 So today we'll be unboxing a motherboard from ASRock. It is part of their True333 series. I'm not sure who they got that marketing thing from, but they mean USB 3.0, SATA 3, and eSATA 3. This is the 890GX Extreme, so it's part of AMD's latest 800 series chipsets. That means it is 6-core CPU ready. Phenom 2x6, Athlon 2, Windows 7, Crossfire X, and integrated Radeon HD 4290 graphics are some of the... I don't know what I'm talking about. Some of the technologies included. They also have support for True Blu-ray, as well as core unlocking. They use Japanese-made long-life capacitors, and they also have EUP, which is less than 1 Watt in off mode. Very cool. So it's an energy savings feature. Let's move around to the back, where we have... Okay, they basically reiterate most of what they said on the front already. Awesome. So let's get this board open. First thing we find inside, in terms of accessories, is the guide to their instant boot application. Okay, so it unfolds about like that. It comes in six different languages. Then we have a little pamphlet on their intelligent energy saver. So this is a little application that shows you, looks like, how much power your system's pulling, how many power phases are enabled. Very neat. Okay. And then... Okay, here we go. So we've got included 1, 2, 3, 4 included SATA 2 cables. Then we have an I.O. shield, which is color-coded for your convenience. Then we have one Molex to SATA power adapter, and one eSATA bracket. Very cool. Then we have a user's manual, which includes a drivers and utilities DVD. Don't use this. Download the latest. This is all English. Holy cow. This is... Oh, no, it's not. Oh, good. Okay, the language has changed, because I was going to say this thing's like a novel. So the manual shows you all the basics, where to plug in your front panel connectors, a little... Oh, color picture guide to the motherboard. That's very nice. I don't think I've seen a color photo inside a motherboard manual before. Something every day, you know? That you encounter for the first time. Alright, so the motherboard itself is not sealed. Okay, let's pull this baby out. Now, ASRock's a bit of a value brand, but a lot of the time, that doesn't prevent them from bringing a product to market at a value price with all of the high-end features. So let's have a look at what they've got included here. They've got a typical AM3 socket with support for dual-channel DDR3 memory, up to 16 gigs at this time. They're 8-pin power connectors in its ideal location, up at the top left. And then I've actually had questions about what makes it an ideal location. The reason is that that's the easiest place to route up behind the motherboard tray most of the time. And then their 24-pin power connector is also in its ideal location along the right-hand edge. Down here, we're going to find the self-bridge cooler. It's kind of just a tower fin cooler, a very standard affair, but it's going to do a good job. You can tell just looking at it. You've got our 6 SATA3 6 gigabit per second ports here, as well as a post-debug LED thingamajiggy. Here's your front panel connectors. They've also included onboard power and reset buttons. Very high-end features, once again, despite a more value image to this particular brand. We have four USB 2.0 front panel headers. Here's your clear CMOS jumper. And USB PW3. To be honest, I can't tell you what that does. Okay, so here is our slot layout. We have one PCIe 1x slot, three PCIe 16x slots, although this one appears to be wired for 4x only. And then we have three PCI slots. So if you're running Crossfire, you're going to want to use these two blue guys. In fact, this one's wired for 8x only. So you'll be running 8x 8x, which does not impact performance significantly. And then if you wanted to run three-way Crossfire, I wouldn't really recommend it because this is a 4x slot. The Northbridge cooling is a pretty, again, a pretty standard affair. You've got just a nice little tower heat sink here with a little ASRock logo. One heat pipe connecting it to the MOSFET cooler, which is, again, very standard, very functional. Let's move around to the back of the board where we will find all of our I.O. And here, what do we got? So first we've got one, two, three, four USB 2.0 ports. Then we have a PS2 keyboard port, VGA, DVI, and HDMI interfaces for the onboard graphics. Hey, a back panel clear CMOS button. That's awesome, considering that this is a value board. Then we have an eSATA port, Firewire, USB 3.0, 1 gigabit ethernet, optical audio out, as well as 7.1 audio. So thank you for checking out my unboxing of the ASRock... Oh, shoot. You know, this doesn't happen to me very often, but I forgot what it's called. The ASRock 890GX Extreme 3.