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Mario C.

Mario C.

Joined on 11/28/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 13
Most Favorable Review

Can't be beat for the price

ASRock B85M-ITX LGA 1150 Intel B85 HDMI USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard
ASRock B85M-ITX LGA 1150 Intel B85 HDMI USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Price and features. I have had a 4770k in this motherboard for the past 4 months at 4.4Ghz rock solid stable. Recently I wanted to try out the G3258 and this board did not disappoint. With the latest BIOS 2.10 it does support the G3258 and it overclocks beautifully on such a low cost board. 4.6 Ghz at 1.37V. There is nothing bad that I can say about this motherboard at this time.

Cons: None whatsoever in my experience with the board.

Overall Review: I really can't believe the value of this motherboard.

Most Critical Review

Immature BIOS

EVGA X79 SLI 132-SE-E775-KR LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
EVGA X79 SLI 132-SE-E775-KR LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: 1.It does work well with a lot of tweaking and troubleshooting. 2. Looks nice

Cons: 1. BIOS setting will not stay! Can't overclock 2. Changing memory settings causes a boot failure even within RAM specs 3. VRM's run too hot 4. USB ports work when they want to in the BIOS

Overall Review: I wish I would have just bought an AsRosk or Asus board. Stay away from this board like the plague until a more developed BIOS is released. It seems like they released this board without troubleshooting anything. Waste of $300 for now.

11/25/2011

Growing pains with Ryzen 3000 series and memory function

ASRock B450M Steel Legend AM4 AMD Promontory B450 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
ASRock B450M Steel Legend AM4 AMD Promontory B450 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Works stock. BIOS flashed without issues. Aesthetically pleasing. Decent sound and I/O for the price.

Cons: Memory only works at 2133 on current bios (Gskill DDR4 3600mhz) any higher and it will not post. Also cannot overclock the infinity at all without it not booting. A lot of other boards are also having these issues so I anticipate them to be solved with future bios updates. Just disappointing a board would be released with such basic functionally not working correctly.

Overall Review: Wait if using Ryzen 3000 series CPUS

Best 7970 for the $

PowerColor PCS+ AX7970 3GBD5-2DHPPV Radeon HD 7970 VORTEXII 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
PowerColor PCS+ AX7970 3GBD5-2DHPPV Radeon HD 7970 VORTEXII 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Pros: 1100Mhz out of the box is incredible! This card comes with a non-reference PCB of Powercolor's own design that just screams high quality. I changed the thermal paste on mine to something a little more high quality and it dropped the temperature by 6 C. Now under full load it maxes out around 63 C. I play at 2560x1440 so it is pretty much at 100% all the time.

Cons: I wish this came with the old Power Jack that Powercolor used to sell because it does sag a little.

Overall Review: Powercolor is quickly becoming my favorite AMD GPU vendor. I had to RMA a 7950 a little while back and it was a painless process compared to other brands I've dealt with in the past.

Impressive for the Price

ECS A960M-M2 AM3+ AMD 760G + SB710 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
ECS A960M-M2 AM3+ AMD 760G + SB710 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: I bought this motherboard to build a spare gaming PC for when my friends come over. I paired it with an X4 965 and a GTX 465 that I had laying around. So far this motherboard is very impressive for the price. I even have the CPU 100% stable at 4Ghz. The only thing I would have to deduct an egg for is that I can't overclock by the multiplier in the BIOS. If I use AMD overdrive in the OS I can change the multi of the CPU but not in the BIOS.

Cons: none

Overall Review: For an AMD build on the cheap I don't see why this motherboard can't do the job.

Low on price high on features

ASRock X79 EXTREME4-M LGA 2011 Intel X79 USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
ASRock X79 EXTREME4-M LGA 2011 Intel X79 USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: This board is without a doubt the best bang for buck X79 board. I ordered it with an i7 3820 and it booted fine with the stock BIOS. Crossfire works great on this board too! It recognized the XMP profile right away for my RAM and the UEFI BIOS is easy to navigate.

Cons: The southbridge fan is insanely loud, but it only kicks on while gaming so it's not that much of an issue.

Overall Review: Asrock is quickly becoming my favorite motherboard brand. This is my 3rd Asrock board and I have never had an issues with them. I used to have an Asus Rampage IV Extreme and this little board has 99% of the essential features but costs half as much! Keep up the amazing work Asrock you have a customer for life.