ASRock Z68M-ITX/HT

Mr. Perfect said:
Whoa, plus $9.95 to ship it. :eek: Still, they are a couple bucks cheaper then Newegg. Thanks.:cool:
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Right, the shipping costs almost kill the deal.
Not to me, though, since I purchased 2 of the 14cm PWM and 3 of the 12cm PWM for a total of $55 (shipping included)!:D
antaresprofans.jpg
 
I dont wanna read the whole thread now (maybe anyone already mentioned) and im not quite sure if its the solution for the throttling but when i tried 4.3GHz with my Z68M/USB3 i had the same issue that 2 cores throttled under load (im running now always at 4GHz, thats enough for me) .. so i increased the "Turbo Boost Power Limit" (short to 125W and long to 115W) .. and then no more throttling ;)
 
Regarding previous gen socket 1156 overclocking, I thought it was mostly dual cores that OC'd well on those ITX boards?
 
Trevor said:
To be clear - I am disappointed that the board is pretty much incapabable of supporting a 100% loaded overclocked 2600k for a significant amount of time. Even though I regularly log the multiplier while gaming (and never see an issue after the fact) it's always in the back of my head. Is it throttlling? Is that all she's got captain? Kind of lame.

But at the end of the day it is the fastest 1155 Mini-ITX board you can get when it comes to actual/normal use. I am amazed at how fast this little thing is & I wouldn't trade it for anything else in this form factor that's on the market right now. But I can tell you that I won't hesitate to replace it when a new option is released.
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Im confused...

So if I have a 2500K on this board and do a small OC to 3.7-4.0GHz it will not throttle unless I am artificially loading it with something like Prime95?
 
Oruf said:
Im confused...

So if I have a 2500K on this board and do a small OC to 3.7-4.0GHz it will not throttle unless I am artificially loading it with something like Prime95?
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You got it. It'll work fine and never throttle on normal programs/games/apps. It just can't hang with an app like Prime95 for more than 30-50 seconds of full power.

I've tried that max current edit in the UEFI and didn't have any luck but that was before the MOSFET heatsinks. Maybe worth trying again. I'd like to try the Intel burn in program too...not sure if that would cause throttling too.

BTW...I went from the 140mm Noctua fan (non-PWM) to this one on my AXP-140:
http://www.xigmatek.com/product.php?productid=131
It's PWM but it has a small window of operation on this board (like 970-1290 rpm from lowest to max). At 970 it's a hair louder than the Noctua with the Low Noise Adapter (900 RPM) and it doesn't seem to be idling any cooler (30-32C). The good news is when it speeds up at 45C it moves quite a bit of air and the peak temps are improved by 4-5C (now 61C at 4.3GHz in Prime95 before it pulls back to 3.4Ghz and 51C). It seems to last a little longer before throttling now too (50 seconds at 4.3GHz/102w).
 
Trevor said:
You got it. It'll work fine and never throttle on normal programs/games/apps. It just can't hang with an app like Prime95 for more than 30-50 seconds of full power.

I've tried that max current edit in the UEFI and didn't have any luck but that was before the MOSFET heatsinks. Maybe worth trying again. I'd like to try the Intel burn in program too...not sure if that would cause throttling too.

BTW...I went from the 140mm Noctua fan (non-PWM) to this one on my AXP-140:
http://www.xigmatek.com/product.php?productid=131
It's PWM but it has a small window of operation on this board (like 970-1290 rpm from lowest to max). At 970 it's a hair louder than the Noctua with the Low Noise Adapter (900 RPM) and it doesn't seem to be idling any cooler (30-32C). The good news is when it speeds up at 45C it moves quite a bit of air and the peak temps are improved by 4-5C (now 61C at 4.3GHz in Prime95 before it pulls back to 3.4Ghz and 51C). It seems to last a little longer before throttling now too (50 seconds at 4.3GHz/102w).
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So in other words, the board is fine if you don't care about benchmarking.
 
Usually benchmarks can't/won't 100% load a processor for 50+seconds. It's done great on the normal benches (WEI/Sisoft Sandra/3DMark11) so far. My CPU numbers fall right in line with all other 2600k's running 4.3GHz on full size Z68 boards.
 
What about video encoding? If it's throttling during stability testing I'm guessin it'll do the same encoding a video with x264.
 
The board actually looks better if you DO care about benchmarking. As Trevor mentioned, benchmarks often take less time to complete. So the throttling may never happen. Benchmarking looks great.

Any heavy sustained workload will cause throttling. Video encoding, image processing/conversion, audio encoding, lots of things. Assuming the software is using all of the cores to the max. The watts will easily go up with this sort of stuff, and these jobs take time to complete.

I've gotten the board (and my H67 board before it) to throttle even at stock speeds! That's the only speed I work with, so the mosfet heatsink solution completely solved my throttling. For this reason, I am very pleased with this board except for the added expense of the mosfet coolers.

If I was into overclocking, I would hate this board if I couldn't figure out how to quietly eliminate the throttling. Throttling is unacceptable. If the board is slowing itself down to get through big workloads, it isn't really overclocking at all.
 
It's not just the Asrock mitx motherboard that throttles under load. They almost all do, even my Asus AMD mitx board throttles under load. Fortunately I can use software to prevent it, but it's not an ideal solution. Board makers need to stop fucken around and give us a serious mitx motherboard without training wheels.
 
It's not like that, OC takes power, using more power causes heat, to avoid overheating components you need....more components so you can spread the load. More components means more space, space is at a premium on mini ITX. Simple as that.
 
fr500 said:
It's not like that, OC takes power, using more power causes heat, to avoid overheating components you need....more components so you can spread the load. More components means more space, space is at a premium on mini ITX. Simple as that.
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all i want is a board that will allow me to under volt a cpu , giggles.


Jen
 
fr500 said:
It's not like that, OC takes power, using more power causes heat, to avoid overheating components you need....more components so you can spread the load. More components means more space, space is at a premium on mini ITX. Simple as that.
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If that's the case then they should stop making mitx z68 boards alltogether. What's the point of a z68 motherboard that cant overclock? An h67 mitx board will do almost everything at a lower pricepoint. They advertise these mitx z68 boards as being overclockable and all the reviews conveniently forgot to mention the throttling issue. I'm sorry but that's just shady and it makes me wonder if they really tested these boards or just wrote a good review to make asrock and zotac happy. I'd be mad as hell if i dropped $150 on one of thse things.
 
So is there a point to this board (Z68) or should I go with something else for a SFF Gaming Rig? Suggestions?
 
how much cpu power do you need for a gaming rig? (unless you're gaming at 640x480, of course :D)
 
Machupo said:
how much cpu power do you need for a gaming rig? (unless you're gaming at 640x480, of course :D)
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1900x1200 16:10, shrug. I'm looking into H67 boards but know very little about current builds as this is my first since my current rig which is an x48 775...
 
Oruf said:
So is there a point to this board (Z68) or should I go with something else for a SFF Gaming Rig? Suggestions?
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If you have or want a K series processor and plan on overclocking I'd say go with a matx board instead. Otherwise I'd get an H67 motherboard and non K cpu and call it a day if you must have a mitx system.
 
The Z68 is required for smart caching, correct? Speeding up the response time of a slower HDD by using a small SSD for a cache.

I have purchased this board because I want to try to overclock a little. I'll be happy with 4ghz until another couple generations of GPUs roll out. Later I'm going to pull the discreet and use the onboard graphics processor for a HTPC.

Please correct me if I've gotten my information mixed, but the Z68 also uses the intel sata3 controller correct? There isn't a marvel controller on this board.
 
When you think about it, does having a 2600K at above 4.3ghz really matter for what you use your rig for, mostly gaming. Games wouldn't even care if you left the CPU at stock let alone 4.3ghz.

It's more important to be able to OC the GPU.
 
Bahanime said:
When you think about it, does having a 2600K at above 4.3ghz really matter for what you use your rig for, mostly gaming. Games wouldn't even care if you left the CPU at stock let alone 4.3ghz.

It's more important to be able to OC the GPU.
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Agreed. I have noticed no bottlenecks in my set up at all. I can run anything so far.

Down the road there will be z68's from Gigabyte and ASUS when the time comes to squeeze more performance out of the CPU. (I'm actually surprised MSI hasn't jumped into the void.)
 
Like I said previous. I watched this thread from day 1, the results many have got made me drop my itx dreams.
 
Nighted said:
Agreed. I have noticed no bottlenecks in my set up at all. I can run anything so far.

Down the road there will be z68's from Gigabyte and ASUS when the time comes to squeeze more performance out of the CPU. (I'm actually surprised MSI hasn't jumped into the void.)
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Unfortunately I think it might be more likely we will 7 series m-itx boards before we see more z68 m-itx boards. Didn't Gigabyte stop development on its z68 m-itx board?
 
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Hello everyone,

I'm getting quite a bit of humming in my speakers when playing games using this board, in a Silverstone SG07

I get the the "humming" whatever the soundcard used (i tried with an external usb soundcard and the nvidia hdmi output to my tv) and I also get it when I select on my amp another input than the pc....

The only way to stop it is to unplug my amp. So it appears the static comes from the cable that links the pc/soundcard to the amp.

And of course the static isn't due to the amp because it's doing perfect with other sources.

I was thinking it could be some sort of grounding issue, so I was wondering if you had used washers when mounting this motherboard inside your cases ?

Thanks in advance for your help
 
StanRex said:
Hello everyone,

I'm getting quite a bit of humming in my speakers when playing games using this board, in a Silverstone SG07

I get the the "humming" whatever the soundcard used (i tried with an external usb soundcard and the nvidia hdmi output to my tv) and I also get it when I select on my amp another input than the pc....

The only way to stop it is to unplug my amp. So it appears the static comes from the cable that links the pc/soundcard to the amp.

And of course the static isn't due to the amp because it's doing perfect with other sources.

I was thinking it could be some sort of grounding issue, so I was wondering if you had used washers when mounting this motherboard inside your cases ?

Thanks in advance for your help
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TBH if you have a decent amp I would just connect the amp to the motherboard headers and try that out. IMO there hasn't been new sound card technology since the early 2000s. Everything is rehashed Creative garbage that literally does nothing and is just buggy. You could argue for CMSS but I've never found it to be all that impressive especially with modern games where the sound is a lot better. The distortion could be coming from the sound card due to noise pollution in the case. Alternatively you could be double amping from the sound card to the amp to the end point which in my experience is a no no and typically sounds worse.

TLDR: Trash the sound card spend some money on a great amp and some nice cans.
 
StanRex said:
Hello everyone,

I'm getting quite a bit of humming in my speakers when playing games using this board, in a Silverstone SG07

I get the the "humming" whatever the soundcard used (i tried with an external usb soundcard and the nvidia hdmi output to my tv) and I also get it when I select on my amp another input than the pc....

The only way to stop it is to unplug my amp. So it appears the static comes from the cable that links the pc/soundcard to the amp.

And of course the static isn't due to the amp because it's doing perfect with other sources.

I was thinking it could be some sort of grounding issue, so I was wondering if you had used washers when mounting this motherboard inside your cases ?

Thanks in advance for your help
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Grounding issue, are you using the front panel or rear plugs?
 
Well, I've tried the HDMI port of the GTX570 and both front panel usb port + rear usb port
 
Well, it's definitely not a sound card issue.

I've removed the GTX 570, and plugged the HDMI cable between TV and computer on the HDMI out of the motherboard.

Unplugged the USB soundcard also. Bottom line, I don't have a single soundcard running anymore. Windows simply doesn't see any sound adapter.

And I still get the humming as soon as the PC is connected to the TV and the TV is connected to the amp.

Ok so this issue probably has nothing to do with the soundcard. I'm starting to lack ideas on what could be causing it though, and how to solve it :(

edit : just launched skyrim. The buzzing sound, from not too bad, becomes much higher and impossible not to hear when in game. And it goes back to "hard to hear" state as soon as I press "escape" and the game enters pause.. Well...
 
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if you have a SG07 try disconnecting the front panel audio connectors from your motherboard, there is a known issue with that.
 
Well, I tried disconnecting the front panel connectors but it didn't change much.

What did have a very strong impact, was plugging into another wall socket (a different one from the one the amp is connected to). It decreased strongly the amount of noise. Maybe I should buy something like an inverter, to get clean power
 
Disable all other sound devices?

W7: Control Panel>Hardware and Sound>Manage Audio Devices>Playback Tab
 
Has anybody taken a (larger than ram or mosfet sinks) piece of aluminum and attached it to the VRM's?

Do we know what the underlying cause of the throttling is?

Seems like the throttlestop program is able to put an end to it. So at least we've got that.

I'm thinking somebody could easily mill out a nice chunk of aluminum to put there to be thermal-epoxied on. If nobody has done it, I will do it (Once I find another person to build a SG06 god-box for). I WILL have a stable 2600K >4Ghz OC in a SG06 (with an H80). Dammit.
 
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I've attached some copper sinks (not the type on newegg, just custom made ones) to the vrms (with shuriken fan blowing down on it), it helps keep 4.3ghz stable for a few minutes in prime95. In games its not a problem.

It's good enough for what is essentially a tiny rig.
 
A few minutes at 4.3GHz? That's pretty good. I'm still on about 50 seconds with the Enzotech heatsinks. Games are no problem though, just like you said.
 
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