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ASRock quality?

R

russilker

n00b
Joined
Nov 14, 2010
Messages
62
I've been browsing newegg and they have the 870 chipset extreme3 with USB3, SATA 6gbps and eSATA 6gbps + x8 x8 crossfire capability for a measely $100.

Its getting good reviews everywhere, but in the past I haven't heard too many good things about ASRock.

Can anyone care to comment on whether or not their quality has improved since then (I'd especially like to know how their quality compares to ASUS boards, I know the two companies are related), and how the specific 870/880g extreme3 boards perform and overclock.

Thanks!
 
I've owned several Asrock board and have been generally satisfied with them. Most Asrock boards are very basic, your not going to see or get many bells and whistles with them, also their BIOS are usually bareboned. If you are an overclocker you would be better served by sticking with ASUS. That being said, every once in awhile Asrock comes out with boards that expandability is exceptional. For example the 939Dual-SATA2 had both AGP and PCI-E. It also had an expansion slot that accepted a daughterboard that had an AM2 socket and DDR2 slots.
 
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Thanks for the reply, that actually makes me even more confused haha
Some of the reviews on newegg said that the BIOS is actually full of tweaks that are great for overclockers, and one of the main reasons I am considering ASRock in the first place is because its the only board in its price range offering "goodies", such as SATA3, USB3, eSATA3, x8 x8 crossfire, etc.
 
I am ashamed to say that I am running an Asrock 775DualVSTA.
I have been overdue for a system upgrade for quite sometime.

I have been very happy with it, and will consider Asrock for my next upgrade.
 
So, quality-wise, they're not that bad? I mean, I see plenty of motherboards for much cheaper on newegg (Jetway, Biostar, ECS, etc.), and I guess I'm just wondering if ASRock quality is closer to the cheapo motherboards or to higher-end MBs like Gigabyte, ASUS, and MSI.
 
From what little I know of current AMD chips, if you're considering a X4 or X6 chip, especially if considering overclocking, stay away from the lower end boards. The power phases just can't keep up, and quite a few boards have actually caught on fire under load with X6s overclocked.
 
I just did a little reading on that, and AFAIK the spntaneous combustion problem affects mostly 890fx MSI mATX boards, so the ASRock 870 shouldn't have the problem, especially since the board has a mosfet heatsink.

EDIT: others are saying its a VRM heatsink issue.. either way, it seems to be limited to MSI
 
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I think they are mostly solid mobos. I had old system with Asrock 775DualVSTA that I have now passed on to my son that has kept an old Opteron 165 overclocked stabily from 1.8 to 2.6 ghz now for close to 3 years or more.
I was told at some point that they were like asus budget line.
 
Both ASUS and ASRock boards are produced by ASUSTek, and supposedly share the same parts/components, while ASRock (at first) was supposed to include less features and be a general "budget" motherboard producer. Since then ASRock has started getting into higher-end motherboards too, so I'm not too sure how they compare to ASUS now.
 
russilker said:
Thanks for the reply, that actually makes me even more confused haha
Some of the reviews on newegg said that the BIOS is actually full of tweaks that are great for overclockers, and one of the main reasons I am considering ASRock in the first place is because its the only board in its price range offering "goodies", such as SATA3, USB3, eSATA3, x8 x8 crossfire, etc.
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Sorry, I confused you. Realize, what I said was a generalization, and I have no experience with the board you are looking at. All the Asrock boards I've owned have been budget boards, yet they have all been rock solid without a hint of problems. The funny thing is, I can't say the same thing about ASUS.
 
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Still rocking a 939DualSATA2 right now. I'm finally upgrading to an amd 6 core soon and have already started piecing it together. This Asrock board has been rock solid for about 5 years and maybe 3 CPU upgrades. I'd definitely consider Asrock man.
 
bboynitrous said:
Still rocking a 939DualSATA2 right now. I'm finally upgrading to an amd 6 core soon and have already started piecing it together. This Asrock board has been rock solid for about 5 years and maybe 3 CPU upgrades. I'd definitely consider Asrock man.
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Yep, running this board in my backup machine with a x2 4200. Still strong after all this time.
 
Yeah, AsRock is a division of ASUS so that's a plus I suppose... I just can't imagine that their boards with a zillion awesome features that undercut the comp. on price are magically problem free.. they had to cut corners somewhere..

That being said, I've read many positive reviews about AsRock boards, might as well give it a shot..
 
I loved my Asrock, have had it for years; however, it appears to be the villain behind my recent rash of dying hard drives, so I'm hesitant to recommend them. I can, however, say their customer service was very quick when I contacted them about supported GFX Cards, they sent me a BIOS not available on their website to support the card I had purchased.
 
I own a few ASRock boards and no complaints. Ran solid and smooth.

Only drawback is the 1 year warranty. But if it was a choice between ASRock and Biostar I would go with ASRock.
 
I was in an internal debate between that Asrock board, the 870a-ud3 gigabyte board and the MSI 870a-g54 board.

I now own the MSI board, however, that was only because i got it for $60 open box. If i had to buy new I would debate between only the Asrock and the gigabyte.

If you are using closed loop water cooling system like the Corsair H50 and/or you need crossfire go with asrock because the VRM's are cooled. If you do not need crossfire and want an 8+2 power setup, then go with the gigabyte.

As far as the looks of the board are concerned, I think the gigabyte looks much better than the asrock. You can't really screw this up. Either way you are gonna get a great board.

I've owned a few asrock boards and they've never screwed up on me, however, 2 recent Asus and 1 recent asrock board I've owned Auto set my Phenom's vcore at 1.45v instead of 1.3v. This is something you should look out for if you do get the asrock.
 
I'm in the same boat...Looking to purchase a good mildly overclockable System witch in my studies have come across the 870 extreme 3 mobo to be the start of hopefully a great all around build.
 
While I changed my mind about building a new system, there was nothing I found that discouraged me from getting the 870 extreme3 for an AMD build. Some say that the 4+1 power phase design is dangerous for high TDP processors (like the Phenom II x4 and especially the x6 Thubans), especially with overclocking, but others say thats an extreme exaggeration and chances of anything bad happening are slim to none.

If you want to be safe (plus get some more nifty features), the 890FX Deluxe3 or Deluxe4 are also good motherboards with an 8+2 phase design IIRC, and also by ASRock.

Good luck with your build!
 
Cajunheat said:
I've owned several Asrock board and have been generally satisfied with them. Most Asrock boards are very basic, your not going to see or get many bells and whistles with them, also their BIOS are usually bareboned. If you are an overclocker you would be better served by sticking with ASUS. That being said, every once in awhile Asrock comes out with boards that expandability is exceptional. For example the 939Dual-SATA2 had both AGP and PCI-E. It also had an expansion slot that accepted a daughterboard that had an AM2 socket and DDR2 slots.
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I agree. You basically said all that needs to be said.
 
I have this board and it has a lot of features that are useful from the start. It has instant boot (special version of S3 resume I think) and it restarts/shuts down the pc for when you hit the power button, its at the desktop and ready in about 4 seconds. Also, the bios has almost ALL of the features from the higher end 890 boards, with the exception for loadline calibration.

I have built 2 systems using this board, one with and 8800gts (beware some reviews say it is SLI capable, but doesnt have an NVIDIA MCP, so thats a no go, but its def crossfire capable) and another system with a HD 6970. Both using an AMD 965be (1 got up to 4ghz, other at 3.96) and both fsbs could be raised to just over 280mhz. It defaults them to 1.375v, and I think the real voltage is 1.35v

It also supports the latest ram and has all of the dram settings you can think of.

Overall a great buy if you overclock on a budget. Plus all the fan headers and cmos reset buttons on the back are a nice add. I've also had to use the onboard power/reset buttons as my power buttons stopped working on my case temporarily.

My complaints are no sli support b/c my old system used dual 8800gts 512s and I didnt have to money to buy 2 amd cards for xfire. Sata6 may be nice when ssds come down, but all in all the add usb ports work nicely.
 
My findings over the last few days with this board are as follows.
1. Stable
2. A lot of bios options relating to overclocking
3. overvolts the CPU when overclocking (con). I'm sure this is an attempt to fend off vdrop, but with the cpu volts set at 1.45 it will over volt to 1.56-1.57.
4. number 3 got me to 4GHz stable on my 555BE with all 4 cores running

All in all a great value at 89.99, However at the NE retail/was price of 109.99 I would be looking at other choices.
 
+ 1 for this board.

I built my current desktop around this about a week ago and am running Windows 7 64 bit. I transferred several internal 3 Gb/s SATA HDDs and my Phenom II X4 955 from a DFI LP UT 790FX M2R (running Windows XP SP3) to this Asrock board.

I'm sure there are a number of reasons for it beyond just the board, but this build feels significantly smoother and faster than my previous. OS boot time is shorter (as is shut down time), and file transfer between drives feels significantly faster as well. I'm extremely satisfied with it.
 
I assembled a rig with an AsRock board for a client with a X2 6400+ BE in it which has been stable for years now but it had a sparse BIOS. They have been putting out a high-end enthusiast board with the last few AMD chipsets with very friendly BIOS setups according to web reviews and I'd definitely put them well ahead of Jetway or any of the others you mentioned (maybe even MSI). I was actually considering one but it was out of stock so I opted for an ASUS instead on my last build.
 
Had great luck with ASRock boards, at work I built 4 workstations for a client company - 3 with athlon II x3s, and one x4 - all with the ASRock used in the tom's hardware $400 buildup.

All 4 are ~3-4 months old now and have been running great. Unfortunately I was not an early adopter, so I can not speak to longer term experience - but I would definitely consider them on any build, personal or work-related.

Had terrible luck with MSI.
 
Each time the capacitors on my Asrock popped, the computer kept working, but each time a cap popped on any of my ECS mobos, the computer either stopped or rebooted.
 
I bought the asrocks 870 ext 3 during newegg BF sales, though still waiting on 1090t to break the $200 barrier, and haven't decided on a video card either to complete the build...I'm hoping everything turns out well. I bought an asus mb a couple builds ago, it died in less than a year, sent it in and they sent it back. Thanks for wasting my money asus, you didn't even give me my rebate money either!

Anyway, I hope nothing goes wrong as I hate asus rma service after that waste of money, and the rebate service after that waste of money too. With asrocks being the same as asus, it kinda scares me a bit.
 
Boo Asrock.

My Asrock III Extreme was DOA from Newegg.

Along with their 1 year warranty, I would stay away from them if you can afford an alternative.
 
WorldExclusive said:
Boo Asrock.

My Asrock III Extreme was DOA from Newegg.

Along with their 1 year warranty, I would stay away from them if you can afford an alternative.
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I'm sure you will find DOA's for even the most expensive boards, I like others have had good success with the 870 Extreme3, sorry you did not.
 
zpackrat said:
I'm sure you will find DOA's for even the most expensive boards, I like others have had good success with the 870 Extreme3, sorry you did not.
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Yeah but they come with 3 year or lifetime warranties.
If the first board was DOA, I can only imagine if I had a problem when the 1 year warranty expires.
That's why I don't recommend them, the warranty needs to be longer.
 
got me the p67 asrock extreme 4. can't wait to try it next week :). i think it will work good. i had the 939 sata dual 2 as well. that lost the network controller due to overheating perhaps while overclocking a opteron 165 but perhaps i did not tweak the overclock enough. i expect better things though with this new board since i have a 2600k :)
 
I used to have ASrock 478 socket motherboard, and it is running perfect now. Asrock for price/performance.
 
I just picked up a Asrock 870 Extreme3 and a AMDx4 965. After reading a bunch people seem to like this combination, I hope they are right!
 
I've been Running a Asrock 890GX Pro3 AM3+ board for 4 months with PII X4 955 BE 3.2 GHz(will do 4GHz on air with default vcore etc) and 8GB Ripjaws RAM, 2 X 4GB.

Had one blue screen...I think it was a driver...Very stable board, large with a nice layout. I never shut it off so it has been running for 4 months except during the tornado weather and stuff back in May...15 miles east of Joplin.

It perform well too...great BIOS that I updated today. Lists at $109 now...I got it for $105 I think and it listed like 119 or something.

It will use a Bulldozer, AM3+ black CPU socket. Anyone looking to build a AMD machine should really look at this board. NO IDE, but that is ok. I looked at lots of boards and anything under say $179 was a poor option and even some of the $179+ boards lacked the features of this board, eSATA, HDMI, USB 3.0...just lots of good stuff.

Just my 2 cents worth.
 
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