Six $200-$260 LGA 2011 Motherboards, Reviewed

[jaquith]

ASUS and ASRock are indeed separated but in a similar manor to GM's (Cadillac and Buick). If you look at their corporate holdings you'll find both the founders and stock overlap. So 'separate' but 'owned'; search 'spin-off' -> http://www.pegatroncorp.com/download/GDR_Listing_Particulars.pdf they still compete fill the left pocket or the right pocket, Pegatron Corporation (ASRock) wasn't a give-away from ASUS nor it's stock holdings.

 

[__-_-_-__]

I love ram slots. 8x ftw cheap ram disk

 

[rishiaditya]

Good thought....would be very useful for SSD Drives.

 

[monsta]

Wish Z77 gets released soon and see whats on offer

 

[tarek0]

Asrock passed a long way since her establishment in 2002, from being ASUS sister Company onto a Company striving to build its own brand and yes they did it, ASROCK has become 3rd Large Motherboard Brand in Taiwan following the 2 Other Big Guy's ASUS & gigabyte. ASROCK does look fast & incredibly stable just like ASUS & they do share lots DNA, but i really wish them to push the Envelop further more and just add some more Powah into their Mobos.
Thumbs Up ASROCK...

 

[Why_Me]

Asrock is #3 atm in the motherboard market behind Asus and Gigabyte in regards to sales, and is coming closer and closer to catching Gigabyte for the #2 spot. Hats off to Asrock.

 

[Crashman]

Asrock is #3 atm in the motherboard market behind Asus and Gigabyte in regards to sales, and is coming closer and closer to catching Gigabyte for the #2 spot. Hats off to Asrock.

Those big gains are mostly from being hyper-sensitive to input from review sites. Three years ago these things were catching fire, now they're becoming paragons of low-cost reliability.

Several times a week ASRock contacts Tom's Hardware guide to ask how it can improve its boards. The typical response is "do it better, and for less money, than your competitors". Amazingly, that advice still stands!

 

[hellfire24]

^well said!

 

[ceh4702]

I have never purchased a motherboard costing over $140.00. Current motherboard Intel DZ68DB cost around $117.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]ceh4702[/nom]I have never purchased a motherboard costing over $140.00. Current motherboard Intel DZ68DB cost around $117.[/citation]But that's completely irrelevant since you can't actually put an LGA 2011 processor on that board. If you're waiting for a $140.00 LGA 2011 motherboard, you could be waiting a few years.

 

[Temp_Username]

I agree 100% with the review. I have an ASRock Fatality Z68 board and love it.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]hjklpoiu[/nom]I was thinking it might be easiest to measure this by having no OS on the boot media and measuring the time to the "please insert boot media"[/citation]That would depend on how many times the firmware searched for a boot device before giving up. I have a USB boot drive with DOS for Windows 98 that boots in less time than most boards take to report the drive error.

 

[lbucci]

Only problem with the X79 Extreme4 is the error 0xAF and no startup. This occurs with all ASRock X79 Extreme4 with an i7 3820 CPU. You need to get a new BIOS chip, the L6.2 BIOS Chip or higher from ASRock to fix the issue and you need to change it on the MoB your self. They are still shipping with BIOS 1.1 which does not support the i7-3820...

 

[AtotehZ]

I think you missed something.. I see 4 DIMM slots on the motherboard, 2 on each side of the processor. Also ASRock's own website says it supports 4 pieces.

 

[AtotehZ]

[citation][nom]AtotehZ[/nom]I think you missed something.. I see 4 DIMM slots on the motherboard, 2 on each side of the processor. Also ASRock's own website says it supports 4 pieces.[/citation]
My bad, I wasn't aware that boards have 8 dimm slots now.

 

[eletrickone]

Checkout the reviews on the P9X79LE at new egg before you pay for the product. Sad!

 

[ubercake]

Checkout the reviews on the P9X79LE at new egg before you pay for the product. Sad!

There are some sad tales of bent pins and some about people that don't know enough to use the BIOS Flashback option BEFORE putting their rig together to reduce compatibility issues. Some people just don't know what they're doing. You can't help bent pins, but when everything works but sound, I'm inclined to think the sound setting on the board isn't set right for their case. This sounds odd, but you can really screw things up if your case is setup for digital audio and you choose legacy output in the BIOS or vice versa. Most of the reviews are good. Based on the specs, it looks like a decent buy. Shame on Newegg for [re]selling boards with bent pins. This is why I always look at Newegg, but seldom order from them. Their return policies seem kind of crappy and strange comments lead me to believe they resell returned items as new. But one dude has a comment on there about pushing the CPU down and complains about bent pins. You don't push a CPU down in the 2011 socket on an X79 build unless you want bent pins. I'm sure newegg will be selling his returned board to someone else in the near future.