Joined on 11/16/10
Fantastic board for VMWare ESXI
Pros: This board simply worked perfectly in a VMWare ESXI build. I had some concerns in regards the NIC as some people had reported that it might not be supported in 6.7 U3. There was not even the slightest issue - VMWare installed without any tweaking. This board is nicely laid out with ample SATA connectors and CPU / water pump headers. The heat shield for the M2. NVME is a really nice feature although it did have me confused for a moment looking for the connector until realized I needed to remove the heat shield to get at it. Havingextra screws and a standoff for the M.2 slots is a nice bonus. The board powered up with my Intel Core i5-9400F Coffee Lake, WD Black NVMe M.2 2280 500GB and CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32GB with no hesitations. I did not need to tweak anything in UEFI. I was able to pull out my old board and drop this one with minimal fuss. This has to have been ome of the simpler builds I have done.
Cons: I would have liked a Displayport connector on the back, but I can easily convert from HDMI to Displayport if needed. A minor beef for many motherboards - having the sata connections off the side of the board can be a pain for plugging in cables. Not a biggie and easy enough to work around.
Overall Review: This is a great board at a very decent price. This is the third ASRock board I have acquired. I am really getting to like using these boards.
BIOS Update Bricked the motherboard
Pros: I loved this board as a simple, decent little mini-itx solution until an BIOS update launched from the update facility ion the BIOS bricked the motherboard. It seems this has happened to a lot of users.
Cons: Motherboard bricked on bio update.
Overall Review: Great until you try to update the BIOS.
Great little case with loads of storage options
Pros: I wanted to find a new case for the motherboard that to run my router software. This case ticked the boxes: * Loads of storage room * Built-in 300W power supply * Simple and attractive case design. My mini-itx board fits great. I love how easy it is to pull out the frame that holds the storage devices and add drives. It was much simpler to do this than some other small cases I have. I was easily able to tuck away two SSDs and still have room for 2 3.5 inch devices and one 5.25 inch device. I simply ricked the levers back into position when done to lock down the frame again. There are ample screws supplied, two sata cables and a sata power splitter supplied. This model does not have the shroud that fits over the cpu that other versions have. I don't need it for my build. The fans are whisper quiet. I did not realize it was hooked up correctly and working as I had the power led in backwards. It just doesn't any sound at all. I'm glad to eliminate the white noise while I work. This is a great value in comparson to buying a separate case and power supply.
Cons: Very minor complaint. I had to snip away a ratchet tie to allow the power cable to attach to the mini-itx motherboard. Even with that, the reach was a little tight. Not a big deal on the overall.
Overall Review: Great small case for mini-itx builds with loads of storage optins.
Simply fast
Pros: This is a great drive at a great value point when it's on sale. I added it as the second NVME drive in my Acer Nitro 5. Dropped it in, closed it up and all worked perfectly. The data just flew as I copied it from the 2.5 inch SSD to the new NVME. Very pleased with this purchase. It's simply fast.
Overall Review: Simply fast. A great addition to my laptop.
Great value, excellent upgrade
Pros: I managed to get this drive on sale which made it a great value in comparison to other Western Digital drives. Knowing that I would get the better performance in a Black made it a must. I put the drive in my VmWare ESXI server. It really made a difference in seems if performance launching VMs. They are noticeably launching faster and I'm having less issues running them.
Cons: The drive is a little noisy. Not enough to be distracting but enough to provide a low background rattle. I'm not in the least concerned with that.
Overall Review: Excellent value. Great performance.
Great value. Reuse your existing 1156 cooling solution too!
Pros: This ia a great value for an inexpensive cpu. Using that cpu benchmark site, I was able to see that this cpu had a sweet spot for performance per core that made sense for my VMWare ESXI build. This replaced a much older I5 giving me almost 6X performance per core and a bump from 4 to 6 cores overall. I am really happy that the 1151 and 1156 mounts are the same for the cooling fan as that allowed me to reuse my existing water cooler from the 1156 build I had previously. Performance so far is great - VMWare has no issues with this cpu.
Cons: No hyper threading; however this is what makes this cpu a better value. 6 real cores over performance that is arguably as good as 4 cores with hyper threading.
Overall Review: Great value. Works really well with VMWare ESXI.