These Are ASRock's Favorite Motherboard Ideas

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Some great idea.

As far as Asus goes. You have been brainwashed. I have been building PC for a very long time as a hobby.
Asus motherboards are cheap with a high failure rate.

Asus 1-3 2 Failed motheboards.
Gigabyte 3-3.
If you're paying > $300.00 for a motherboard, it better perform flawlessly for years.

I can't say Asus motherboards have filled the bill.
jj
 
well quite frankly you can find all these on some of the MSI boards I've used but to the guys at ASRock why don't you just look at your competition they know whats going on and how about you make a quality board that doesn't fry the first time you O'C something on it never had any luck with your boards."JUNK"
 
Soo.. they WONT be making AMD boards that support SLI AND DDR3?

AWW MAAAN.. theres only like 2 boards i know of that do.. and i own one.. but i need a board with more SATA ports than 4.
 
[citation][nom]haplo602[/nom]+1 on the rear BIOS reset switch[/citation]

Make it have a coded key or lock though. I don't want people to get past my admin password and screw my system up!
 
I would personally love to see fan connectors standardized and moved to the back of the motherboard (along with some other connectors like case LED displays and so on), with cases designed with a bit more of a motherboard standoff to make room for it (using that cool mobo locking device idea). That way the display side would look pretty and more cordless. Cable management would be much easier.
 
Each time I change a motherboard, I need to check if the screws are correctly installed, because otherwise, they contact the back of the mother, causing a short circuit, and destroying it.

Is cumbersome to check it, because motherboards are not transparent.

What I do is to take a sheet of paper, under the new mother (before installation), and through the mother holes, I mark the holes position in the paper.
Then I use the paper over the case installed crews. I pressure the paper over the crews, perforing it, and I detect easily if the screws are in the wrong position.

So, I suggested that such sheet of paper should be included (maybe with transparent paper), in the motherboard packaging. A sheet of paper cost nothing, and saves time meanwhile installing the mother.
 
"I think a very nice feature would be a small capacitor/battery that is built onto the board (or provided, but takes a drive bay), that would act as a small back up power source for the computer during a 10-20 second power blip. Basically, anything that will save the computer from very small power blips, potentially saving unsaved work from being lost, while not requiring a $80+ UPS to be bought." This is golden! In my i get such power "blips" pretty often. If they implement this in a mobo it will be on the very top of my buying list.
 
I'm unhappy to see they didn't find the idea of a "no legacy" mobo a good idea. Would be cool if you could invest in the newest tech, without having to shell out the upper premium price, and then save space, heat and power by not have the old tech compatibility.

High end cards always has the newest ON TOP of the old thing. Why not allow people the option of a board with only the newest. That is my wish everytime I upgrade, because I keep my comp for 3-5years, so I need to make a switch of everything anyways.
 
[citation][nom]marraco[/nom]Each time I change a motherboard, I need to check if the screws are correctly installed, because otherwise, they contact the back of the mother, causing a short circuit, and destroying it.Is cumbersome to check it, because motherboards are not transparent.What I do is to take a sheet of paper, under the new mother (before installation), and through the mother holes, I mark the holes position in the paper.Then I use the paper over the case installed crews. I pressure the paper over the crews, perforing it, and I detect easily if the screws are in the wrong position.So, I suggested that such sheet of paper should be included (maybe with transparent paper), in the motherboard packaging. A sheet of paper cost nothing, and saves time meanwhile installing the mother.[/citation]

It was kind of popular in the past. Seems forgotten nowadays as all manufacturers had to cut costs to keep selling.
 
[citation][nom]krisgebis[/nom]I'm unhappy to see they didn't find the idea of a "no legacy" mobo a good idea. Would be cool if you could invest in the newest tech, without having to shell out the upper premium price, and then save space, heat and power by not have the old tech compatibility.High end cards always has the newest ON TOP of the old thing. Why not allow people the option of a board with only the newest. That is my wish everytime I upgrade, because I keep my comp for 3-5years, so I need to make a switch of everything anyways.[/citation]

There's market for both. Consider somone may have a dedicated conventional PCI sound card and wish to keep it while upgrading the motherboard. Others are more concerned with not-so-old IDE DVD burners or hard disks. Concerning workstation/server hardware it's even more relevant as some PCI-X RAID cards cost over $1000 and there are lots of PCI-X enterprise network cards that work about as good as brand new PCIe ones.
 
There is another thing please scrap all these cheapo JMicron chips for OnBoard SATA. I've had so much trouble with these in all operating system environments (WinXP/7, Linux and OpenSolaris).

Instead use for example LSI's MegaRAID chips. If you want to stay cheap use those MegaRAID chips that only support RAID 0, 1, and 1E. They would be well worth the cost. If I were to design a MoBo I would use an LSI 1068E (8-ports of basic SATAII) or 2008e (8-ports of basic SATA III) and add one or two SAS SFF-8087 ports. Those SAS->SATA fan-out cables are really nice and makes connecting hardware easier and you don't have to clutter up the MoBo with a dozen of SATA ports. Here's what a SFF-8087 MultiLane port (one port to rule them all...) looks like on a motherboard:

One port to rule them all...

And here's what a SATA cable for that port could look like:

Sample SATA Fan-Out cable


Of course you don't have to use SFF ports. You could for example let four of the lanes be e.g. 2xSATA+2xESATA. There is also an external version of the SAS port (known as SFF-8088). THere are also 4-lane (4 SATA ports) versions of the MegaRAID chips; 1064E/2004E.

The reason I suggest LSI here is that they are very stable with mature drivers for most platforms (Windows[from 3.1/MS-DOS to Win7 i386/x64, 2008 Server etc.], Linux, *BSD, Solaris, OpenSolaris, MacPPC, Mac OS9, MacOSX ...) and they have been around for several years (at least the SATAII chips). Some of the Intel (e.g. IOP333 or IOP343 I don't know much about their later lines of SAS/SATA chips) could be a good deal as they also are very stable and have good driver support for different platforms. I wouldn't choose Marvell as many of their chips have poor driver support as of now.
 
@g00ey

I agree entirely with you but let's face the fact they don't use awful integrated devices without a reason. They cost much less than the 1st grade ones.

Asus could integrate their best Xonar sound hardware into their so-called high-end motherboards. Would make the final price raise by $150. How many would buy? Few.

Asus could integrate stable yet fast LSI controllers (there are other excellent alternatives as well) into their motherboards. Considering you mentioned a dedicated processor for XOR calculations, which also requires dedicated RAM, that would bump the final price by at least $300. How many would buy? Few.

Asus could integrate enterprise grade network controllers (there are many great manufacturers out there that would make a nice discount to Asus). They're not only more durable but also offloads CPU, lowers latency and have lower packet drops. That means at least $100 extra.

So, in the end a real good motherboard with 1st grade onboard hardware costs at least $600. Of course there is market for that but common sense tells the $200 models sell a lot more. That's what ASRock thinks.

The opposite idea would also work. There could be motherboards with absolutely no onboard crap - just plenty of slots so we could choose every piece of hardware on our own. Unfortunately they're no more as the motherboard market is a cartel. They want us to purchase things we don't want and that's it.
 
I fail to see how switching from screws to clips for mounting is a motherboard idea and not a ATX chassis design idea.

HP and Dell have been doing this for years and it can be even done with standard boards. HP z600 Workstations have plastic pins that are screwed onto the boards that push into keyholes on the case then slide into slots.

Then you twist a lock and your done.

Anyone chassis company can implement this by having the slots in the chassis in the standard ATX locations and supplying you with the screw-pins.

If you like a change in motherboard mounting standards, ask Intel. If you want standard boards to clip in, ask Thermaltake/CM/etc.

I would not think of approaching any mobo maker for this, just does not make sense to me.
 
@K2N Hater You are talking about High Grade hardware and I'm not. I'm not saying that they should put state-of-the art SATA hardware that is fast and supports RAID6. I only want them to stick with hardware that is stable and reliable.

The LSI chips I suggested are entry-level hardware and these chips (at least the 1064E/1068E) have been around for years. They have been used extensively on budget level servers so the R&D costs should have been covered for a long time ago. The price tag for such a chip should lie in the range of $1-10 which I'm more than willing to pay for a motherboard and not an extra $300.

Actually some motherboards do feature these chips, you can look at the ASUS Z8PE-D18 (and some of the motherboards from Supermicro). But look at how cluttered the motherboard is with SATA ports. One or two SFF-8087 ports would save space on the motherboard for other things.

Putting a JMicron controller that by definition is a malfuctioning controller doesn't make any sense to me. Then it is better for me if they don't put any at all and let me use those lanes for my own controller that I can put in a PCIe slot.
 
it a lot easier to install new heatsinks/video cards/processors etc.
Click to expand...
Get a case that has a removable back plate...viola! You can change your heatsink and processor without taking everything out. Second, how does that equate to videocards? If you can't take your side panel off, pull out the power connector, remove the one maybe two screws from the expansion slot, then pull your video card out, please stop trying to think. JMO
 
Seriously??? In one fashion or another these have all been done before. Come on... originality was lost on this whole contest thing. People have stuck battery backups in drive bays, moved connectors all around and provided breakout boxes for external connectors. There have been LCD panels and ports all over the place... This is the "best" and they couldn't think of this themselves? Many cases have had screw-less designs for mounting motherboards and even components. The one I have at home does exactly that. Rotten results.
 
"“Replace screwing the motherboards in with some kind of locking mechanism."

Doesn't anyone remember that there used to be plastic locks that pushed through the back where screws went and into the Motherboard... I still have a some from an old case.
 
Toolless motherboard install? Yuck. I hope using screws is still an option. Nothing but grief from toolless cases, much less toolless motherboard...
 
[citation][nom]xantek24[/nom]integrated bluetooth, wi-fi and cellular radio (gsm calls, 3g, hspa+, etc.) are a no brainer[/citation]

Asus almost tried this with the P4P800 Dlx m/b with a custom slot for a custom wi-fi card which never, ever hit the market, or if it did had a shelf half-life shorter than a mayfly. They probably still use this as a lame excuse not to try again, not that they really tried in the first place.

The phone space is so heavily populated with contract-funded h/w jail locked to specific carriers, plus the whole country versus country freq difference thing, it would take a major player to break through and offer something universal enough to sell profitably in more than one market and still work. ASRock is not a major player.
 
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