Power Phases and Controller Chips
The older Llano series of fusion APUs had serious internal power gating problems when being overclocked. This severely limited what you could achieve from the chips when making use of the IGP and all four cores at once, which would usually result in a lack of power for the IGP resulting in instability.
The new Trinity based APU’s have a vastly superior power design. For both internal gating, of resources, as well as dynamic power management with an increased number of power states, not just for core processing functions.
The new power management includes increased power gating and state control for the IGP, and memory buses.
The Digi Power controllers come in handy for performing such functions under both stock and extreme conditions. This controllable in some degree in the bios. Though ASRock is still playing around with exactly how much support they want to give users in the bios. Some of the earlier versions of their bioses featured OCP control (YUMMY). Which is a true Necessity for when you start pushing the new APU’s to their Limits. While the new versions of their bios are currently missing these features I am sure a bit of gentle inquiry to ASRock would see them return.
Another wonderful addition is Load Line Calibration(LLC) control. To help maintain stable voltages while under loading. While stock performance will not require much help from LLC, overclocking will quickly yield a increased power draw that require such features and control.
Here’s the Main power phase controller, an IOR 3565A. Which Runs the 8 core power phases.
A nice picture of the underside of the main power phases. Showing off the Inductors termination point, and the IOR driver chips. The pairs of traces leading away from the inductors are for per-phase OCP.
Moving on from the power bitties.
Asmedia usb3.0 controller, used for supplementary usb 3.0 ports.
The Realtek Network controller chip. Extra extra small. Model # RTL8111E.
Next we have the Realtek HD sound chipset, #ALC838. Nuvoton SuperI/O controller NCT67760.
