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The Asrock P55 Extreme4 Motherboard arrives in a large blue box which details the main features on both the front and the back.
The bundle is extensive, there are 4 Sata cables, a USB 3.0 box for front panel fitting, an SLI connector, a driver/software DVD, a multilanguage manual and a bios manual.
The motherboard is safely packaged with a foam insert protecting it during shipping.
Intel sent us a Core i5 750 for the review today, a very capable, good value for money processor which has proven to overclock very easily to 3.8ghz+ (from 2.66ghz). As many of you will already know, socket 1156 processors have an integrated PCI Express 2.0 controller inside the processor. This controller supports one x16 lane or two x8 lanes.
The Asrock P55 Extreme4 has two PCI Express x16 slots and it supports both Crossfire X and SLI. This motherboard however doesn't use a PCI Express chip which means potentially there is a possibility of dropped performance when utilising PCI Express 16x slots, USB 3.0 and Sata 600 ports simultaneously.
As the image above shows there are also three PCI Express x1 slots although you will lose one of these when you install a dual slot video card in the first x16 slot.
The P55 Extreme4 motherboard supports DDR3 up to 2600mhz via overclocking. The board has four DDR3 sockets each supporting 4GB modules, for a maximum installation of 16GB. The first and third sockets are white and the second and fourth are blue. ASrock instruct users to populate the white slots first, then the blue. We appreciate the fact they put a sticker over the slots so no confusion can occur.
There are six sata 300 ports with optional Raid support. Additionally we have support for 14 USB 2.0 ports which handle port disable. There is also a single ATA 133 connector which is rotated 90 degrees. This particular board provides all six SATA 300 ports with full support for Intel Matrix Storage which offers Raid 0, 1, 5 and 10 (blue ports above left). There are also four white SATA 600 ports (SATA 6Gbps) and each pair of these is controlled by a different chip. This is where is gets a little confusing however as there are various options offered here.
SATA 3_1 and SATA 3_2 are controlled by the Marvell 88SE9128 chip which provides support for Raid 0 and Raid 1. The other two SATA 3_3 and SATA 3_4 are controlled by the Marvell 88SE9120 chip which doesn't offer Raid support. This obviously means if you are building a system with two SSD's combined for maximum performance (RAID 0) then you must use the SATA 3_1 and SATA 3_2 ports. On the rear panel there is also an eSATA port, however if you use this, you can't use the SATA 3_4 port. Thankfully all the sata ports have been placed where graphics cards will not block them when installed (take note Intel!).
An interesting option is the ability to install 775 coolers via a dual hole design on the PCB, which is a great idea for some people already with a high end cooler they don't want to bin. They also support a floppy drive which many manufacturers are dropping. The 12 USB 2.0 ports are split into 6 via the rear panel and six available via three motherboard headers.
Well this seems like a very good value for money product especially with sata 6 and usb 3.0 support. front panel idea is nice also.
Well I wasn’t expecting such a positive review, but after reading it all, it certainly appears to be delivering the goods.
Very well rounded mobo that, tons of connectivity and good overclocking options also.
That is an awesome board, totally stunned me how good it is. I might look at one of these in a month or so for my 750. my current motherboard sucks and I cant get the CPU past 3.5ghz!
Its really attractively designed too. no real design flaws I can see. such as sata ports being blocked by gfx etc.
ASRock are unfairly seen sometimes as a purely budget maker with no frills designs. This goes some way to change that with this audience I feel.
Well color me impressed with this.
That looks to be a board that has spent some time on the development table. shame it doesnt have a dedicated controller to keep bandwidth higher when sata, USB and PCI are used however. thiat might be an issue for some people.
I have never owned an ASROCK board, but im going to see what AMD products they support now with mobos. seem good prices.
SATA 6, USB 3, loads of ports, front mounted panel, good manual, plenty of cables. strong power delivery, SLI and Crossfire support. RAID, Anything it doesnt have?!
Very good review, I actually read another review of this via google, ill not say the site name, but it sucked. this gives a lot more info and some testing also which helps!
Very good review, I actually read another review of this via google, ill not say the site name, but it sucked. this gives a lot more info and some testing also which helps!
Bookmarked to read later in depth. very good support out of the box. Very good design.
Well the review is great. product looks brilliant, and I just bought a 655k to go with a good board. So where the hell can I buy the fucking thing ? 🙂
Can not see it for sale anywhere. what is the point? any ETA on release?
I like the bundle deal with it, seems they put almost everything in I could think of. ASRock availability is always poor however, really difficult to buy here.
Been looking at another review of this earlier this week, but they did no testing for some reason which seems pointless. its nice seeing some tests. seems to perform well with the 750 which will appeal to be a big audience. I know some people have struggled to hit 4ghz with a 750, even manually overclocking. What settings did the board set up Zardon for 4GHZ ?
Great testing and solid review product. Liked the bios page, good detail in there.
Christ the captcha interface does my head in. fourth time lucky to get a comment submitted here !
GOOD REVIEW, there thats all I wanted to say.!
Did you try it with any dual core 1156’s? good overclocking settings in there also?
Zardon I bought a 875K after your article last month – how far did you get with this board and it ? have you tried it yet?
Wicked board, nice to see some of the smaller players bringing out good overclocked products.
STill, dont think I would touch ASRock, always been a doubt for me as to reliability.
You get far too much hardware to test. annoys me 🙂
The heatsinks are really great design. weird there is no heatpipe though between them.
I am impressed with this product, it has a good mixture of features and performance.
I need to get a 750 and this board, I suck with overclocking and I love the idea of this doing all the work for you.
This isn’t the first board to offer overclocking pre sets, but they seem to work well,. never a bad thing.
Very good to see sata 6 and USB 3 support on such a fine level. makes this board well worth buying
Gets my vote, nice featureset and the sooner more MAKERS START USING USB 3 the sooner more devices will come out with support. annoys me how slow USB 3 is being adopted..
its such a shame this platform doesnt offer tri channel memory support. I know thats for 1366, but it would be a nice addition if it was possible.
the i5 platform is good, much better value than 1366 i7
this is great, thanks for the review.
Very good looking product from ASrock – seems to be a good 1156 board for the money, shame I dont have a 1156 cpu.
I would be curious to see AMD AM3 mobo review from ASrock’s portfolio. 890FX Extreme4 maybe 😛 Does anyone know does that mobo support using USB 3.0, SATA3 and PCI-e 16x / dual x8 at the same time? As this Intel based mobo doesn’t. I suppose that’s one kind of a bottleneck if one wants to futureproof his/hers computer…
What does it mean: “This motherboard however doesn’t use a PCI Express chip which means potentially there is a possibility of dropped performance when utilising PCI Express 16x slots, USB 3.0 and Sata 600 ports simultaneously.”?
I’m having a WD Black 640 Sata III 6GB/s and I need maximum performance!
P55 chipset has 16 physical lanes of PCI-E gen. 2.0. The lack of another PCI-E chip which generates logical lanes means tt when connecting your Sata3 drive, those 16 lanes will become 8lanes for video card + 8 lanes for your hdd. 8lanes * 500MB/s per lane is enough bandwith for using /w both USB3 & SATA3 simultaneously.