capable of supporting up to DDR3 2600MHz. Alongside the memory slots we find the 24pin ATX power socket and a USB 3.0 front panel header.


Bottom right section of the board

In this section, we find a welcome bank of 6 right angled SATA ports, the dual BIOS chips, an additional SATA port (it appears the A88X chipset can give a total of 8 SATA connections), a power and reset buttons, a BIOS selector switch, another 4pin PWM fan header and a debug LED indicator. The low profile chipset cooling looks simple but should be effective.


The internal I/O lined up along the bottom

From left to right there is the front panel audio, which will give access to the headphone amp supporting up to 600ohm impedance headphones via the front panel jacks, COM headers, IR sensor header, 3x 2 USB 2.0 headers and the front panel control headers.

The expansion slots are arranged intelligently, giving a clear two slot space between the first and second PCIe x16 slots, ASRock have also included 2x PCIe x1 and 2x PCI legacy, as well as a final PCIe x 4 to finish things off (physical x16).


Purity Sound

Underneath the Purity sound EMI shield, is located the Realtek ALC 1150, one of the best audio codecs available, with the TI NE5532 headphone amp/ differential amp either side. Towards the top we find the Qualcomm Atheros AR8171 that supports remote power on via the internet, this is what allows the ASRock Home Cloud feature that enables remote access to your desktop via various devices, anytime, anywhere.


Rear I/O

From left to right, Universal PS2, 2xUSB 2.0. D-SUB, DVI, DP, HDMI, HDMI-IN, eSATA, 4x USB 3.0, gigabit lan, 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port and HD audio jacks. The inclusion of an HDMI-IN is quite interesting and many could find useful, also using an FM2+ APU, the A88X Extreme6+ supports the use of up to four monitors.


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