Pros: Cheap, have the basic for building a PC on a budget.

Cons: Bought 5 of these for building budget PC for customers who were looking for something affordable. Now, the quote "you get what you paid for" comes into mind. Yes, it is affordable, but comes with it is the quality of it. Two of the motherboard broke down within a week of use, and was sent back for a credit refund to purchase other boards from another vendor. Now I have two more that have just died right after 1 year of using it. I guess they engineer these to break down right just after the warranty period. If I were to know that this type of model motherboard was only to have 1 year of warranty on it compare to other vendors who honor 3 years of warranty for their items. I would of never bought these junks.

Other Thoughts: In conclusion. Go for other Vendors such as MSI, GIGABYTE, or even ASUS. At least they carry a 3 year warranty on their motherboards so you can have more confidence in case the motherboard goes bad.

Pros: -ASROCK , talking about the quality, it is just under the other brand starting with an A.

-Very fast, fastest boot time i ever seen.
Chipsets z77 - z87- H81 - h97 were all performing better than expected
(didn't tested the Z97 yet)

-Best motherboards H81 for the cost.

-Asrock tuning utility.

-Looks nice. UEFI BIOS very easy to understand and FLASH update online directly from BIOS. No need to go on the website to download the BIOS and copy to USB. It's all automatic with ASROCK.

Cons: -NO Q-FAN control. Cannot custom Voltage on 3 pin connectors.
Using a Y connector with 4pin PWM on the main CPU 4pins connector would not work
(second fan isn't following the CPU).

-One of the DIMM slot stopped working after 3 weeks (on the H81HDS) ( no probleme with the H81DGSr2.0),
i decided to keep the motherboard cuz i didn't need to use 2x8GB, only 1x8GB was enough for my gaming.

-Motherboard would sometimes not start and keep rebooting it self to show a black screen for a minute then restart loop, then, for no reason, started to work again after many hours trying to reach the BIOS.

-12 days after the DIMM stopped working the motherboard would not post anymore.
And i also noticed that it killed the RAM that was installed.
Both RAM stick are burned and i must RMA everything. I had to build another computer for the client.

RMA shipping cost to high, i will just trow it away in garbage.
I decided to save time and money and got the Asrock DGS R2.0 instead.
The client didn't complain yet and didn't notice any differences between the two mobos.

Other Thoughts: -Some BIOS version didn't let me use the XMP and TURBO boost. After updating to the latest version i had to roll back to the version just before.

This is my second H81 HDS, the first one is still working very well as the other DGS r2.0 even better.

Asrock is a very good brand and i will continue buying from them, we just have to keep in mind that it is cheaper for a reason.

thank u sry my bad english.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Emilie,

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Please trouble shoot the mainboard whether the issue is resolved.
• Unplug the ATX power, clear the CMOS.
• Reseat the CPU and heatsink fan.
• Test with single memory module, switching another memory module if problem persist.
• Test with onboard video.
• Connect the monitor.

If you have any technical support inquiry, please contact us at http://www.ASRock.com/Support/tsd.asp
We will assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock Support
Tech Support Email: http://www.ASRock.com/Support/tsd.asp

Pros: None. DOA.

Cons: Installed board, tested against two different working sets of memory, and two separate power supplies. Board would start, run for about 5-8 seconds then reset. Over and over again. Throughout the troubleshooting one of the resets actually bricked my old SSD (an OCZ Vertex 3). It's out of warranty so I can't RMA it. Looks like I ran into the old SanForce bug with it.

Other Thoughts: Not the first time I've heard of ASRock shipping DOA boards. It's extremely rare, in general, for a motherboard though.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Please check if 4 pins ATX CPU power has plugged to mainboard.
Check if mainboard’s BIOS version that support using CPU model at link below (if not please contact us).

How to identify BIOS version link: http://www.asrock.com/support/index.asp?cat=FindBIOS

CPU and BIOS version link: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H81M-HDS/?cat=CPU

If you have any technical support inquiry, please contact us at http://www.ASRock.com/Support/tsd.asp. We will assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock Support
Tech Support Email: http://www.ASRock.com/Support/tsd.asp

Pros: Worked for about 2 hours. New complete build, installed Windows, played WoW for about an hour.

Cons: Completely shut down after an hour, unable to reboot. Read previous responses from Asrock here, what a joke. Disconnect power supply, reseat everything...blah blah, are you kidding me?

Other Thoughts: Do not buy

Pros: Couldn't tell you any off the top of my head.

Cons: The item came in DOA, so i can not tell you any pros because it never worked. This was my first build and the motherboard came in broken. Not happy at all.

Other Thoughts: Do not recommend this brand to anybody. Get an Asus or Gigabyte, I have learned my lesson.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Please trouble shoot the mainboard whether the issue is resolved.

• Unplug the ATX power, remove all components from mainboard.
• Remove the mainboard from chassis, place it on mainboard’s box.
• Clear the CMOS.
• Reseat the CPU and heatsink fan.
• Test with single memory module.
• Test with onboard video.
• Connect the monitor.
• Plug the 24 + 4 pins ATX power.
• Connect the chassis power switch to mainboard, and try again.

If you have any technical support inquiry, please contact us at http://www.ASRock.com/Support/tsd.asp
We will assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock Support
Tech Support Email: http://www.ASRock.com/Support/tsd.asp

Pros: Reasonable cost
Plenty of USB ports
HDMI/DVI/VGA
Serial port availability
Works with Ubuntu

Cons: Potential issue with USB3 onboard connector
Unable to tweak power settings in UEFI

Other Thoughts: I had previously bought a Gigabyte B85 board that had too many USB issues running on Ubuntu. I returned it for this board which seems to be working well so far. I did run into 2 issues:
1. The onboard USB3.0 connector is not working (I've ordered another cable to rule out any issues with the cable). The OS does not report anything getting plugged in or out.
2. I'm using the latest gen i3 processor and was hoping to limit power consumption to about 45W to reduce heat since I'd like to use this board in a case with limited ventilation. There is an option on the UEFI for setting power limits in Watts but it is clearly not working. I checked power consumption using Kill-a-watt with widely varying settings for the Power limit but it did not make any difference. The moment I stressed the CPU, power utilization would shoot to 68W.
My 2 star rating is purely for this documented UEFI capability not working. It would have been better if they don't claim to support it at all.
Anyway, if any of my Cons don't apply to your needs then go ahead and purchase this board.

Pros: Stable and reliable motherboard (have come to find that ASRock pulls this off very well lately). Great price. Nice assortment of features. Great build quality. Nice layout of fan, USB, audio headers.

Cons: For budget to mid-range builds, I honestly cannot name any cons. Sure there's things I'd like the motherboard to have, but it'd be the same as me buying a base model Chevrolet Impala and complaining that it doesn't have Cadillac CTS-V options.

Other Thoughts: For your budget to mid-range builds, there is not a better motherboard in my opinion. Sure they may be a cheaper option with an Intel 8-series chipset, but I feel ASRock is a solid make that is a great value. So far I have built three systems off of this motherboard and people love them. This is my go-to board for cheap, quick, and reliable Haswell systems.

Pros: Fantastic case. Easy to build in. Love being able to drop the mobo in from the top. Very quiet. Using it in the living room as an entertainment PC. Built on an Asrock H-81M mobo, Core I-3 Hazlett 35W proc, 8Gb of Crucial "Sport" RAM, Crucial SATA3 (6G) 120Gb SSD. Running Win7 Home Premium SP1. Boots in about 20 seconds! Used mostly for catching up on missed shows online. Our "monitor" is a 60" Sharp flatscreen running through an HDMI bus.

Cons: None so far.

Pros: Easy to work with, had no problems plugging things in and the BIOS is simple.

Cons: Must have had a bad board, because I had a lot of trouble with it early on and just recently, about 2 months after building and light use, it finally stopped working. Contacted their customer support and got an email back saying that I would be contacted about RMA'ing my board, but have yet to hear back, even after emailing back again.

Other Thoughts: Good for the price, must have gotten a bad board unfortunately.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Please contact us at 909-590-8308 or http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We will assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp

Pros: for the price, performer budget mobo! always check supported dual channel memory kit c/ haswell cpu. g3220 and g3258 use ddr3 1333 while g3440 uses 1333/1600. although g3258 is newer for the lower price g3220 is better deal coz the spec differ are not really substantial for g3258. same instruction set & extensions, l2/l3 cache tho g3258 runs at 3.2 whereas g3220 at 3.0 if u overclock then that will not matter. computation wise I ran benchmarks n almost the same. intel hd graphics r the same n would change if u put in a video card. I put in a rosewill pcie 2.0 wireless card that went on sale for $9.99 up to 150mbps.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: g3440 w/ asrock h81m-hds, team elite 2x4gb=8gb ddr3 1333(3128usable), win7 pro 32-bit sp1, two monitors, 1tb hdd as my second computation/embedded/MySQL server