Layout
The ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Champion comes into a non ATX format. The board is a
tiny big larger than the ATX format by 2.3 cm, ASRock refers to as the CEB Form
Factor. If you want it or not, the design of ASRock's Fatal1ty Champion
reminds you of ASUS' ROG series, with the difference that ASRock put some nice
gold capacitors on the board. Combined it makes the design is very unique and good looking. Furthermore the southbridge cooler as well as the power design
coolers have been shaped with a lot of attention to detail. The layout itself has been well thought and there
are plenty of cool features - five PCIe 16x slots, ten SATA connectors, eight USB
3.0 on the back, a Creative Recon3Di HD and more ...
ASRock equipped the Fatal1ty X79 Champion with a
12+2 phase
digital power design with an Intersil ISL6367 taking care of the CPU VRM.
Furthermore you will find 100 % Japan made high quality capacitors so that's a
pretty strong power design. But hey the most important is that they come in
gold!
The memory gets a 2 phases digital power design per bank (4 DIMMs) also driven
by an Intersil ISL6367. This gives you 4 phases in total for the memory also
featuring gold caps.
Totally you'll find eight DIMM-slots on the
ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Champion. Officially supported are the following clock speeds:
DDR3 2500+(OC) / 2133 / 1866 (OC) / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz up to 64GB non-ECC
un-buffered. I like the DDR3-2500+ (OC) certification because most of the X79
processors barely do more than DDR3-2400 400% stable.
Southbridge as well as current converters are being held at
adequate temperatures via a passively cooled heatpipe loop. This loop consists of
three nickel-plated copper heatpipes and four aluminium made cooling blocks. The
cooling blocks have been very well manufactured and also very well attached to
the board to provide enough pressure on the components they have to cool down.
They are full black colored and feature different inscriptions. For exemple
the PCH cooler gets a large Fatal1ty logo in red, the one just above the main
PCIe slot has "Fatal1ty Gaming Gear" written on, the CPU VRM one has Fatal1ty's
signature while the one between the back panel and the memory slots has the
Champ1on Series inscription. Oh btw, the PLX chip is not cooled.
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