ASRock 939NF4G-SATA2

Board Layout:

Starting the motherboard examination with the system memory slots, the 939NF4G-SATA2 relies upon four DDR-400 sockets and supports a maximum capacity of 4GB. Running parallel with the memory slots along the front edge of the motherboard's blue PCB is two ATA-133 IDE connectors. The layout of the ASRock 939NF4G-SATA2 is similar to that of the 939Dual-SATA2 with the exception being the size of the motherboard PCB. Below the memory DIMMs on the motherboard are two Serial ATA 2.0 ports, two USB 2.0 headers, FDD port, and NVIDIA nForce 410 MCP. The NVIDIA chip is concealed by a small, golden-colored, passive heatsink.

At the rear of the motherboard is one PCI Express x16, two PCI, and one PCI Express x1 slot. Some of the ASICs used by the motherboard include the Realtek ALC850 and RTL8201CL. Approaching the CPU socket area, the NVIDIA GeForce 6100 chip can be found above the PCI Express slot. The NVIDIA GeForce 6100 and nForce 410 support PureVideo and a 425MHz graphics clock, among many other features. The NVIDIA GeForce 6100 and nForce 410 remain the entry-level solutions compared to the GeForce 6100/nForce 430 or GeForce 6150/nForce 430 combinations.

Moving up the motherboard, above the passively cooled GeForce 6100 is the AMD Socket 939 area. The ASRock 939NF4G-SATA2 supports AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet and all AMD Athlon 64 / 64 FX / 64 X2 (Socket 939) processors. To the lower right hand corner of the CPU socket is a 3-pin fan header. Towards the end of the motherboard is a 20-pin ATX power connector as well as a 4-pin ATX12V connection. At the rear I/O panel is the PS/2 ports, parallel port, VGA out, four USB 2.0, 10/100 network, and six audio outputs. The 939NF4G-SATA2 does not utilize any external Serial ATA ports and is not nearly as elaborate as the recently reviewed ASRock 939SLI32-eSATA2.