The ASRock 939NF4G-SATA2 is
a microATX form factor motherboard that is well suited for compact
mini-tower desktop computer chassis. The board measures 24cm x 22cm in size, and mounts with
six screws. ASRock include only the basic cables necessary to install a pair of IDE devices, a
SATA hard drive perhaps, and take advantage of the COM port. There are no frills
with the ASRock 939NF4G-SATA2, and its price reinforces that.
The socket 939 ASRock 939NF4G-SATA2 motherboard supports all current 939-pin AMD Athlon64/FX/X2 processors (Cool 'n' Quiet supported), and is based upon the value oriented nVidia Geforce 6100 Northbridge and nForce 410MCP Southbridge. The nVidia GeForce 6100 chipset maintains a 1 GHz 16-bit wide upstream and downstream Hyper-Transport connection between itself and the processor.
Most notably though, the
Geforce 6100 incorporates Geforce 6-series integrated graphics which are accessible
by a 15-pin Analog VGA jack at the rear I/O. The integrated NV44 GPU is DX9.0c compatible, and includes support for Pixel Shader 3.0. It shares 128MB of the installed system memory. The Geforce 6100 does not support quite as many visual and High Definition content features as its bigger brother the nVidia Geforce 6150 does, but we'll discuss that in a moment.
The list of essential onboard expansion options on
the ASRock 939NF4G-SATA2 motherboard include two full ATA133 IDE
channels, two non-hotswapable SATA II
headers capable of transferring data at 3.0GB/s (with support for RAID 0, 1,
JBOD), a floppy drive and AMR connector, two 32-bit PCI slots, and a single PCI Express x1 and x16 slot for high bandwidth devices. The AMR slot can be used with a device like a v.92 modem, but the riser cards are generally difficult to find in retail stores.
The board will support up to 4GB of dual channel PC3200 DDR400 RAM
via four DDR DIMM slots. Memory must be installed in pairs for dual channel operation,
so we'd recommend installing DDR modules of at least 512MB in size. Rounding
out the list of onboard goodies is a Realtek ALC850 7.1-channel HDA (Azalia)/AC'97 audio controller, a 10/100 Ethernet
network jack, and four USB2.0 ports (plus two USB2.0 headers) at the rear I/O.
The ASRock 939NF4G-SATA2 retails for less than a $95 USD
.
The user manual that accompanies the ASRock 939NF4G-SATA2
motherboard is well detailed, and should guide you through the installation
steps of setting up a system nicely. If you are confused, have a look
at PCSTATS Beginners Guide on the subject for some pointers. And for
those who have been stung by the burst
capacitor problem in the past, this Asrock
motherboard is equipped with KZG and OST electrolytic capacitors. Let's hope ASRocks's commitment to
quality parts is as good as its pricing structure and none of them burst 3 years
down the road... pop!
Up next, let's have a closer look at this microATX
motherboard...
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