Anyone have an Asrock S1155 Extreme4 Gen3, either the P67 version or the Z68 one?

[VirtualLarry]

Curious how it's been working for you, and if you've had any problems.

Looking to purchase one of these two boards at MC soon, along with a 2500K CPU.

Scary 1-2egg reviews at Newegg though. Lots of DOA, BSOD and USB3.0 problems.

A little bit concerned.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Curious how it's been working for you, and if you've had any problems.

Looking to purchase one of these two boards at MC soon, along with a 2500K CPU.

Scary 1-2egg reviews at Newegg though. Lots of DOA, BSOD and USB3.0 problems.

A little bit concerned.

LOL. All I'll say is, if you're concerned about DOA, the ASRock boards are one of the best you can get, and even then Newegg reviews aren't very good for basing things on. If you go there you'll see the P67 board I have has 14% "bad" reviews. If you go search for something like the the most popular P67 board, the MSI P67A-GD65, 28% of the reviews are "bad". Or how about a current favorite here, the ASUS P8Z68-V PRO? 22% of people rate it "bad". How about the Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3P? 35% "bad".

My point: you really can't base much off of Newegg, except if it's an issue something extraordinary like 50% of the users are experiencing. As far as reviews go ASRock is actually the best Intel board manufacturer now, and even then you have one or two people complaining about DOA products. You have to keep in mind: users are MUCH more likely to report problems than success. For every dissatisfied user you have, you have 100 that had no problems. I haven't actually bothered to give a review for my board on Newegg because it's been nearly flawless.

 

[Kenmitch]

I picked up the P67 Ext4 Gen3 a week ago Friday with a 2500k at microcenter. I'm using the board as a temp one till my Asus comes back from rma.

The P67 > Z68 jump was too huge for me as it's most likely only a temp board for me. If I was gonna keep the board for the long haul I'd have to think about the jump tho. Z68 features don't look like they are for me.

I've had some BSOD's but overclocking and BSOD's go together

USB3.0 I don't have anything to test it with. Using the drive bay adapter to mount my SSD drive tho. The port is functional but only have tested it with my USB memory sticks.

I'm using the board with my 2700k currently at 4.8ghz without issues. The uEFI is primitive compared to the Asus implementation but has the needed settings to crank up a K chip to be fair.

Overclocking wise my 2700k pretty much clocks the same as it did on the Asus board.

I haven't really found anything negative about the board yet other than the uEFI not being as nice as Asus's.

Newegg reviews can be scary! I suggest taking them with a grain of salt. It's hard to tell if it's a true issue or if it's pilot error.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

I picked up the P67 Ext4 Gen3 a week ago Friday with a 2500k at microcenter. I'm using the board as a temp one till my Asus comes back from rma.

The P67 > Z68 jump was too huge for me as it's most likely only a temp board for me. If I was gonna keep the board for the long haul I'd have to think about the jump tho. Z68 features don't look like they are for me.

I've had some BSOD's but overclocking and BSOD's go together

USB3.0 I don't have anything to test it with. Using the drive bay adapter to mount my SSD drive tho. The port is functional but only have tested it with my USB memory sticks.

I'm using the board with my 2700k currently at 4.8ghz without issues. The uEFI is primitive compared to the Asus implementation but has the needed settings to crank up a K chip to be fair.

Overclocking wise my 2700k pretty much clocks the same as it did on the Asus board.

I haven't really found anything negative about the board yet other than the uEFI not being as nice as Asus's.

Newegg reviews can be scary! I suggest taking them with a grain of salt. It's hard to tell if it's a true issue or if it's pilot error.

VirtualLarry recommended this to me, and I recommend you do it: download the Etron USB 3.0 drivers from Gigabyte. ASRock has older 0.96 drivers and for me the newer 1.05 drivers from Gigabyte solved some problems I was having with some USB flash drives. They use the same USB 3.0 controller, so no worries:

http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Driver/motherboard_driver_etron_usb3.exe

The UEFI looks a bit dated, but it does have all the options you'd need for overclocking and setting the board up. I don't really consider it much of a con because, in all honesty, you only go to the UEFI once you've set everything up once a month or even less.

 

[Magic Carpet]

ASrock are fine. They get eventually fixed. Unless it's dead on arrival, of course. And I am sure, 50% of the people marking their goods as DOA are doing something wrong or doing that intentionally

 

[Kenmitch]

VirtualLarry recommended this to me, and I recommend you do it: download the Etron USB 3.0 drivers from Gigabyte. ASRock has older 0.96 drivers and for me the newer 1.05 drivers from Gigabyte solved some problems I was having with some USB flash drives. They use the same USB 3.0 controller, so no worries:

http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Driver/motherboard_driver_etron_usb3.exe

The UEFI looks a bit dated, but it does have all the options you'd need for overclocking and setting the board up. I don't really consider it much of a con because, in all honesty, you only go to the UEFI once you've set everything up once a month or even less.

ASRock has some in the betazone for the board also.

The USB3 is vers 0.106 dated as 1/9/12 so not sure if it's just a number game and it's newer or older than the Gigabyte one.

ftp://174.142.97.10/drivers/all/usb/Etron_USB3_Win7-64_Win7_Vista64_Vista_XP64_XP(v0.106_WHQL).zip

Device manager shows these as 1.0.0.106 dated 10/7/11 what does Gigabytes show as?

Yes the uEFI is fully functional as I said. It is a little lacking on voltage adjustment choices but is functional. It's more of a once you've played with the Asus uEFI everything else is second best

What did you set your power limits to? On the Asus board I could just leave them on auto. On the ASRock I had to change them to get the board to overclock to what I set.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

ASRock has some in the betazone for the board also.

The USB3 is vers 0.106 dated as 1/9/12 so not sure if it's just a number game and it's newer or older than the Gigabyte one.

ftp://174.142.97.10/drivers/all/usb/Etron_USB3_Win7-64_Win7_Vista64_Vista_XP64_XP(v0.106_WHQL).zip

Device manager shows these as 1.0.0.106 dated 10/7/11 what does Gigabytes show as?

Yes the uEFI is fully functional as I said. It is a little lacking on voltage adjustment choices but is functional. It's more of a once you've played with the Asus uEFI everything else is second best

What did you set your power limits to? On the Asus board I could just leave them on auto. On the ASRock I had to change them to get the board to overclock to what I set.

The driver by Gigabyte is version 1.0.0.105 but they call it 1.05. It's a stable release, so I think I'd be more comfortable with that.

Yeah, I do remember raising the power limit. I'm running -smp8 on F@h right now, though, so I can't check. :/

Apart from that, I set the voltage to +0.10 mW offset and that gave me 1.290-1.304V in the BIOS and 1.28-1.288V effective. I tried at 1.27V effective, but it was too low. So far it has passed a 12-hour Prime95 torture and has been running no problems, so that's enough for me.

 

[Rvenger]

ASRock has some in the betazone for the board also.

The USB3 is vers 0.106 dated as 1/9/12 so not sure if it's just a number game and it's newer or older than the Gigabyte one.

ftp://174.142.97.10/drivers/all/usb/Etron_USB3_Win7-64_Win7_Vista64_Vista_XP64_XP(v0.106_WHQL).zip

Device manager shows these as 1.0.0.106 dated 10/7/11 what does Gigabytes show as?

Yes the uEFI is fully functional as I said. It is a little lacking on voltage adjustment choices but is functional. It's more of a once you've played with the Asus uEFI everything else is second best

What did you set your power limits to? On the Asus board I could just leave them on auto. On the ASRock I had to change them to get the board to overclock to what I set.

I actually wasn't a fan of the Asus UEFI at all.

 

[Kenmitch]

I actually wasn't a fan of the Asus UEFI at all.

ASRock = Good bang for the buck! Feature rich for the money!

The ASRock uEFI gets the job done. I wouldn't not buy the motherboard because of it. It just lacks in some areas and needs some refinements is all. Most people are just gonna go into uEFI setup their rig and be done with it and never see it again. Some people like to tinker around in the uEFI with overclocks, etc. Sometimes you need to fine tune voltages other than vcore and memory. This ASRock board lacks in the other voltage choices is all. But to be fair it's doable and stability can be achieved with some tinkering. My 2700k needs a bump in the VTT(memory controller) voltage to be AVX stable at 4.8ghz with HT on for example and the choices are pretty big jumps without the ability to fine tune....But it's still doable

I can only base my judgement on this board and the board in my sig. I know options in the uEFI are gonna be based on the motherboards being used. Not all ASRock and Asus boards are gonna have the same uEFI settings available.

The Asus implementation seems more refined and feature rich. The ability to use a mouse correctly for example is a plus. The ability to have a finer controll on voltages other than vcore and memory is a plus. The ability to go into the uEFI and take screenshot or to view voltages/temps and then directly boot the OS without posting is a plus. From uEFI to windows login screen is a matter of seconds with a SSD. The ability to save 8 profiles is a plus for those whom like to tinker with multiple overclocks.

Recap: I don't have any issues with this ASRock board that would make me not want to use it or to not recommend it to others. Although the uEFI implementation is a little primitive it gets the job done. It is a good bang for the buck motherboard which is feature rich and the included items are for the most part something a person would want or need. The front USB3/SSD mount is a nice bonus that most likely will be used by the end user and not left in the box or thrown away!

I'm still testing my 2700k at 4.8ghz on this board. I did have to bump up my vcore so it hovers around 1.40v's in order to pass testing with IBT (ALL) threads do to the AVX support/load/stress. The beta prime with AVX has been running for around 11hrs plus so far. Looking at my temps the hottest core hit 74*C sometime in the last 15hrs or so.