What i3, DDR4 Board shall I get?

[bullocky]

Was building an Asrock H110M box but it would never accept win7 and let the USB work.
And now it seems it has just died.

Good riddance.

Leaves me with an i3 cpu and 8gig of DDR4. and a 600W psu.

What shall I get? I don't have much money to spend. I don't overclock. I do some video processing with Premiere, some sound processing with Audacity, a bit of tech drawing like with Sketchup or better and move a lot of files around.

That's about it.

Just got my fingers burned with that Asrock experience. Don't want anything like that again. I'm planning to use Win7 Ult x64 and I would like a board that will happily accept it with everything working - USB2, USB3, etc..

I like good strong, reliable expandable boards. I have an ASUS A8NSLI that's been banging away for years and I've got old Intel D945's working well. But I need something a bit more modern, seems like. I put Win7 on the D945 and there's no audio ! They're getting too old.

So I'm fishing for clues....



p.s. that Asrock just goes round and round back to the BIOS, to setup. You exit and it boots back straight into Setup, again and again. If anyone knows what that's about? Would flashing the BIOS maybe help?

 

[nerp]

Look at ASUS's H170 and B150 boards for non-overclocking.

 

[daveybrat]

Was building an Asrock H110M box but it would never accept win7 and let the USB work.
And now it seems it has just died.

Good riddance.

Leaves me with an i3 cpu and 8gig of DDR4. and a 600W psu.

What shall I get? I don't have much money to spend. I don't overclock. I do some video processing with Premiere, some sound processing with Audacity, a bit of tech drawing like with Sketchup or better and move a lot of files around.

That's about it.

Just got my fingers burned with that Asrock experience. Don't want anything like that again. I'm planning to use Win7 Ult x64 and I would like a board that will happily accept it with everything working - USB2, USB3, etc..

I like good strong, reliable expandable boards. I have an ASUS A8NSLI that's been banging away for years and I've got old Intel D945's working well. But I need something a bit more modern, seems like. I put Win7 on the D945 and there's no audio ! They're getting too old.

So I'm fishing for clues....



p.s. that Asrock just goes round and round back to the BIOS, to setup. You exit and it boots back straight into Setup, again and again. If anyone knows what that's about? Would flashing the BIOS maybe help?

You say you like "good strong, reliable expandable boards." Yet you buy an H110 chipset, the lowest and least expandable option for Skylake??

It goes H110 < B150 < H170 < Z170

So for what you're looking for, you should get a H170 or Z170 chipset board.

 

[whm1974]

You say you like "good strong, reliable expandable boards." Yet you buy an H110 chipset, the lowest and least expandable option for Skylake??

It goes H110 < B150 < H170 < Z170

So for what you're looking for, you should get a H170 or Z170 chipset board.

Yes most H110 boards are known to be flaky. I would avoid them even for budget builds.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I put my i3-6100 CPU in an ASRock H110 ITX board, and it works great, even with Win7 64-bit.

I think OP got confused, you cannot install Win7 on ANY Skylake or Braswell platform, without modifying the Win7 install USB to inject the necessary Intel XHCI drivers (USB3.0). Or you have to use a SATA DVD optical drive.

 

[l1amrob]

Look at ASUS's H170 and B150 boards for non-overclocking.

 

[escrow4]

Yes most H110 boards are known to be flaky. I would avoid them even for budget builds.

I've used frisbee cheap boards from Asrock before. No issues, but they were not exactly top shelf. Personally I would buy a Z170 mid-range board for around $150-$200 (USD) with all the slots you could possibly need till the box dies. The mobo is the centrepiece of your build. Do note that all those extra controllers are extra points of failure, but the flexibility is well worth it. If a non K CPU, then H170.

 

[bullocky]

I put my i3-6100 CPU in an ASRock H110 ITX board, and it works great, even with Win7 64-bit.

I think OP got confused, you cannot install Win7 on ANY Skylake or Braswell platform, without modifying the Win7 install USB to inject the necessary Intel XHCI drivers (USB3.0). Or you have to use a SATA DVD optical drive.

I don't think I was confused so much as plain ignorant of that fact.

That outlandish fact. Why necessary USB3? When there's two USB2 ports available? Win7 understand USB2 by default doesn't it?

I, in fact, installed from Optical drive, using PS/2 keyboard and mouse.

What is a 'non K cpu' ? It is a G4400 3.3G. I made a mistake, called it an i3. It is not. It is a PentiumG4400. That make much difference?

I'll probably get an Asus H170 as suggested. A quick google and I see it is a 'gaming' board. That'd be heavy on the graphics processing, I guess.

Do we pay a premium for that? Not being a gamer I wonder if it is worth having. It will be good for my video editing? Something like that?

At less than $200 there's not much to be saved but I'm just wondering if there's a range of boards that are 'non-gamer' at a lower cost but still good boards?

 

[escrow4]

This Asus board:

https://www.asus.com/au/Motherboards/H170-PRO-GAMING/overview/

is decent. The other non gaming ones do not have a decent audio codec strangely. Looks well built with OK port placement too.

You should be using 10 instead of 7, no reason to use an OS from 2009 in 2016.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That outlandish fact. Why necessary USB3? When there's two USB2 ports available? Win7 understand USB2 by default doesn't it?

I, in fact, installed from Optical drive, using PS/2 keyboard and mouse.

The "USB2.0" ports on a Skylake platform system are not really traditional USB2.0 (EHCI) ports, that Win7 can control. They are really down-graded USB3.0 (XHCI) ports, that require USB3.0 drivers to enable them.

If you did get Win7 64-bit installed on your Skylake rig using a DVD and PS/2 keyboard and mouse, then all you needed to do as the next step, after booting the fresh install, was insert your mobo's driver CD/DVD, and double-click the USB3.0 drivers. That would have enabled all of the USB ports on the board.

 

[bullocky]

What do you mean 'non gaming' - that's a gaming board, too, isn't it?

But it looks fine to me. Enough SATA, enough USB and even enough PCIe. Everything I could ever need.

I see the G4400 is a 'skylake' - saw it in your sig, Larry. So is my skylake fine in that board? Is it fine in any i3 board, is that it?

Because I don't think specs usually mention G4400 or 'skylake', do they?

I haven't got an Asrock driver disk, I don't think. I don't remember one coming with it. I've had it laying around for months now.

Is there anything I can do to try recover it, do you think?

Thanks for the tip about the USB2 on the board.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Because I don't think specs usually mention G4400 or 'skylake', do they?

I haven't got an Asrock driver disk, I don't think. I don't remember one coming with it. I've had it laying around for months now.

The online page on the mobo mfg's site should have a "CPU support list" for that board, and various CPUs, like the G4400 Pentium and the i3-6100 should be listed on it. That shows what CPUs the board can take, and what BIOS revision is needed on the board to accept those CPUs.

If you bought the mobo new, from a dealer, then it came with a driver disc. It was probably sandwiched in-between pages of the manual, that was included with the board.

 

[bullocky]

Okay thanks for that. I can't remember where I bought the thing - maybe ebay, maybe not. Maybe second hand, maybe not. Just don't know.

 

[nerp]

I have the ASUS H170 PRO GAMING board. It's great. The audio is superb. Intel LAN. Good full size ATX board with all the ports you need. M.2 NVMe, just enough SATA ports, displayport if you're using onboard. ASUS has a very nice BIOS interface. They've been aggressively updating with BIOS revisions for the past year. Mine is locked up in a case with no windows so I don't care about how it looks but it looks kinda cool and the 'breathing' leds all over the board are pretty cool. The board feels pretty durable and hefty. Not a flimsy part at all. I bought it mainly for price, Intel LAN and the sound chip.

I am planning to build a new machine with some spare parts including an i3-6100. I'm considering a mini-itx based system and am eying ASUS B150 boards with included wifi. The alternatives in this form factor are from MSI and ASRock and neither are tempting me. The problem is the ASUS board is nearly double the price. There just aren't enough mini-itx LGA2011 boards out there right now.

 

[bullocky]

I see a H170M-E D3 on ebay at only $100 + shipping. Seems okay but it only supports DDR3 and I'd like to use the DDR4 I already bought for the dead Asrock.

I don't like the way they make so many variations of the same board and change things like that. Confuses me and can trip me up.

If I H170 is the board I should have then I'd want them all to have the same basic things.