ASRock 939Dual-SATA2

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wee96

2[H]4U
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Sep 5, 2005
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Anyone have it? How do you like it? I currently have the Abit UL8 but am dissapointed at its lack of overclockability and having an AGP card at the moment, I would need the AGP slot. I like being able to upgrade to PCIe later as well, so it seems to be the best thing I could get and its cheap. Ive read a bit about it and just wondered everyones opinions (especially those who HAVE it :) ).
 
I have the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 and so far I'm loving it. Its the most stable motherboard I've ever used. If you want to upgrade, you definatly need to upgrade to the latest official BIOS whish is 1.20. Also, don't use the drivers that come with the motherboard. Use the ULi Unified Drivers as the ones that come with the motherboard are horrible and the AGP driver causes all kinds of issues. The manual is a bit too basic, but the manual on the CD is quite nice. Head over to the following link to the ocwforums to get the scoop on this board...
http://www.ocworkbench.com/ocwb/ultimatebb.php?/forum/30/1000/0.html
 
Great board. I ordered a second one. With the latest bios it is a decent ocer. It is a great value board for those of us with a great AGP card waiting for the 7800 series to drop a bit ;) BTW, I am running an X2 3800 processor without a hitch. GET IT...
 
I plan on purchasing the Asrock very soon.

Here is another review here .


"The ULi M1567 Southbridge does not support SATA2, though an upcoming M1575 Southbridge will support SATA2 with NCQ. ASRock provides the two SATA/SATA Raid connectors supported by M1567 plus a 3Gb SATA2 slot with NCQ supported by a JMicron JMB360 chip. This is certainly much more than what you would expect on a "value" board."

autobot, is your Southbridge M1567 or M1575? Did you download the Uli Unified drivers directly from www.uli.com or another website?
 
jp2002 said:
I plan on purchasing the Asrock very soon.

Here is another review here .


"The ULi M1567 Southbridge does not support SATA2, though an upcoming M1575 Southbridge will support SATA2 with NCQ. ASRock provides the two SATA/SATA Raid connectors supported by M1567 plus a 3Gb SATA2 slot with NCQ supported by a JMicron JMB360 chip. This is certainly much more than what you would expect on a "value" board."

autobot, is your Southbridge M1567 or M1575? Did you download the Uli Unified drivers directly from www.uli.com or another website?
Click to expand...


My motherboard had a sticker labeling the SATA II port. It was seperate from the normal ones. I just got mine from Newegg a couple weeks ago. (it also already had the 1.20 bios loaded on it) SATA II was also plastered on the box.

As far as the Asrock.. I love it... totally stable, really nice board.. even though it's supposed to be a budget board. Running my 3800+ @ 2500mhz on air.. I am pretty sure I could get it higher.. but 2500+ sounded like a nice rounded #. :)
 
Nice linkies :cool: Definitely makes me feel better about buying TWO of these boards...
 
Does anyone have any problems with this board and a Nvidia card like the 6800?
 
My buddy built a system w/ this board, a 3500+, and 3500DDR. It did 2.6gigs on air(xp-90) right out of the box running prime(48hrs stable) and everything. Needless to say I was shocked :eek:
 
darktiger said:
Does anyone have any problems with this board and a Nvidia card like the 6800?
Click to expand...
Can't really say I have any with mine other than some graphical glitches with United Offensive that I didn't have before with my NF7-S/AXP mobile.

All other games seem to run fine. Card is AGP by the way.
 
wow this board looks nice...I read the review on anandtech, and they said they can get 300+ HTT. Has anyone else had such good overclocking experiences with this board? With my current board, im stuck at 265, i would love to get up to 290+...

Also the review said the to set the memory voltage higher, you have to just set it to "High"...is this true?
confused.gif
doesnt sound very good to me...
 
Does this board support SATA natively? Or do I have to insert a driver disk inorder to load XP on there?
 
i ordered the borad and now trying to look for HSF that fits.
i was looking at the XP-90 but found this big guy from thermaltake -> bigtyphoon

any suggestions on that? i've heard that 939dual does not have a backplate underneath. does that mean i have to buy one separately to install the HSF?? if i need the backplate, where can i get it and what type?? thanks!
 
As far as heatsinks are concerned with this board, you have to factor in that this board doesn't have a backplate. The retention module is attached to the motherboard via 4 plastic compression clips. This means you have to get a heatsink that will clip onto the retention module instead of screwing onto the board. The Arctic Cooling Freezer-64 is a great example of a heatsink that will work great on this board as it simply clips onto the stock retention module.

As for native SATA capability, yes. You can just plug a SATA HDD into one of the ports and it will work without any drivers. However this board does not support hot-plugging of the SATA ports.
 
Bakku said:
i ordered the borad and now trying to look for HSF that fits.
i was looking at the XP-90 but found this big guy from thermaltake -> bigtyphoon

any suggestions on that? i've heard that 939dual does not have a backplate underneath. does that mean i have to buy one separately to install the HSF?? if i need the backplate, where can i get it and what type?? thanks!
Click to expand...
I ended buying this for my XP-90 and it fits perfectly. You'll just have to find a place that has them in stock.
http://www.thermalright.com/a_page/main_product_accessories.htm#acc_k8bp
 
darktiger said:
Does this board support SATA natively? Or do I have to insert a driver disk inorder to load XP on there?
Click to expand...
If you are using a SATAI drive by itself than you don't need drivers. If you are using two SATAI drives in RAID you will need drivers. You will also need drivers if you're installing on a SATAII drive.
 
I have the board and love it, I mean I'm getting 2500Mhz out of my X2 with nothing more than upping the FSB and the board has been rock solid for the whole 2 weeks that I've had it :eek:

In all seriousness though, the board behaves the way it should, it ships with a non-OC friendly BIOS (or at least mine did) but I think that is because they were trying to sort out the cold boot problems that Anandtech which is fine by me and the current 1.20 BIOS works great.

There isn't much to the package but the board itself has a good layout (CMOS jumper is a bit tight once you have everything installed) and, at least from what I've been reading, it hasn't been a problematic board for anyone.

The draw for me was the PCIe/AGP capabilities because I didn't think I would be upgrading to PCIe for a while (6-12mos,) well that went out the window with the new GTO2 so I may be getting a new board and keeping this as a backup (say for when the M2 chips come out.) For $70 (what I paid) it was a steal and I'm hoping it serves me well for years to come.
 
Fam Money said:
I ended buying this for my XP-90 and it fits perfectly. You'll just have to find a place that has them in stock.
http://www.thermalright.com/a_page/main_product_accessories.htm#acc_k8bp
Click to expand...
ya, i found that backplate but the shipping costs twice as much, CRAP!!! and you are right, many online stores show OOS. i ordered both bigtyphoon and the backplate, hopefully they'll fit on the board without problems.

FamMOn, how hard is it to remove the cpu bracket? do you need to break anything to get it off?
 
The stock retention module is really quite easy to remove. Turn the motherboard over so you are looking at the back of it. Use a small screwdriver and push the small white tabs that are between the black tabs about 1/4" of an inch in. Do the same for all 4 white tabs. Now you should be able to pinch the black tabs together and push them through the board. Do this with the rest of the black tabs and the retention module will fall off the board. Then using an aftermarket backplate, you can attach any heatsink that will clear the NB heatsink.
 
Just wanted to share something with you all who have this awesome board. XP120 :)

xp120a.jpg

xp120b.jpg

xp120c.jpg
 
Is anyone running x64 with this board? Did you install the ULI unified drivers? Which ones did you install?
 
darktiger said:
Is anyone running x64 with this board? Did you install the ULI unified drivers? Which ones did you install?
Click to expand...

Using X64 right now but I didn't install any drivers besides audio/lan :eek:
 
I am looking at getting this board... Anything else I should know about it that hasn't been posted?


Will be pairing it with:

X800XT PE VIVO
2x512 Kingston HyperX CL2 PC3200

And likely an X2 3800+ even though I can't afford it.
 
Just got mine up and running last night. It was an easy install. I used the unified drivers, thanks for the link. I've just started testing in gaming, but from some short playing I can't notice anything different from my MSI K8T-Neo2 board with the via K8T800 pro chipset. But only time will tell with some benchmarks. One issue I did have was when I tried to install alcohol %120. I use this because I don't like to carry a lot of cd's with me to LAN's. the install would freeze and BSOD. Used a restore point and all is well. It must have some kind of issue with the virtual drives because I tried to execute a command with the alcohol cmd window and it said that the virtual drivers weren't installed. I tried it twice, same results. Guess I'll have to invest in a good CD case.

My hardware is a 6800GT AGP, 3500+ venice, and 2x512 hyper x.

Hooray for newegg, fast shipping and it already had bios 1.20 installed. I havn't messed with overclocking yet but the features seemed pretty decent, better laid out than the MSI bios, which was also an AMI bios btw. The board seems to run pretty cool as well, with a Thermaltake AMD K8 Venus 7+ heatsink and AS5 I'm running stable @ 34C. with the same heatsink, fan, cpu, and AS5 the MSI board was stable at 40C. It could be because of the drop in ambient temps though. Or a faulty sensor. I'll be checking that out as well.

But first impressions is that this is a great board for the money and leaves tons of room for upgrades.
 
bigbadgreen said:
One issue I did have was when I tried to install alcohol %120. .
Click to expand...


Running WIndows XP 32 I had Alcohol going just fine, running XP 64 it won't work because Alcohol doesn't work with XP 64 and won't anytime soon...hopefully daemon tools v4 finishes soon :(
 
I am slowly oc this board. So far I got from my x2 3800+ (2ghz) to 2.41 (x2 4800+ speeds). Did not even come across the BSOD. So I am going to burn in the cpu at this speed for awhile. So far after 1 hour of burning it in, my temps are 40°C with the XP120
 
I've got a few questions concerning this board for those of you who have it-

A) Is the AGP/PCI lock intact all the way up to 300+ HTT?

B) What does "high" voltage mean? Anandtech's review said it was about 2.8? Thats not very high...

C) For those of you with TCCD/TCC5, how high can you clock your memory? My TCC5 can do 270+ at 3.0v-3.1v but with the 2.8v max on my current board it cant get it much over 225...

Thanks!
 
HighwayAssassins ...
There is a functioning AGP/PCI lock.
When VDIMM is set to "High" the motherboard suppplies 2.7 volts.
I'm using Hynix ram, so can't comment on TCCD.
 
you can mod your board to get VIDMM @ 3.1v/3.3v if you want to.
the mod is fairly easy, you just need some soldering skillz.
 
Westmassguy said:
HighwayAssassins ...
There is a functioning AGP/PCI lock.
When VDIMM is set to "High" the motherboard suppplies 2.7 volts.
I'm using Hynix ram, so can't comment on TCCD.
Click to expand...
cool thanks, that is what i needed to know
 
I'm using TCCD at the high setting and I'm at 270 3-4-4-8 2T right now. Gonna keep pushing till I hit at 2.5Ghz.

*Edit*
Oh yeah, this is with four modules installed.
 
So what's the concensus on this board?

Is it worth the $70 to tinker around with?

What BIOS is it currently shipping with?

I have a 6800GT that I'm plenty happy with on a P4 system. I would really like to get an X2 and keep my 6800GT. Is this the way to go?

For about $430 I could upgrade to this board and a 3800+ X2. My P4 is starting to seem a tad bit sluggish (I've had it for 2 years now.)
 
Yeah I wanted to keep my 6800GT AGP also. Went with the board and the 3800+. Man so much faster. Right now my memory is holding me back. I can run 2.41ghz stable (running dual prime95 for 24hours). If you order it from newegg, it comes with the newest bios 1.20.....
 
It's a kick a** board for the price.
Some people are reporting problems with the GForce 6800, some are not.
BTW, theres a thread over at OCW forums (don't know if I can link directly) regarding a new BIOS that may support Higher Vcore and Vdimm.
The thread starter was in contact with ASRock, so you might want to check it out, or contact ASRock directly as I did.
 
Westmassguy said:
It's a kick a** board for the price.
Some people are reporting problems with the GForce 6800, some are not.
BTW, theres a thread over at OCW forums (don't know if I can link directly) regarding a new BIOS that may support Higher Vcore and Vdimm.
The thread starter was in contact with ASRock, so you might want to check it out, or contact ASRock directly as I did.
Click to expand...

May I ask what kind of RAM you are using and if you did the volt mod that I've read about for this board?

I see you have your X2 @ 2700Mhz, that's pretty impressive. Are you H2O cooling?
 
I did the revised Vcore mod which adds .2 volts to the BIOS Vcore setting.
I'm running 1.5 volts with a Thermalright XP90 and a Thermaltake 92mm 2700 RPM case fan attached.
My memory is a mix of Geil Ultra Platinum PC4400 (2X256) and Patriot ELK PC4000 (2X256), which are both made with Hynix D5 chips.
VDIMM is set to "High", and timing is 3, 4, 4, 10.
I was able to push the X2 3800 to 2600 MHz without any mods.
 
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