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Just before going to press we received a new version of the bios which meant we had to retest this section. It is just as well we did however as we found overclocking to be more stable.
The Bios is fully featured when it comes to overclocking with the base clock able to be adjusted from 100mhz to 300mhz in 1mhz increments. CPU voltage can be moved from 0.84375V to 1.6000 V in 0.00625V increments and CPU VTT Voltage can be moved from 0.815C to 1.595 V in 0.075V increments. Chipset voltage can also be adjusted from 1.065V to 1.490V in 0.01 increments.
The basic overview screen which details the processor and memory installed. The bios defaults to safe settings when memory is first installed. our memory for instance is massively underclocked, so a simple setting change to read from the profile would be needed.
Our DDR3 2200mhz modules were immediately detected and supported which was good to see, especially as another board we are testing didn't like them at all.
A full list of voltages are offered with the ability to quickly save and load offered via an intuitive area in the bios.
The ASRock method of upgrading is completely pain free. You copy the bios file onto a USB drive, attach it to the machine, boot up and enter the bios to flash directly. You can also press F6 when posting to go directly to this, bypassing the need to enter the bios at all. Very nice.
Hardware monitoring is supported and we noticed that this board was actually quite accurate when we compared against our diodes. There is between a 1-3c variance, which is class leading.
Boot settings options are pretty much like many other boards we have used before.
Using the XMP profile on our ADATA memory also proved painless and totally stable – registering 2200mhz without any problems.
For those of you who really can't be bothered learning a bios inside and out for overclocking, ASRock offer several ‘pre configured' options depending on the CPU installed. Our Core i5 750 registered 40% and 50% overclock settings. the 40% option posted without a problem and the system was running at just under 3.8ghz. The bios handles all the voltages and timings, although we didn't like the fact it adjusted memory to 1140mhz, a little bit of manual tweaking would be needed here.
We then tried the 50% overclock option which had the machine booting at 4ghz. This also had the upside of massively increasing the memory settings and we were pleased to report a totally stable system. For someone who doesn't want to overclock manually this is going to be a huge performance boost without any hassles at all.
We were able to manually increase the overclock to 4.2ghz but this required another 0.1 voltage to around 1.47volts (and obviously higher temperatures). All in all we were pleased with the bios automatic settings, although depending on your memory configuration you may need to manually tweak the settings to achieve optimum bandwidth.
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.