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To test the ASrock P55 Extreme4 today we are going to utilise a Core i5 750 at default speeds, then compare this to the automated ‘50% overclock' bios setting which raises the CPU to 4ghz (from 2.66ghz). Remember, this board handles all the settings for you, so its a great value test for a potential customer who doesn't want the hassle of tweaking a bios for hours to reach solid overclocked speeds.
We consider a 50% overclock to be an extremely impressive ‘out of the box' setting. To achieve this however KitGuru recommend you use a good third party cooler rather than the reference Intel heatsink, so we have opted for the formidable, yet very affordable Thermaltake Frio, a recent award winner here.
The quad core Core i5 750 is only £160 inc vat now in the UK so it will be a perfect partner for the ASrock P55 Extreme4 which is due to retail for around the £125 price point.
Motherboard: ASRock P55 Extreme4 Motherboard (1.23 beta bios)
CPU: Intel Core i5 750 2.66ghz (default) // 4ghz (50% ASRock overclocked setting)
Memory: ADATA 4GB DDR3 2200mhz
PSU: Thermaltake XT775W
Chassis: Antec Dark Fleet DF 85
Graphics Card: HIS HD5870 iCooler V Turbo
Cooler: Thermaltake Frio
Thermal Paste: Noctua NT H1
Hard Drive: OCZ Agility 2 120GB SSD
Thermal Diodes
Digital Sound Level Noise Decibel Meter Style 2
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Keithley Integra 2700
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit
Catalyst 10.7
3DMark Vantage
PCMark Vantage
Super Pi
FRAPS Professional
SiSoftware Sandra 2010
Cinebench 11.5
KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark 1(4)
3D Studio Max 2011
Handbrake
Encoding
Colin McRae Dirt 2
Alien V Predator
Crysis Warhead
All our results are gathered from five individual runs to analyze and remove any possible result abnormalities.
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.