ASRock Z68M-ITX/HT

Zap said:
Megamaid!
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citizen_cane.gif
 
these are the VRMs right? I placed some heatsinks here and have a small fan sucking from this area. I do notice a difference but it still throttles after a while. before it would go from 4.3ghz to 3.3 and then 1.6.
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Well this mobo lasted less than a day in my gaming pc before i gave it the boot.

At first i was wondering why my fps was so bad in bad company 2. then i watched teh cpu clocks.

It was throttling from 4.2 to 3.3 then flicks down to 1.6 every so often literally halving my fps.... Tried changing the bios load limits etc and nothing helps it. even changed from samuel 17 heatsink to an axp140. Temp maxes out at ~60 C under prime and starts throttling within 60 seconds and will hit 1.6ghz within another minute or so with tmp always <60.

Only way i could even keep it at 3.3ghz was to take mobo out of case and just point massively loud 12cm fans at it.... even then coudnt keep 4.2ghz.

Most useless board ever for mini itx gaming machine. especially when you have hot videocard just adding to the issue. :mad:
 
This was my concern in post #14 of this very thread. A major reason for purchasing a Z68 board is for the overclocking capability. But like the H67, there is some dumb temperature sensor somewhere that needs to be pleased. Any overclocking features in the UEFI are useless with this design.

I would guess that throttlestop would fix this, as it does with the H67. I found that throttlestop worked as soon as I ran it - there was no need to even hit the start button. But then I wonder if this thermal protection was added because the engineers knew these boards have cheap, weak components that can't handle it.

I have a Z68 board arriving in two days (I will move my H67 into another machine). I don't plan on overclocking, however.
 
Deathskythee said:
these are the VRMs right? I placed some heatsinks here and have a small fan sucking from this area. I do notice a difference but it still throttles after a while. before it would go from 4.3ghz to 3.3 and then 1.6.
image02x.jpg
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I believe those are the chokes, the small black ones beside them are the mosfets. I think the mosfets get hotter and need cooled, referencing gaming boards have heatsinks on them and not the chokes.
 
Trevor said:
My board is here but I'm still waiting on ram from Mushkin:
http://www.mushkin.com/Memory/Blackline/997015.aspx

The pair will be replacing an H67 ASRock board in an existing system. The rest of the build:
2600k
Scythe Samurai ZZ cooler
Silverstone SG07 Case
GTX 590 driving a Dell 30" Monitor
120GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD
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It's been running for quite a while now. I've found the same thing as you guys have...it throttles to 3.4GHz in Prime95 after about 20-30 seconds regardless of what clock you have it set at. I've tried a bunch of settings but I've settled on the generic "Turbo 4.3GHz" mode in the BIOS as it seems to work well. I'm not sure what it changes behind the scenes but it sure seems like it gives the board a little more time before it pulls back the multiplier and anything I've tried in the BIOS hasn't replicated it. I wish it had a turbo 4.4 and higher so I could give that a shot.

The good news is I've played a bunch of games while logging and it never throttles back in any of them (4.3GHz solid). Since I built it to play games and not Prime95 I'm ok with that. :p I'm actually satisfied with the board. The 2133MHz RAM was pure plug and play at 1.5v using the built in profile. Yes, the board could be better but it seems this is the best one you can get in this form factor. I can tell you it's quite a step up from the H67 ASRock board I was running. This thing is stupid fast.
 
Yeah im very happy too. For the price(keeping itx in mind). Its still a good board it cant help it usually lives in heatbox cases. If it didn't throttle for thermal reasons everyone would be bitching about them bricking.
 
qwksi1 said:
I believe those are the chokes, the small black ones beside them are the mosfets. I think the mosfets get hotter and need cooled, referencing gaming boards have heatsinks on them and not the chokes.
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Indeed the mosfets are the black chips. The others are coils or chokes. Might have to afaix something on there perma
 
is that silver bit where the asrock logo is on the blue heatsink removable by any means(without damaging the board)?
 
qwksi1 said:
I believe those are the chokes, the small black ones beside them are the mosfets. I think the mosfets get hotter and need cooled, referencing gaming boards have heatsinks on them and not the chokes.
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thanks, I totally missed those lol. I cut a few heatsinks in half and got them placed on the mosfets. I have the mobo OCed to 4.3ghz with speedstep still on and it doesn't throttle for the first few minutes. it slips down to 3.3 for a sec every so often but its a big improvement.
 
Is there any off the shelf/cleaver way to cool those mofsets? I'm not sure there is a simple way to get air over there in a SG06 since I'm running a H60. :\
 
Cute. I still need to figure out how to get air to there. Its probably 35C in there with the front fan and the PSU blowing down.
 
Put together a system with this board today, can confirm that the Scythe SHURIKEN does just barely fit with a graphics card. It touches the back of the graphics card and you have to watch memory heatspreader height as the tips of the heatpipes overhang the 1st memory module (it touches the top of the Mushkin Blackline DDR3 i'm using).

For cooling the mosfets i cut some small memory heatsinks in half, ones that came with an aftermarket GPU cooler i never used.
 
akromatic said:
is that silver bit where the asrock logo is on the blue heatsink removable by any means(without damaging the board)?
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It's held on by two of those spring mounted plastic push pins, you can just about see them in the picture a few posts above yours. A pair of needle nose pliers to squeeze the pin ends should be all you need.
 
Just got this board set up, but when i pressed power nothing happened...excepet the fans came on. I got no bios screen from any of the outputs, no lights on the board, no beeps, just fans. Did I get a bad board, CPU, both?
 
ac82 said:
Just got this board set up, but when i pressed power nothing happened...excepet the fans came on. I got no bios screen from any of the outputs, no lights on the board, no beeps, just fans. Did I get a bad board, CPU, both?
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That's when I check all of the connections, jumpers etc. If you missed plugging in the 4-pin ATX12V connector on the motherboard, that can result in this behavior. I think I had similar issues one time when I was apparently too rough with a cable and unseated the CMOS jumper.
 
Mr. Perfect said:
It's held on by two of those spring mounted plastic push pins, you can just about see them in the picture a few posts above yours. A pair of needle nose pliers to squeeze the pin ends should be all you need.
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actually ment just the silver bit while keeping the blue bit intact and in use
 
Has anyone tried SRT with this mobo? Just wondering if it would work out of the box or if the BIOS would need to be flashed first thing.
 
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DesertCat said:
Mosfet heat sinks? ;)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835708011
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I just installed these on the MOSFETs. They're not a 100% fix but they were a significant improvement. On "Turbo 4.3GHz" mode in Prime95 it used to scale back to 3.4GHz after 20-30 seconds and I recorded right around 50 seconds now (CPUID Hardware Monitor shows 104-105W sustained) compared to 20-30 seconds before. Additionally it now consistently tries to ramp back up to 4.3GHz...staying there about 1/4-1/3rd of the time (it hardly ever popped back up to 4.3GHz once it got heat soaked before).

All of that testing was with my SG07's 180mm chassis and CPU cooler fans on auto so they had to play catch up after the heat already had a head start. With the fans locked on max speed I got 73 seconds of sustained 104-105W before it pulled back to 3.4GHz (before it really didn't make much of a difference than having the fans on auto; maybe 5 extra seconds).

It sure seems that the power system on the board is protecting itself and somehow the little MOSFET heatsinks helped out the situation.

BTW...still super happy with the board. I'm not complaining...probably just a compromise/limitation of the form factor. ;)
 
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superH said:
anybody tried the i3 2125 on this mobo?
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This.

Also, is there voltage options with this mobo (it's all new to me (SFF + this mobo))?

I ask because I was thinking about going with the i3-2120T paired with this mobo for my new mini itx build but then realized I may be able to just get the the newer i3 2125 and under clock it to the i3-2120T speeds. This would hopefully allow me to achieve the same TDP but with much better integrated graphics reducing the need for a separate graphics card make my mini itx's overall footprint even smaller yet packing some power. Can I do this? Can any owners of this board comment on the BIOS OC options?

TIA
 
Is there not automatic voltage reduction when your CPU throttles down? I thought there were ways to make the CPU throttle down in power settings.
 
Has anyone tried any more coolers with this board and a PCIe card? So far we have a "kind of" on the AXP-140, how about some Noctuas or something?
 
I had no issues installing an AXP-140 on my Z68M-ITX/HT with video card installed. No special adjustments needed. Installation properly matched the documentation.
 
Trevor said:
I just installed these on the MOSFETs. They're not a 100% fix but they were a significant improvement. On "Turbo 4.3GHz" mode in Prime95 it used to scale back to 3.4GHz after 20-30 seconds and I recorded right around 50 seconds now (CPUID Hardware Monitor shows 104-105W sustained) compared to 20-30 seconds before. Additionally it now consistently tries to ramp back up to 4.3GHz...staying there about 1/4-1/3rd of the time (it hardly ever popped back up to 4.3GHz once it got heat soaked before).

All of that testing was with my SG07's 180mm chassis and CPU cooler fans on auto so they had to play catch up after the heat already had a head start. With the fans locked on max speed I got 73 seconds of sustained 104-105W before it pulled back to 3.4GHz (before it really didn't make much of a difference than having the fans on auto; maybe 5 extra seconds).

It sure seems that the power system on the board is protecting itself and somehow the little MOSFET heatsinks helped out the situation.

BTW...still super happy with the board. I'm not complaining...probably just a compromise/limitation of the form factor. ;)
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Nice to know that those MOSFET heatsinks actually make a difference. I figure your situation is kind of a "best case" scenario because you have that big SG07 case fan blowing down on your motherboard. For people using water cooled CPU coolers in other cases (e.g. SG05) I wouldn't expect the results to be as good because there probably isn't going to be as much airflow over those sinks.
 
josephclemente said:
I had no issues installing an AXP-140 on my Z68M-ITX/HT with video card installed. No special adjustments needed. Installation properly matched the documentation.
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Really? You didn't have trouble with screwing down the pressure plate? Chumby has an AXP-140 on his board, and reported a problem with that(last post on page 5). If it works without any jury rigging then I'll just get an AXP-140. :cool:

Also, anyone know the voltage range for the memory? Can it run the low voltage 1.35v stuff, or is it pretty much limited to 1.5v?
 
DesertCat said:
Nice to know that those MOSFET heatsinks actually make a difference. I figure your situation is kind of a "best case" scenario because you have that big SG07 case fan blowing down on your motherboard. For people using water cooled CPU coolers in other cases (e.g. SG05) I wouldn't expect the results to be as good because there probably isn't going to be as much airflow over those sinks.
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Especially as the PSU is blowing hot air down onto the area around the CPU...:rolleyes:
 
J32P said:
That actually answered my question but gave the answered I feared.

Come on! I didn't want to OC the CPU, I wanted UC the CPU...lol
Sad, very sad. :(
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Based on this review and the current Z68 mITX board options, I'm not really seing much tangible benefit over a good H67 board like the Asus P8H67-I Deluxe (which does support undervolting and has great stability :) ). Aside from "supposed" Ivy Bridge compatibility, faster disk benchmarks, and a lower price (typical of ASRock), what do you get for the poor OC support given that most games seem to be GPU limited? Does anybody else miss DFI? :D
 
Mr. Perfect said:
Really? You didn't have trouble with screwing down the pressure plate? Chumby has an AXP-140 on his board, and reported a problem with that(last post on page 5). If it works without any jury rigging then I'll just get an AXP-140. :cool:
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Correct, I did not have any issues, not even with the pressure adjustment screw. Sample variance might be playing a role in this.
 
lack of any voltage control on the CPU is highly disappointing, i guess its another board that i'd have to give it the miss.

so far both z68 itx boards fail to meet standards and expectations
 
Even though I am running at stock speeds with the 2600K, this board is still throttling with Prime95. Just like my Asrock H67M-ITX board did before I added Enzotech heatsinks to the mosfets.

With the H67M-ITX, I was able to make some taller heatsinks by ordering the larger one-piece Enzotech kit and cutting it up with a jewelers' sawblade. I didn't want to spend as much time though.

I've got the Enzotech MOS-C1 Mosfet heatsinks on the way. I am going to use Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive to mount them. I want to cover all of the mosfets, so I ended up buying two MOS-C1 kits for $30 total. :mad:
 
josephclemente said:
Even though I am running at stock speeds with the 2600K, this board is still throttling with Prime95. Just like my Asrock H67M-ITX board did before I added Enzotech heatsinks to the mosfets.

With the H67M-ITX, I was able to make some taller heatsinks by ordering the larger one-piece Enzotech kit and cutting it up with a jewelers' sawblade. I didn't want to spend as much time though.

I've got the Enzotech MOS-C1 Mosfet heatsinks on the way. I am going to use Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive to mount them. I want to cover all of the mosfets, so I ended up buying two MOS-C1 kits for $30 total. :mad:
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Throttle stop doesn't work on this board?
 
jeremyshaw said:
ehh.... neither the SG05, SG06, or the SG07 have their PSU blowing hot air in... (well, the SG07 does blow it right into a vent).

Do you own any of these cases?
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I'm using a SG06, I was always under the impression it sucked in and exhausted out but upon further research, you are right.

Still I don't think that's really enough air to cool the area around the CPU very well.
 
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