- Intel H97
- Core i7 / i5 / i3 / Pentium / Celeron (LGA1150)
- 4×240pin
Good mid-range board
06/25/2014
This review is from: ASRock Fatal1ty H97 Performance LGA 1150 Intel H97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Pros:
This is a solid board with a very accessible price point. Sub $100 gets you a fairly extensive feature set considering. The board does have support for AMD Crossfire (more on this later), all digital power management circuitry, 4 USB 3.0 ports on the back and another 4 2.0, a pretty nice integrated audio system with a built-in headphone amp, and a high-end look with an attractive color scheme.
While I would normally prefer the 90 degree, front facing SATA and 24 pin connectors, these "flat" connectors will lend themselves quite nicely to a smaller mid tower where the others could be difficult to use.
The UEFI BIOS is easy enough to navigate and adjust to your liking and looks very nice with the HD option.
Cons:
There were a couple of issues I found that really turned me off from this board.
First off there's this dual-gpu limitation that seems to be on all the H97 boards. The 4th and 5th gen Intel Core series processors all provide 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes. Both the Z and H97 chipsets provide another 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes. This board (and from the looks of it, all other H97 boards) routes all 16 lanes from the CPU to the top GPU slot and then shares the chipset lanes among the rest of the board's features. Ultimately you're left with 4 lanes for the second x16 slot. This is why SLI isn't supported, Nvidia requires 8 lanes per GPU. Benchmarks of x16/x4 Crossfire vs x8/x8 are pretty easy to find and there's a significant penalty to pay for this setup. I'm fairly confident this is a restriction from Intel for this chipset, but it is certainly worth noting if you are considering a dual GPU setup. Another thing to note regarding the PCIe lanes: should you occupy one of the x1 slots, 2 lanes are directed to those slots dropping the x16 further to only 2 lanes.
The other main issue I had was with regards to overclocking. The BIOS provides all the adjustments necessary (multiplier, voltage, etc) and even shows that my 4770k is at 4000MHz on the main page, but when running CPU-Z to validate the speeds it always reports the stock CPU speeds. I waited to see what other reviewers had to say and if their overclock attempts were successful. I know the H series chipset isn't supposed to support overclocking, but with all the options available I wasn't sure what to expect.
The only other issues I'd bother pointing out had to do with board layout. The front panel audio is at the far bottom, rear corner. It could be a real stretch to connect on some cases.
The clear CMOS jumper is right below the top x16 slot as is the BIOS selection jumper so performing either of these tasks will require removing your graphics card (if you have a single-slot card you should be able to get at the selection jumper).
Overall Review:
Ultimately I had to consider this board and its target market. In the sub-$100 category I think it fits in just fine and is quite comparable to other H97 boards.
I would advise against this board if you are seriously considering a dual GPU system, you really won't be getting the everything you paid for from the cards.
I really like the audio on this board. The headset amp drives my Sennheiser HD558s quite nicely (50 Ohms) and the Realtek 1150 surprised me with its capabilities (along with available software for fine-tuning). I wouldn't bother with one of my beloved Xonars on this board.
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