ASRock Z68M-ITX/HT LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Easy to install. Small compacted.

Great features for a board this size.

Cons: None really the CPU shield scrapped the side of my cpu but I have seen this with other 2nd gen i7 cpu's aswell.

Other Thoughts: I was worried that my i7 2600s would kill this board due to the heat output. But it has been doing just fine. I do plan on updating to a z77 asrock board.

Pros: Awesome board for a tiny gaming build. Runs an i5-2500k and 6870 flawlessly. It may not have the most advanced overclocking features but it's more than enough for what you'll cram into a miniITX build.

ASRock customer service.

Bonus remote control.

Cons: The remote I got with it was DOA but ASRock replaced it within a week. No egg removal for this.

Other Thoughts: Certain cases front USB ports are not wired correctly to take advantage of the remote control plugin on the board. Getting a simple, single port USB cable got it working for me and the SilverStone SG05-450. The remote even works through the front grill so it actually turned out for the better because I don't have any useless front USB ports.

Pros: The layout of the board is thought out. I can easily access all the ports and lay the wires out of the fans way. The Z68 chip gives me flexability to clock the CPU to be quiet running or raw power.

Cons: Unfortunely this board comes with more cons than I would like it to have for being a Z68 chip.
1. Asrock tech support is very lacking. Don't expect to hear a reply back on a issue within a week or a month for that matter.
2. This board will overclock, but it does not overclock stable. I'm running a i7 2600k, 3.4GHz it will do fine at. Anything higher, the voltages and clock speed will bounce. For a regular user, this will be fine and provide the short time speed boost. But I keep this CPU pegged at 100% workload.
3. The BIOS is really simple, but lacks fine tuning. The fan control will only allow a max temp of 65*C on the CPU &/or board. So if you work this board hard or have temperatures issues, it will become noisy. I've upgraded to aftermarket cooling to keep the temps below the 65*C threshold.

Other Thoughts: This board will best suited for lower power CPU's. Not that it can not handle a i7 95Watt, you just will not get the full benefit of it. This was the first and will probably be the last Asrock mobo that I buy.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear AsRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for that you having difficulty with mainboard. Since Z68M-ITX is designed for home theater, we're not recommended users to overclock CPU on Z68M-ITX. When overclocking, CPU frequency will be changed once temperature is high to protect the system. If you have any technical questions or warranty issues in the future please contact us at user@asrockamerica.com

Thank you

AsRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@asrockamerica.com

Pros: Update to last review.

Cons: -

Other Thoughts: Just so everyone knows since its so confusing when this board throttles. Yes it will throttle with I5 2500k @4.5ghz but only when prime95 or stress software is used. Im using Corsair H60 - Load ~60c and its at 4.5ghz +.9v under turbo with no throttling in games like bf3. So overclocking is possible, just you gotta check stability of your overclocks basically in games and such.

Pros: Really quick booting board compared to my crosshair V
Good Bios

Cons: CPU socket is to close to pcie slot.
After market heatsink fan didn't work, Good I bought a retail cpu and not OEM.
I love how you have multiplier settings but when you go up more then 2-3 points the cpu throttles under load... Sucks (-1 egg)

Other Thoughts: Boot times with 2 sdds in raid 0 is from button on push on case to firefox up in 29.3secs. Now thats pretty respectable.

Pros: Used this for my second Mini ITX build in an SG08 case. Works great. No issue whatsoever. I dont care about overclocking but did perform a mild one to 4.3. If you want to overclock, I dont think this one is for you.

Cons: Great little board. Since this is for gaming I dont care much but would have been nice if they included a wifi card. Also, the included remote is DOA. Read a few reviews and seems to be common.

Other Thoughts: Overall great product. Prior ITX build used an Asus board. Decided to go with Asrock based on good reviews. Real happy.

Pros: + Works nicely at stock clocks.
+ UFEI is laid out nicely

Cons: - Had to use the stock cooler since the PCI Express slot is so
close to the CPU.

Wish it would drop the PS2 and VGA port and add in Wireless.

Other Thoughts: So far so good. I didn't use the remote feature.

Pros: Stable, never crashed. Using this board until a DIFFERENT brand releases a Z77 board soon, the replacement for Z68.

Cons: Throttles!!! I have an i7-2600K and this board will throttle after some time with Prime95, verified by CPU-Z. My motherboard and CPU temperatures are very low thanks to heatsinks added to all mosfets and watercooling. I even replaced the northbridge cooler.

Other Thoughts: ASRock knows about this - I know people have been asking tech support for an answer. This problem exists for their older H67-based ITX boards, also. Forums have many people complaining about the throttling issue. Manufacturers can respond to Newegg reviews - look through these reviews and you will find ASRock is missing.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear AsRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for that you having throttle issue. Since Z68M-ITX is designed for home theater, we're not recommended users to overclock CPU on Z68M-ITX. When overclocking, CPU frequency will be changed once temperature is high to protect the system. If you have any technical questions or warranty issues in the future please contact us at user@asrockamerica.com

Thank you

AsRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@asrockamerica.com

Pros: Work great
easy to set-up
tiny size, full power ;-)

Cons: not for OC but good for my purpose (OC are very limited)
don't recognize the correct speed of memory, have to set-up manually in the bios at 1600 but everything else work great

Other Thoughts: work great with I3-2105 and Team Xtreem Dark Series 8GB Model TXD38192M1600HC9DC-D

Pros: Great board. Put it together in my SG07 case with:
i7 - 2600
16gb 1333 DDR3
HD 7950
1TB HD + 30GB SSD Cache

Cons: When I got the board it had some kind of residue on the back, I didnt know what this was but when the board when in and has been running for a few days now with no issues.

Also when setting up RAID or SSD Cache (which requires raid) Make sure you have a ps/2 keyboard lying around.
To get into the RAID configuration screen a usb keyboard wont send "Ctrl-I"

Other Thoughts: This board was perfect and accepted my 16 gbs of ram right out of the box along with my 7950.

This included software is somewhat useful. I dont really use any of it besides the drivers though. But can see where it might come in handy.

For those that care this board + 7950 + i7 2600 in a SG07 case

i7 Temp: 32Idle-60Max
7950 Temp: 60idle-77Max

Still trying to get the idle gpu temps down, but when it sits in that small case and doesn't max above 80 I don't worry too much.