Does z97 asrock have good quality components?

[Psulover]

In z77 i notice that asrock use a thin pcb and had "questionable" quality issues with VRAM in the past.

Also, the caps for this generation is mention as Nichicon 12K Platinum Caps. They are gold plated as well.

ASUS(12k caps), GIGABYTE(only 10k caps) AND MSI all uses BLACK caps. Does the color matters in terms of quality of the caps?


What about the NEXTFET MOSFET- are they better than the dpak mosfet?
In terms of quality component that last, is ASROCK quality comparable to ASUS, GIGABYTE or MSI?

 

[DejaWiz]

Not even close in quality....to put it in yet another car analogy, ASRock is the Yugo of the motherboard world. All they do is apply a little spit and polish to give their boards an illusion of being high quality by spending the money where it doesn't belong, like shiny anodized neat looking heat sinks and whatnot instead of on tangible things like thicker PCBs, higher quality SMCs, and you'll even find things like expansion slots not aligned just right or DIMM slots that are a smidge out of size spec. If you look at those types of key build quality and feature comparisons, you will easily be able to tell that they are corner cutters through and through, just with a healthy mark-up in price because of the spiffy look and appearance, plus the "Fatal1ty" coattails they're riding as a marketing gimmick to charge even more for their low quality crap.

Now to be fair, ALL MoBo makers out there have their cheap line of products (gotta try and grab as much business and profit from all price segments, right?). Hell, ASRock was the invention of ASUS wanting to keep their cheap-shit product line out of the ASUS brand name. Asus has since severed ties with the brand, and ASRock is still trucking along with the same basic (and I mean very basic) build quality and corner cutting principles.

With today's products (I'm not talking about past products, as I would have a very different outlook), brands like Biostar, Foxconn/WinFast, ASRock, ECS, and Jetway typically apply their cheap corner-cutting manufacturing cost model to their entire (or nearly their entire) line-up. Throw into the equation things like questionable component layouts, lack of BIOS updates, slow or unresponsive customer service, and pricing in-line with or even above the superior quality products from trusted and renown brands, that results in products worth skipping.

Asus has a fair share of haters due to a lot of reports about questionable build quality and horrendous customer support, and I have personally only ever used two Asus motherboards: My current Z77 Gene and a Z77 Sabertooth. The TUF and ROG series are the only Asus product lines I will ever use and recommend, as I have never had any problems with my own ROG and TUF products nor any that I have used for family/friends PC builds...not one.

I also have used Gigabyte and MSI products ranging from various motherboards to many generations of video cards, and have never had any problems with them. The only RMA I've ever had to go through was for a Seagate HDD years ago, and it was absolutely smooth sailing to get a replacement.

Yeah I know most (or all) of the above sounds like I'm jaded, but in my opinion, the motherboard is the second most critical piece of your entire computer system behind the power supply. Everything else is generally easy and quick to access/service/replace if it's ever needed. Don't compromise on the motherboard by falling for illusionary "oasis in the desert" bullshit design and marketing tactics from these inferior brands.

[H] just posted a review of the Fatal1ty Z97 Killer. It earned a Gold rating, but The Bottom Line explains why:

The ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer motherboard is cheap. It has a cheap build quality, it has a cheap look, and just all around feels cheap. "Cheap" is a word we use hardly ever in our reviews, because "inexpensive" or "economical" is usually a true better fit. That is not the case today. This motherboard is cheap. Actually it is $125 cheap today. Once you get past the cheap, things change.

The ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer motherboard was an excellent performer overall. In terms of overclocking it simply kicked ass for a budget motherboard solution. Its no-frills approach is something that is refreshing in this day and age. Ignore the glut of marketing on its spec page and look the other way at the inclusion of the Killer NIC, and the Fatal1ty Z97 Killer is near perfect for what it is. We wanted to hate it and ended up loving it. I am however not convinced that over the long term it is not going to self-ignite and burn the house down.

We did not want to give it a Gold [H], but we felt that it had earned it. Did we mention cheap?

Is that kind of a product good enough for your PC build? You be the judge.

 

[pavel]

What's the evidence that their boards are mostly bad? That the components are that sub par? Or that they are so less standard quality than other makes? Just curious. I thought Asrock was from former ASUS employees?

Also, imho, it seems most makes cut corners and I don't know about others, but, I find many motherboards are lacking top quality components and this is a pet peeve or should be!

Why so many costly motherboards have these 'Killer' NICs or often Realtek and the sound chipset is rarely ALC1150 unless you go with an upper line (and EXPENSIVE) ATX board?

It doesn't matter if it's ASUS or Gigabyte. ASUS is often disappointing with lower line components for both micro ATX and mini-ITX boards and probably for ATX, too, unless you choose ROG or something like that. With MSI and Gigabyte, I'm not sure but I bet you have to shell out over $200 to get the higher level hardware. But, you are implying that virtually all Asrock motherboards are of the same calibre in quality as the typical ECS, Biostar or other lower rep makes.

 

[DejaWiz]

Their product history of build quality speaks for itself. When they are selling a motherboard at $125+ with the same lowly features and build quality as competitors $40-70 motherboards, that says enough.

 

[LigTasm]

I've used a number of ASRock boards, expect little from them and end up pleasantly surprised most of the time. They can get away with this mainly because of the ever-increasing efficiency of the CPU's and RAM. Lower voltages and less heat means cheaper parts work fine for most people. Try an ASRock X58 board and prepare your fire extinguisher.

However, ASRock is the only motherboard I've ever had die outright and kill most of the rest of the machine with it (it was an H77 ITX board, took one stick of RAM, the CPU and the GPU with it). I will say I've had more, many more failed Asus boards over the years though. I stick with MSI and Gigabyte these days as I have rarely ever had problems with them.

 

[knupxfon]

I've used a number of ASRock boards, expect little from them and end up pleasantly surprised most of the time. They can get away with this mainly because of the ever-increasing efficiency of the CPU's and RAM. Lower voltages and less heat means cheaper parts work fine for most people. Try an ASRock X58 board and prepare your fire extinguisher.

However, ASRock is the only motherboard I've ever had die outright and kill most of the rest of the machine with it (it was an H77 ITX board, took one stick of RAM, the CPU and the GPU with it). I will say I've had more, many more failed Asus boards over the years though. I stick with MSI and Gigabyte these days as I have rarely ever had problems with them.

Everyone has their own experiences with different MB manufacturers. I've never had an issue with an ASUS motherboard, and use them in most of my builds. I've also never had an issue with ASROCK motherboards. MSI's are about 50/50, and I used to love Gigabyte mbs, until the last 3 I purchased died within a few months. It's mostly luck of the draw I think.

 

[Shogon]

When it comes to z97 AsRock is lacking compared to Gigabyte I feel. Lots of there boards have much better digital controllers while AsRock is using a hyrbrid/analog mix.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1490142/z97-vrm-info/0_20

Personally I think Asus/Gigabyte are near the top seeing as lots of boards are fitted with ditial controllers, and MIS/AsRock are just below them in terms of quality components. When it comes to there high end boards though AsRock/MSI have good stuff compared to the others.

 

[Dave65]

I've never had a problem with ASROCK, saying that I would not buy one today..they seemed to have cheapened them in the last two years it seems..On the other hand I have never had a problem with ASUS either, but I won't buy one again because of horror stories about their service..I just built a new Z97 coming from the Z77 listed in my profile which I love but I needed a second computer so I went with the UD5H Gigabyte and so far it is rock stable @ 4.6GHZ!

 

[Conditioned]

I've never had a problem with ASROCK, saying that I would not buy one today..they seemed to have cheapened them in the last two years it seems..On the other hand I have never had a problem with ASUS either, but I won't buy one again because of horror stories about their service..I just built a new Z97 coming from the Z77 listed in my profile which I love but I needed a second computer so I went with the UD5H Gigabyte and so far it is rock stable @ 4.6GHZ!

Im a bit of a dpc hunter care, to do some dpc testing? The reason is that eteknix and anandtech have this board at ~70-80 micro seconds while hardocp gets a max of.. 344 or so. Use latmon by resplendance for win8 and dpc latency checker for win 7. Also please include what os, if you have amd/nvida gpu and if you have any powersaving settings enabled on the cpu. Thanks a bunch in advance!