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Information relating to the processor and memory is displayed on the main page of the ASRock 990FX Extreme 3 motherboard's UEFI BIOS.
An overclocked CPU frequency of 3.6GHz is achieved by means of a 200MHz base clock and 18x multiplier with a core voltage of 1.2750V. The CPU Northbridge frequency and voltage configurations have also been tweaked to allow for enhanced stability and additional performance.
As the FX-8120 processor is a ‘Black Edition' part, the unlocked multiplier can be used to achieve higher CPU overclocks, without sacrificing the system stability that exists with a 200MHz base clock.
Voltages, temperatures and fan speeds are displayed in the ‘H/W Monitor' page of the UEFI BIOS. As our testing wasn't conducted in the heart of a Siberian blizzard, the -60.5°C ‘recorded' CPU temperature indicates that there still hasn't been an outright fix for the widespread problem of incorrect readings that has existed on many recent AMD-based set-ups.
Whether it's the fault of board manufacturers or AMD themselves, this issue really should have been solved by now.
According to the ASRock motherboard's BIOS, the 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 HDD was configured as the main boot device. This is incorrect – we booted directly from the Vertex 2 SSD without changing any settings.
The system builders configure the storage drives' default mode as IDE, rather than the more favourable AHCI mode. While this isn't a major issue and one that is likely to have few real world impacts, it's missing out small touches like this that can make the difference between a system being great or just good.
