X-bit labs

Started by: nx | Date 05/02/08

Comments: 14 | Last Comment:  05/05/08

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1. Ok, let's see what we've got here: we have "only" 10 USB ports (I'm anxious to see a user needing 11, though), we also have to sacrifice one SATA port for the eSATA functionality. But how many HDDs would I have if I were to buy this board? Six? I doubt.

And the most bad thing of all - we have a primitive-looking NB cooling solution! I was very surprised to see this listed as a drawback, especially on a site like xbitlabs, which has always tended to value functionality instead of good looks... Let me remind you of the MSI "roller coaster" solution, it looked marvelous, but was pure crap - didn't cool as well as it looked and was a pain in the a** to deal with...

For a board at this price point (about 85€ currently), with such an abundance of interfaces, I would hardly complain about anything... Simply keep in mind the target group this board was meant for - if you have 250€+ to spent, go for an Asus ueber-mainboard an kill your QX9650 gracefully. It is a bothering trend these days - everybody is expecting ALL products on the market to behave equally, always comparing the modest one to the top dogs. It's like buying a family van and complaining about the lack of Ferrari dynamics...

I found it very funny to even touch the DDR3 support, when the price of any such kit will be easily twice that of the mainboard.. This is no enthusiast mainboard, it was neither meant to run FSB frequencies of 500Mhz+, nor DDR3@1600Mhz...

So what would be most suitable in this case was just to show as some numbers from the board running at stock, which will surely be the case with the majority of its users.

As a bottom line, the review was far too critical in my opinion, not accounting for the potential users of the board... For me, it is a clear winner for an inexpensive system running at stock speeds.

2. Xbit Labs guys, you have some mistakes in the article. First, the second picture on page 1 opens maybe 2/3 of what it should be. Second, on page 7 the listed testbed lacks a CPU. Well, that may not be a mistake since you mention the CPUs you have used later on...so you decide on that. And I also noticed some typing mistakes.

Overall - a nice article though a bit critical at times. IMO as an Asrock board owner - they make nice, stable, feature rich boards targeted at the low end of the market, so given the price, quality and functionality I am willing to overlook some drawbacks.

3. surely page 3 paragraph 4, and we do not appreciate it, should be and we do appreciate it.

Asrock takes enough knocks without a typo causing one.

4. Doors4ever When you overclocked the conroe did you set the first fsb jumper into the 1-2 configuration?, you can force the 1:1 ddr-fsb divider with that for overclocking, on asrock faqs site http://www.asrock.com/mb/faq.asp?Model=4Core1600P35-WiFi%2b&s= .. my overclocks are mostly cpu thermal limited and can hit a lot more than yours, please try doing some bench with that jumper on. Last thing, nx, the usb ports are unofficialy 11, the wifi module use usb, check the pinout on the wifi module docs on asrock..i think this review was a tad too much psycho are they going to change into yahtzee mode for reviews now?

5. i looked more at the review and those are the very big flaws

primitive cooling, the board falls into the lower mainstream area where the chipset cooling is nonexistant not a giant rollercoaster of pipes

the rear chip pins, easily solved with a thin layer of heavy duty rubber,

the jumper issue, as those jumper are not something you change everyday since this is not an overclocker board but a inexpensive pc one

the esata nonwired one is a plus since i can unplug the port definetily so the user can't enable it via bios when i look away or fry the port and the controller while using some rubbish chinese disk casing

the spdif connector is here, (hdmi audio) just go find a >1$ bracket

the usb ports are 11(10+1 used by wifi module)

the overclocking tool can change the target when you get thermal issues so you won't fry the cpu is you could in manual mode so there are differences(for the average grandma that will use the pc and not your average liquid nitrogen type)

the fsb-ddr 1:1 ratio jumper as every 1600 core overclocking guide states, here is the jumpers to use: http://www.asrock.com/mb/faq.asp?Model=4Core1600P35-WiFi%2b&s= your overclocks are way too low (about 111%) i can hit about 133% (265mhz) with system stable (then it shuts down due to heat after the end of the bench) on a E2180 (fsb 800 :rolleyes:) so no magical issues as you stated...

pricing, the next dual memory type board i can find in the same price range is the basic asus 5kc and it costs 10% more without the wifi module and ich9r, the esata requires me to use the rubbish jmicron jmb363, the +12v epx has only four pins, the audio is a alc883..so your note about finding a better board at the same price point does not stands..

Your review makes the board looks like a cheap rubbish board while clearly it isn't, you didn't look at major points here and there thinking that every single board must be a super hyper asus maximus emperor whatever with giant glitter disco balls as coolers and a marketing list of useless features the size of jupiter...

typo on the io tool

the overclocking tool can change the target when you get thermal issues so you won't fry the cpu as you could in manual mode so there are differences(for the average grandma that will use the pc and not your average liquid nitrogen type)

6. I for one approve of the criticism. It's not like anyone wrote that it was a bad board, it's just that the manufacturer said "this board can do everything", and the reviewer looked to see how true they were and found that some things worked better than others (and also took time to praise the board about the things he liked about it), endeding everything with a pretty fear conclusion which, in short, said that the board offered a bunch of features at an appealing price, but those who want to build a cheap system and OC it for some extra performance should look elsewhere. (For example, Gigabyte P35 DS3L offers pretty much everything this board does minus WiFi and does great at overclocking while being even cheaper.)

So, keep up the good work, Xbitlabs people. :)

Sorry about the spelling (fear - fair, endedin - ending etc), perhaps we could have an edit option for us who don't check our posts. :">

Hi Ivan. Don't you work for xbitlabs?

LOL! I wish, I'm just a poor college student. :'(

7. Concerning usb boot option you stated "It is really strange that no one has yet implemented something like that."My year-old crummy Acer laptop has this feature,as well as options to boot from practically any device under the sun in the bios[other than that there are no options to change anything but date,time,etc.].

8. I don't think xbit realizes the Asrock is/was (and I still think pretty much is, despite what others may say) a subsidiary of ASUS. That's why the Bios behavior is similar. On a side note, I love the dependability of my Asrock 775i65G motherboard. Very stable, and enough features for me to find it more of value than its competitors. For some reason, Xbit continually has an ax to grind with Asrock for some unknown reason.

I see my last sentence is redundant and grammatically awkward. That's what I get for starting starting that sentence, getting distracted, and a half hour later writing the last half of it, without remembering/realizing I've already used the "for some reason" earlier in the sentence!

The Asrock indeed has some resemblence to Asus.
Take a look at the heatsink and the font type they use. It's
exactly the same.

As for the article...
Excellent job as always. :)

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