Hey guys, beware of this board. check all the negative posts on differnt forums.
been 3 weeks trying to rma this board. apparently from searching around this board dieing is a very common issue.
I’ve had this motherboard working for a total of two days and now it’s dead. It will not post. Just shows the A7 code on the LED readout. This no posting has been a problem since I bought this thing. It worked just long enough for me to load windows7, one day after it didn’t post on the original build, I took the thing apart and rebuilt it only changing the sata port where the hdd is plugged into then it posted and I loaded win7. Found all the drivers etc. everything was looking good. Then the next day I loaded my apps and then made an image / backup of the disk. This was all done over last weekend. Two days later I turn it on and it will not post. I’ve got an Antec truepower 650 i7 920, thermaltake v1, 6gb Corsair XMS ddr3 1600 nvidia gts 250 512mb. Sata and ide liteon DVDs. That’s it. nothing special. The monitors don’t even show to be receiving a signal from the video card. I swapped the GTS out for an ATI raedon and it made no difference. Tried the other pci-e slots also. As I stated above. This board was working for 2 days just fine. It’s now dead.
This board turned out to be quite a headache. If you get this and there's any indication that something may not be right, return it before your 30 days. You DO NOT want to have to deal with asrock support, unless you enjoy waiting for weeks for responses and not being able to contact them at all via phone.
First, there are some major ram compatibility issues which Asrock is not fixing that result in stability problems (firmware 1.4) which are causing problems for many people. there is no acknowledgement on their end that these problems even exist. in fact it's hard to get any response from them at all.
Second, if you think you might run linux and use any IDE drives at all, this board won't work. Asrock pulled shenanigans when they merged the ide and firewire controllers, which prevents the unix/linux kernel from even seeing let alone booting from ide devices. This will probably get fixed eventually in software, but who knows. there sure aren't going to be any linux drivers coming from asrock.
Third, there are problems with the network interface. you can do your own searching on this one, or check the newegg reviews to see people complaining about it.
IDIOT,there is only one such idiot snakeoil - and he worships useless daamit in any possible way.You not another,stop lying dirty green bastard :D Im visiting VR Zone every day for 5 years,and know your way to post "comments" you asshole :D Here is typical your "comments" you inbred
Soon more than half people in internet will know you,you green idiot gay,because of you idiocracy about how good daamit is - go in hospital you inbred,check your last half of brains,if you have some.
YOU ARE VERY WELL KNOWN IDIOT - and you just confirmed that.What can you expect from from loosers daamit fangays HAHAHAHAHA
Just get lost you inbred HAHAHA
let me guess, the poor grammar, etc.... you suffer down's syndrome isnt it?, well don't be ashamed of you. you can live a normal and productive life, with the right therapy and medication.
Jesus,SNAKEOIL,you even come here to post your trolling idiotic BS?Isnt enough VR-Zone alone,you start spreading your pathetic,n00bish,idiotic nonsence everywhere.Here is not VR-Zone,here you going to be f...ed up LOL
Lads - he is very well know idiot from VR-Zone forums,no point to talk to him,he doesnt have any sense of reality,living only for one reason - trolling against intel and nvidia for no reason at all,just because he is idiot - pure IDIOT.Not even tests can help him see real true.
Snakeoil - you are complete I D I O T rofl
an the fastest phenom II they make is still only about 70% as fast as a core i7 on the asrock board.
And aside from not having a name brand is there any reason to thing this asrock board is not an extremely solid mobo?
That $60 mobo doesn't hold a candle feature wise, and the $170 motherboard while comprable on features is the same on price and will be signfigantly slower than a core i7?
You didn't miss anything because mr sad is sad for his own failed fanning, not for you. Sad for himself, that more people aren't taking bad advice given by the sad crier.
I mean where do we get these people ?
You gave the person a fair chance pointing out the plain truth, and there was no rebuttal - not even an attempt.
What is sad, is we all wind up putting up with sad crybabying like that, then when someone like you kindly makes the neccessary points, the other person isn't man, woman, nor adult enough to take correction. They are so screwed up, they come back with a meaningless emotional claim that is a smart aleck lie.
Yeah, that's really, really sad, sick behavior.
I thank you both for the lesson, I now know without a doubt to absolutely avoid the amd board recommendations. That is not sad, I am thankful and happy.
So, just maybe, the skumbagisms that arise so often, are worthwhile.
cpu difference between core i7 and phenom ii: 70 dollars
motherboard difference: 100 dollars
memory difference: 100 dollars
also core i7 is ultra overheating so you add 70 dollars more for a good coolermaster v8 cooler
and you need a case with extragood airflow lets say another 200 dollars.
is that enough for you?
pathetic.
Very informative mini-review and apparently, an excellent job by Asrock! As said in the review "we're focusing on everyday, stable overclocks and not maximum benchmarking"; that's where I'm at too AFA overclocks go. The price of X58 motherboards has kept me away from upgrading; this motherboard is considerably cheaper, feature rich (enough for me, anyway) and may just be the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Thanks for bringing this gem to public light.
Couldn't boards be made cheaper if they came with only one 16x PCIE slot? I'm building a computer which will run a medium sized database. To say that graphics isn't my top priority would be an understatement.
I would however love to see a cheap board with 8 memory dimms! (I don't care for triple-channel, I'd rather have more memory installed)
1 16x slot wouldn't save you any money because the x58 already has the PCIe lanes for 2 16x slots.
You can't have 8 dimm slots because the CPU only supports 2 dimm slots per channel. If you really need more than 24GB of memory then you should be looking at FB dimms anyway.
I thought I would never see a hardware review site review a processor the way I actually use it. Overclocking to ridiculous speeds is fun for sure, but it is also seems pretty useless to me, at least for the things I use my computer for.
I took advantage of the overclocking headroom of my 720BE to lower the voltage and the temps to stop my computer from being a loud space heater during the summer. I can't imagine running it at 1.4/5v just to get a few hundred extra mhz out of it, except maybe in the winter, and even then only if your heater is inefficiently running on electricity instead of natural gas.
Gary Key, if this were not a tech site then such aesthetics would not really matter, but seeing as this IS a tech site and one might ponder credibility, please use the appropriate codecs!
How about adding a 24 100% load stability test for all motherboard reviews. It would really be useful to get a feel for the motherboard's quality and VRM robustness.
Use the highest clocked supported proc and see if anything crashes.
We loop various applications (multitask) to keep CPU utilization above 95% on all cores at our overclock settings for approximately 100 hours of actual testing and 200 hours at stock settings. We do this to ensure the entire platform is being stressed and not just one particular area such as the CPU (memory to some degree) with various programs like LinX (Linpack front end), OCCT, and others that concentrate on the CPU.
While these programs will also stress the VRM to some degree, in some instances,LinX to be exact,tend to overstress it based on the original Linpack requirements. That is fine for short burst testing but for long term testing it does not represent anything close to the actual VRM loads your system will experience.
That said, we do run all of the various CPU buster programs, but they are just that, CPU centric. We can pass certain hour points that people tend to think is stable with these programs and then watch our first multitask test tank in a few minutes. I tend to stress everything on the platform with actual apps (single/multitask) and call it a day if everything I run does not crash over a 100 hour period.
In the full review I will list out our testing methodology in more detail. Also note, every board, memory, and CPU combination is different. We tend to spend the first day or two with a board dialing all the various components in so the CPU is in the "Zone" when overclocking.
I've known about Asrock for awhile and I see these great boards from them, but they're so hard to recommend because they don't really have much of warranty to speak of. I just put an Asrock 760g in my brother's new computer and the system runs great, cool, and has a wealth of BIOS options.
I'd like to get one for myself in the future but the 1-year-return-to-the-retailer-warranty just prevents me from spending anymore than around $80 on one of their boards, let alone $170.
Perceptions of value are relative and everyone has their own standards. But right before reading this comment I was thinking: how can a company produce a piece of technology like this and sell it retail for $170? The design effort, manufacturing equipment, parts cost, build, testing, packaging, documentation, shipping AND the warranty - not to mention dealer profit - make this seem incredible. And that's taking for granted the supporting tech / price achievements of the component suppliers.
Look at what you're getting - the heart of a strong PC that can outperform any computer in the world of 15 years ago, and do it 24/7 for the next 15 years if you ask it to. In contrast, $80 is two tanks of gas.
Really - successfully mass-producing something like this IS rocket science. We tend to lose sight of that fact and fail to appreciate what this industry is doing for us. We need to stop and smell the surface-mount devices once in a while.
If a motherboard is reliable and has the features I want, I'm not going to worry about these differences in price. The true value of the finished PC, to me at least, is many thousands of dollars. Saving $100 or $200 on the motherboard is not important in comparison, and I wouldn't want to have done so. And that's my recommendation for anyone else who would be reading this column.
I agree with what you say almost to the letter, but I'm just a more cynical buyer I suppose. My philosophy is that any company that can create a good product can also have a terrible one come off the production line and I just like the companies that I buy from to be accountable and aware of that.
If Asrock offered a 3 year warranty there'd be no contest for me. Hell, even if they offered 2 years I'd be happy. You say that we tend to lose sight of the importance of these devices and you're absolute right, most do. I'm just really jaded and skeptical of a products quality no matter where it comes from. I also suspect that the both of us might be different in our financial situations as well. I'm a student that doesn't make much money so if I were to buy an $170 board and it blows after 1 year I'm computer-less.
Hey is there going to be a guide to help us noobs out here OC our i7 920 Rev D0? There are a zillion settings, and it is to much money to monkey around with without any real guidance.
I discussed it with Raja this morning and due to the interest in a "How To" article, we will team up and do one together later this month after I get this floating pile of motherboards reviewed. ;)
200 for CPU is not that high, considering Q6600 used to go higher than that, and that wasn't a high-end CPU either. I can understand the too much money involved if it was a CPU that's 500+ USD..
I've had this board for 3 years running core i7930 and a radeon 5850. Haven't had any problems yet, stability is constant and performance is fine. I will agree with some of the posts in the fact that asrock support suks.
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44 Comments
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tommydokc - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
Hey guys, beware of this board. check all the negative posts on differnt forums.been 3 weeks trying to rma this board. apparently from searching around this board dieing is a very common issue.
I’ve had this motherboard working for a total of two days and now it’s dead. It will not post. Just shows the A7 code on the LED readout. This no posting has been a problem since I bought this thing. It worked just long enough for me to load windows7, one day after it didn’t post on the original build, I took the thing apart and rebuilt it only changing the sata port where the hdd is plugged into then it posted and I loaded win7. Found all the drivers etc. everything was looking good. Then the next day I loaded my apps and then made an image / backup of the disk. This was all done over last weekend. Two days later I turn it on and it will not post. I’ve got an Antec truepower 650 i7 920, thermaltake v1, 6gb Corsair XMS ddr3 1600 nvidia gts 250 512mb. Sata and ide liteon DVDs. That’s it. nothing special. The monitors don’t even show to be receiving a signal from the video card. I swapped the GTS out for an ATI raedon and it made no difference. Tried the other pci-e slots also. As I stated above. This board was working for 2 days just fine. It’s now dead.
yummypaint - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
This board turned out to be quite a headache. If you get this and there's any indication that something may not be right, return it before your 30 days. You DO NOT want to have to deal with asrock support, unless you enjoy waiting for weeks for responses and not being able to contact them at all via phone.First, there are some major ram compatibility issues which Asrock is not fixing that result in stability problems (firmware 1.4) which are causing problems for many people. there is no acknowledgement on their end that these problems even exist. in fact it's hard to get any response from them at all.
Second, if you think you might run linux and use any IDE drives at all, this board won't work. Asrock pulled shenanigans when they merged the ide and firewire controllers, which prevents the unix/linux kernel from even seeing let alone booting from ide devices. This will probably get fixed eventually in software, but who knows. there sure aren't going to be any linux drivers coming from asrock.
Third, there are problems with the network interface. you can do your own searching on this one, or check the newegg reviews to see people complaining about it.
InterClaw - Thursday, August 6, 2009 - link
Does the CPU fan header support temperature control?mi1stormilst - Wednesday, July 8, 2009 - link
Now if I could actually find one on sale for $169.00 or at all? :-)cube26 - Wednesday, July 8, 2009 - link
IDIOT,there is only one such idiot snakeoil - and he worships useless daamit in any possible way.You not another,stop lying dirty green bastard :D Im visiting VR Zone every day for 5 years,and know your way to post "comments" you asshole :D Here is typical your "comments" you inbredSoon more than half people in internet will know you,you green idiot gay,because of you idiocracy about how good daamit is - go in hospital you inbred,check your last half of brains,if you have some.
YOU ARE VERY WELL KNOWN IDIOT - and you just confirmed that.What can you expect from from loosers daamit fangays HAHAHAHAHA
Just get lost you inbred HAHAHA
snakeoil - Wednesday, July 8, 2009 - link
let me guess, the poor grammar, etc.... you suffer down's syndrome isnt it?, well don't be ashamed of you. you can live a normal and productive life, with the right therapy and medication.cube26 - Wednesday, July 8, 2009 - link
Jesus,SNAKEOIL,you even come here to post your trolling idiotic BS?Isnt enough VR-Zone alone,you start spreading your pathetic,n00bish,idiotic nonsence everywhere.Here is not VR-Zone,here you going to be f...ed up LOLLads - he is very well know idiot from VR-Zone forums,no point to talk to him,he doesnt have any sense of reality,living only for one reason - trolling against intel and nvidia for no reason at all,just because he is idiot - pure IDIOT.Not even tests can help him see real true.
Snakeoil - you are complete I D I O T rofl
snakeoil - Wednesday, July 8, 2009 - link
i'm another snakeoil, moron.snakeoil - Friday, July 3, 2009 - link
well for 170 dollars you get the crappiest of all core 17 motherboards which is asrock. that's sadinstead if you use phenom II you can get asus motherbords since 60 dollars
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
and if you pay 170 you get a fine motherboad asus deluxe
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
is so sad.
sotti - Saturday, July 4, 2009 - link
an the fastest phenom II they make is still only about 70% as fast as a core i7 on the asrock board.And aside from not having a name brand is there any reason to thing this asrock board is not an extremely solid mobo?
That $60 mobo doesn't hold a candle feature wise, and the $170 motherboard while comprable on features is the same on price and will be signfigantly slower than a core i7?
Amy I missing something or are you just a troll?
SiliconDoc - Sunday, July 5, 2009 - link
You didn't miss anything because mr sad is sad for his own failed fanning, not for you. Sad for himself, that more people aren't taking bad advice given by the sad crier.I mean where do we get these people ?
You gave the person a fair chance pointing out the plain truth, and there was no rebuttal - not even an attempt.
What is sad, is we all wind up putting up with sad crybabying like that, then when someone like you kindly makes the neccessary points, the other person isn't man, woman, nor adult enough to take correction. They are so screwed up, they come back with a meaningless emotional claim that is a smart aleck lie.
Yeah, that's really, really sad, sick behavior.
I thank you both for the lesson, I now know without a doubt to absolutely avoid the amd board recommendations. That is not sad, I am thankful and happy.
So, just maybe, the skumbagisms that arise so often, are worthwhile.
cube26 - Wednesday, July 8, 2009 - link
+10000 to SiliconDoccube26 - Wednesday, July 8, 2009 - link
+100000snakeoil - Sunday, July 5, 2009 - link
wow, you are charged 1000 dollars for a cpu and you seem to enjoy it , well that its not sad, its pathetic.SiliconDoc - Monday, July 6, 2009 - link
Lying is pathetic, isn't it ?core i7 920 2.66 = $280
top phenom deneb 3.2 = $250
---
the core i7 wins - the lowest end one - roflmao
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclock-phen...">http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclock-phen...
---
Now that's SAD FOR YOU, and you are now seen as pathetic.
---
better luck next time - try not lying, ok ?
snakeoil - Monday, July 6, 2009 - link
cpu difference between core i7 and phenom ii: 70 dollarsmotherboard difference: 100 dollars
memory difference: 100 dollars
also core i7 is ultra overheating so you add 70 dollars more for a good coolermaster v8 cooler
and you need a case with extragood airflow lets say another 200 dollars.
is that enough for you?
pathetic.
snakeoil - Saturday, July 4, 2009 - link
im not a troll i'm just sad for youSiliconDoc - Monday, July 6, 2009 - link
I've moved your lie to the last page. Reverse bump.SiliconDoc - Sunday, July 5, 2009 - link
Thank you for proving to me the amd boards are crap in comparison, you've done a fine and thorough job of it. Be proud of yourself.A5 - Friday, July 3, 2009 - link
There's no reason to cross-shop Phenom II and i7.MichaelD - Friday, July 3, 2009 - link
Very informative mini-review and apparently, an excellent job by Asrock! As said in the review "we're focusing on everyday, stable overclocks and not maximum benchmarking"; that's where I'm at too AFA overclocks go. The price of X58 motherboards has kept me away from upgrading; this motherboard is considerably cheaper, feature rich (enough for me, anyway) and may just be the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Thanks for bringing this gem to public light.ytoledano1 - Friday, July 3, 2009 - link
Couldn't boards be made cheaper if they came with only one 16x PCIE slot? I'm building a computer which will run a medium sized database. To say that graphics isn't my top priority would be an understatement.I would however love to see a cheap board with 8 memory dimms! (I don't care for triple-channel, I'd rather have more memory installed)
sotti - Saturday, July 4, 2009 - link
1 16x slot wouldn't save you any money because the x58 already has the PCIe lanes for 2 16x slots.You can't have 8 dimm slots because the CPU only supports 2 dimm slots per channel. If you really need more than 24GB of memory then you should be looking at FB dimms anyway.
sotti - Friday, July 3, 2009 - link
I'm shopping X58's right now (the P55 doesn't seem to be close enought to justify putting it off).I'm on a tight budget, but also want to get the right components to hit my goal (4ghz).
This board seems to be it.
Would there be any reason to spend a little more to get a gigabyte UD3R, Asus P6T SE or Foxconn Flamming Blade?
drizek - Thursday, July 2, 2009 - link
I thought I would never see a hardware review site review a processor the way I actually use it. Overclocking to ridiculous speeds is fun for sure, but it is also seems pretty useless to me, at least for the things I use my computer for.I took advantage of the overclocking headroom of my 720BE to lower the voltage and the temps to stop my computer from being a loud space heater during the summer. I can't imagine running it at 1.4/5v just to get a few hundred extra mhz out of it, except maybe in the winter, and even then only if your heater is inefficiently running on electricity instead of natural gas.
tviceman - Thursday, July 2, 2009 - link
What's the deal with the lower frame rates with Far Cry 2 @ 4.2 ghz vs. 3.3ghz? That does not make any sense.jordanclock - Thursday, July 2, 2009 - link
It makes plenty of sense. It's called a margin of error.tviceman - Saturday, July 4, 2009 - link
Margins of error do not account for 20% variance in frame rates, but thanks!I ask again, why does 3.3 ghz post significantly higher maximum frame rates than 4.2 ghz?
HollyDOL - Thursday, July 2, 2009 - link
Folks, sorry to be nosy but given pics I can see only three PCI-E slots on the board contrary to first paragraph last sentence...Or I am already blind which can be the case as well ;-)
HollyDOL - Thursday, July 2, 2009 - link
Taking back, I am blind... it was mentioning the other board...SunSamurai - Thursday, July 2, 2009 - link
Gary Key, if this were not a tech site then such aesthetics would not really matter, but seeing as this IS a tech site and one might ponder credibility, please use the appropriate codecs!Thank you and another great article.
Ryun - Friday, July 3, 2009 - link
Why is .jpg bad? I'm legitimately curious.UNHchabo - Thursday, July 2, 2009 - link
For tables, .png files would likely be smaller, too.DeepThought86 - Thursday, July 2, 2009 - link
How about adding a 24 100% load stability test for all motherboard reviews. It would really be useful to get a feel for the motherboard's quality and VRM robustness.Use the highest clocked supported proc and see if anything crashes.
Gary Key - Friday, July 3, 2009 - link
We loop various applications (multitask) to keep CPU utilization above 95% on all cores at our overclock settings for approximately 100 hours of actual testing and 200 hours at stock settings. We do this to ensure the entire platform is being stressed and not just one particular area such as the CPU (memory to some degree) with various programs like LinX (Linpack front end), OCCT, and others that concentrate on the CPU.While these programs will also stress the VRM to some degree, in some instances,LinX to be exact,tend to overstress it based on the original Linpack requirements. That is fine for short burst testing but for long term testing it does not represent anything close to the actual VRM loads your system will experience.
That said, we do run all of the various CPU buster programs, but they are just that, CPU centric. We can pass certain hour points that people tend to think is stable with these programs and then watch our first multitask test tank in a few minutes. I tend to stress everything on the platform with actual apps (single/multitask) and call it a day if everything I run does not crash over a 100 hour period.
In the full review I will list out our testing methodology in more detail. Also note, every board, memory, and CPU combination is different. We tend to spend the first day or two with a board dialing all the various components in so the CPU is in the "Zone" when overclocking.
Ryun - Thursday, July 2, 2009 - link
I've known about Asrock for awhile and I see these great boards from them, but they're so hard to recommend because they don't really have much of warranty to speak of. I just put an Asrock 760g in my brother's new computer and the system runs great, cool, and has a wealth of BIOS options.I'd like to get one for myself in the future but the 1-year-return-to-the-retailer-warranty just prevents me from spending anymore than around $80 on one of their boards, let alone $170.
Arbie - Thursday, July 2, 2009 - link
Perceptions of value are relative and everyone has their own standards. But right before reading this comment I was thinking: how can a company produce a piece of technology like this and sell it retail for $170? The design effort, manufacturing equipment, parts cost, build, testing, packaging, documentation, shipping AND the warranty - not to mention dealer profit - make this seem incredible. And that's taking for granted the supporting tech / price achievements of the component suppliers.
Look at what you're getting - the heart of a strong PC that can outperform any computer in the world of 15 years ago, and do it 24/7 for the next 15 years if you ask it to. In contrast, $80 is two tanks of gas.
Really - successfully mass-producing something like this IS rocket science. We tend to lose sight of that fact and fail to appreciate what this industry is doing for us. We need to stop and smell the surface-mount devices once in a while.
If a motherboard is reliable and has the features I want, I'm not going to worry about these differences in price. The true value of the finished PC, to me at least, is many thousands of dollars. Saving $100 or $200 on the motherboard is not important in comparison, and I wouldn't want to have done so. And that's my recommendation for anyone else who would be reading this column.
Arbie
Ryun - Thursday, July 2, 2009 - link
I agree with what you say almost to the letter, but I'm just a more cynical buyer I suppose. My philosophy is that any company that can create a good product can also have a terrible one come off the production line and I just like the companies that I buy from to be accountable and aware of that.If Asrock offered a 3 year warranty there'd be no contest for me. Hell, even if they offered 2 years I'd be happy. You say that we tend to lose sight of the importance of these devices and you're absolute right, most do. I'm just really jaded and skeptical of a products quality no matter where it comes from. I also suspect that the both of us might be different in our financial situations as well. I'm a student that doesn't make much money so if I were to buy an $170 board and it blows after 1 year I'm computer-less.
ap90033 - Thursday, July 2, 2009 - link
Hey is there going to be a guide to help us noobs out here OC our i7 920 Rev D0? There are a zillion settings, and it is to much money to monkey around with without any real guidance.Gary Key - Friday, July 3, 2009 - link
I discussed it with Raja this morning and due to the interest in a "How To" article, we will team up and do one together later this month after I get this floating pile of motherboards reviewed. ;)chrnochime - Thursday, July 2, 2009 - link
200 for CPU is not that high, considering Q6600 used to go higher than that, and that wasn't a high-end CPU either. I can understand the too much money involved if it was a CPU that's 500+ USD..zebrax2 - Friday, July 3, 2009 - link
the Q6600 doesn't have a multiplier of 21 isn't it?ap90033 - Thursday, July 2, 2009 - link
Oh and it would be great if it were universal, as I have an EVGA X58 board...gerry410 - Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - link
I've had this board for 3 years running core i7930 and a radeon 5850. Haven't had any problems yet, stability is constant and performance is fine.I will agree with some of the posts in the fact that asrock support suks.