Latest motherboard reviews and NEWS
tbreak reviewed the ECS P55H-AKConclusion: The extra USB3 and SATA3 ports add to the overall expandability of the board and the overclocking potential of this mainboard is very good. If you want to build a capable machine with a relatively low budget consider the ECS P55H-AK Black Series motherboard. Overclocking: This mobo doesn't disappoint in overclocking. Without changing the voltage and everything else on auto, the reviewers managed to raise the base clock from 133MHz to 166MHz, giving the Core i5 750 a stable clock speed of 3.34GHz, the cooler used was the Intel stock heatsink. With a better heatsink you'll probably reach the 4GHz barrier easily. ....More 
legitreviews reviewed the Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5Conclusion: The performance of this board was great, the overclocking results were very high and this mobo has a good layout. The placement of the onboard power and reset switches are not blocked when you are running multiple graphics cards. The price is somewhat lower when compared to other 890FX boards, but the performance difference is near negligible. Overclocking: An AMD Phenom II X6 1090T was OCed @4.2GHz, BCLK 300MHz. ....More 
silentpcreview reviewed the ZOTAC H55-ITX WiFi H55ITX-C-EConclusion: LThe H55-ITX-C-E has a great feature set, 6 SATA ports, a USB3 controller, and a 802.11n mini PCI-E card with dual antennae. Power consumption is a problem though, compared to the Asus P7H55D-M EVO, the H55-ITX had much higher CPU voltage, resulting in a 20% increase in full load power consumption, even after undervolting it to the max, the Vcore was still to high. The increase in power draw by the IGP was 5 times that of a typical H55 board. This board is only recommended for a compact but powerful gaming PC. Overclocking: The reviewer did not perform any overclocking. The BIOS is severely restricted. Voltages can be adjusted for the CPU, PCH, RAM, and the integrated GPU, but the ranges offered are very small. ....More 
hothardware reviewed the MSI Big Bang-XPowerConclusion: The Big Bang performs exactly like an X58 motherboard should. The XPower delivers on its promises, although some of its features are only useful to a small niche' of hardware enthusiasts. The Big Bang is competitively priced and overclocks extremely well. There's nothing to suggest that lower-cost boards from any manufacturer are less reliable, durable, or failure-prone than this high-end mobo. If you are looking for an expensive luxury board though, the MSI Big Bang XPower is the right choice. Overclocking: An Intle Core i7 920 was OCed @ 3.84GHz, BCLK 192MHz. Stability Testing: All six DIMM slots filled with dual-bank RAM let's us see if the board is stable under stressful conditions. The reviewers ran PC Mark and 3D Mark Vantage several times with Elpida and Corsair RAM, to ensure system stability. ....More 
ixbtlabs reviewed the Foxconn A9DA-SConclusion: Foxconn A9DA-S is an up-to-date product with little 'extras', so it should be affordable. Other mainboards with the same chipset usually have more and better features. The competitiveness will fully depend on the retail price of this mobo. Overclocking: An AMD Phenom II X4 810 2.6 GHz was overclocked @ 3380MHz. ....More 
techgage reviewed the Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3Conclusion: The reviewer had tested the H55M-USB3 a while ago and he was impressed with the features and overclocking potential, with the H55N-USB3, this has once again been accomplished. With a mainboard like this, building a Home Theatre PC with huge potential couldn't be easier. Overclocking: A Core i5-661 was OCed @ 4.25GHz, vCore @ 1.3v. This board uses 6 phases dedicated to the CPU. Benchmarks: PC Mark Vantage, Adobe Lightroom, 3ds Max 2010, TMPGEnc XPress, Blu-ray Playback, ATTO, 7-Zip, Sandra, CoD: Modern Warfare 2, Crysis Warhead, 3D Mark Vantage, Power Consumption. ....More 
pro-clockers reviewed the Jetway MA3-880GPConclusion: This board has HDMI, DVI and high definition audio which makes it a perfect board for a HTPC build. The layout of this board has been improved with a better color scheme when compared to previous Jetway boards. The placements of the SATA ports could have better though. This mobo does not support SATA3 AND USB3. This is the perfect board for overclockers on a budget. Overclocking: The reviewers reached a solid 3910MHz with an Phenom II X4 965, 17x CPU multiplier and the vCore @ 1.5v. ....More 
guru3d reviewed the ECS P55H-AKConclusion: This board is designed for the mainstream to low-level enthusiast, and offers excellent baseline performance. The board is also relatively overclocker friendly to the novice that just wants a little more extra performance with quick overclock functions. This mobo is a feature-rich attractive looking solution, and is one of the fastest performing P55 motherboard the reviewers tested. Overclocking: Core i7 870 overclocking An Intel Core i7 870 was OCed @ 4023 MHz, DDR3 memory @ 2200 MHz. The reviewers encountered issues like :
Benchmarks: SiSoft Sandra, Lavalys Everest, 3D Mark 2006, 3D Mark Vantage, Handbrake, Medialink Espresso, Cinebench 11.5, Far Cry 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2, USB3, SATA3, Power Consumption. ....More 
insidehw reviewed the BIOSTAR TA870+Because of the low price of this board it will enable users on a budget to buy a faster processor or a better video card. They get extras like SATA3 and Firewire, but they will have to accept a lesser overclocking potential. Benchmarks: WinRAR, 7-Zip, x264 720p, Blender, Cinebench R10 and R11.5, Everest, 3D Mark 2006, 3D Mark Vantage, World in Conflict. Test Setup:
expreview reviewed the MSI Big Bang-XPowerConclusion: The MSI Big Bang XPower features Military class components, like Super Ferrite chokes and tantalum cored Hi-c capacitors, To ensure higher and more stable overclocking this mobo comes with a 16-phase power circuit for the CPU. Multiple GPU configurations from both ATI and NVIDIA are possible, but it does not support 4-way SLI running at full speed mode. Next to that you'll find USB3.0 and SATA3.0, OC GENIE, Active Phase Switching, V-Switch and voltage measurements. The MSI Big Bang XPower delivers a good performance at a good price, it's probably the best partner for a hexa-core CPU. Overclocking: After raising the voltage of to 1.344 V, the reviewers reached 4.2 GHz with an i7 920. Test Setup:
hothardware reviewed the ASUS P7P55D-E PROConclusion: P7P55D-E Pro is an enthusiast board with a good feature set, it's stable and the overclocking performance is OK. USB3 and SATA3 are the interfaces you'll need in the years to come. The reviewers recommend this mobo to anyone looking for a good LGA1156 motherboard from a trusted manufacturer. Compared to: Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R. Overclocking: A i5-750 was stable up to 3.5GHz (175MHz BCLK), the board became unstable above 180MHz. The reviewers had some RAM issues and even the The MemOk! button was no help for them during the overclocking tests. They wouldn't recommend this board as an overclockers dream board, but if you just want an extra 300-500MHz, this board will be OK. ....More 
hardocp reviewed the MSI Big Bang-XPowerConclusion: This is a great board, it has a nice design, good looks and an unbelievable performance. The reviewers couldn't boot Windows XP with a drive connected to the Marvell SATA ports and the Intel ICH10R controller set for RAID operation. The reviewers were forced to revert the ICH10R controller to IDE mode for the system to load Windows XP. The overclocking performance was somewhat disappointing but hopefully future BIOS updates will fix this. Other factors such as the CPU and memory used may have affected the outcome as well. The board is also set up to take a large Thermalright TRUE cooler with push and pull fans configured and you'll still be able to use all RAM slots with taller DIMMs. MSI has a solid design on its hands with the XPower board. Overclocking: The highest manual result with a Core i7 Extreme 980X was 4.198GHz with the BCLK @221MHz, the highest OC Genie result was 4.126GHz with a 188MHz base block. There is also a dedicated page for the MSI Control Center and the OC Dashboard.....More 
hardwaresecret reviewed the ECS P55H-AKConclusion: ECS decided to change the design and has used gray and white colors for this mobo. The NVIDIA NF200 and the PLX PEX8608 chips, allow your system to maintain a high performance even if you install three graphics cards and decide to use the SATA3, USB3 and the Gigabit Ethernet connections all at the same time. Next to that this mobo has 2 eSATA connectors. This mainboard has decent overclocking options, but if you want more than increasing the basic clocks and voltages, you'll need have to look for another product. Overclocking: The reviewers did not perform any overclocking, there is a dedicated page that summerizes the overclocking options and there are also some BIOS screens.....More 
madshrimps reviewed the ASRock X58 Extreme3Conclusion: This mobo is a nice improvement over the last generation X58 boards by ASRock. The design looks much better and the VRM cooling has been improved , the VRM cooler is linked with the chipset heatsink with one heatpipe. Thanks to the new cooling system, there were no stability problems, even after running the CPU at 4GHz for a long time. The PCI Express slot retention mechanism also has been improved and USB3, SATA3 and eSATA3 make this board future proof. This is an affordable USB3--SATA3 enabled X58 mainboard. Test Setup:
guru3d reviewed the ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO-USB3Conclusion: This mobo gives you value for money. If you like to build a good and decent mid-range PC, then buy a mainboard like this, the reviewers would not recommend Crossfire on this motherboard as one adapter will only have a x4 lane configuration. The AHCI performance was not so good, but regular SATA/IDE mode performance really is fast, for AHCI you'll have to wait for a driver update. The overclocking performance was good, and you get extras like core unlocking and a MemOk feature. Overclocking: The reviewer reached 4.1 GHz with an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T processor, stable with a BCLK of 250MHz. There is also a dedicated page for the AMD Overdrive. Turbo Key II resulted in a stable overclock @ 3712 MHz, the memory however was clocked down to 928 MHz.....More 
overclockersclub reviewed the ASUS P6X58D-EConclusion: This mobo can handle triple card configurations, has 8 SATA slots, 6 memory slots, clean and open CPU socket, solid chipset cooling and a matching color scheme. This board is a lot cheaper than the Premium version, is a good overclocker and is 32nm CPU ready. Temperatures were always good on all the heatsinks, and performance was normal for a motherboard. This board has the right price/performance. Overclocking: It was easy to overclock and went past 205 BCLK with minimal effort. There is a screenshot of a Core i7 920 that was OCed @3895.1MHz. The TurboV software was a bit buggy and caused a BSOD at the first attempt to use it, after the reviewers swapped to the latest version it worked perfectly.....More 
kitguru reviewed the ASRock P55 Extreme4The board has an indepth POST Diagnostics display, automated overclocking options and supports DDR3 memory up to 2600mhz. Overclockers will like the ten phase VRM and of course SATA3 AND USB3 are also supported by this mobo. Conclusion: This mainboards was very impressive. with in built support for both SATA3 and USB3 across a total of eight ports, including a front USB 3.0 panel. There are still mounting holes for legacy 775 CPU Coolers on the PCB. This is probably one of the most stable motherboards the reviewers have tested, a Core i5 was pushed to 4.4ghz, the system safely managed to recover to the bios, without using the CMOS clear. Overclocking: A Core i5 750 was overclocked with an automated 50% overclock bios setting, which raises the CPU to 4ghz (from 2.66ghz). The reviewers considered a 50% overclock to be an extremely impressive 'out of the box' setting. ....More 
overclock3d reviewed the MSI P55A FuzionThe MSI P55a Fuzion has a Lucid chip on board. With this chip you'll be able to combine various graphics cards from various brands that have various speeds and even a different manufacturer like ATI or Nvidia. Insert both cards, install both drivers, install the HYDRA software and reboot. After rebooting you'll get a little utility in your system tray. Not every existing game takes advantage of the Lucid chip, only very popular games are and some benchmarking suites, but more and more games are added nowadays. Conclusion: When the Big Bang P55 was released with the Lucid technology very few people expected it to work. In those days it barely did. The Lucid chip works with most of the major current titles nowadays and driver updates are being released frequently, so that will improve compatibility. This Fuzion does not only overclock higher and easier, but also has greater performance even at stock and supports USB3 and SATA3. Overclocking: Base Clock overclocking resulted in a very satisfactory 218MHz. Manually overclocking the CPU resulted in an absolutely stunning 4.33GHz running stable. The OC Genie (button) reached almost 4GHz. ....More 
pureoverclock reviewed the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD9Conclusion: This board is very impressive in terms of overclocking ability and stability, this mobo also has lots of features for the diehard enthusiasts, but the price tag isn't good and the reviewers have no clue why it's been set so high. A few other boards on the market from ASUS, MSI, and EVGA have top overclocking abilities, several PCI-E slots, and other premium features that cost about half the price of the UD9. This mobo is also missing one feature that all other premium overclocking boards have: voltage reading point, on the other hand this board is build solidly, and can withstand the punishment from extreme cooling. Overclocking: A final stable overclock of 5.64GHz was reched with an Intel Core i7 980X. With base clock overclocking the reviewers reached a BCLK of 218MHz, a 64% increase. ....More 
neoseeker reviewed the ASUS AT3IONT-I DELUXEConclusion: This board will allow you to install up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, comes with built in wireless, and next to the IGP you'll be able to use a PCIe X 16 video card. The included remote control, the Asus Home Theater Gate software and the Express Gate for fast Internet access make this board an ideal candidate for a HTPC build. Allthough the performance cannot be compared to high-end computer builds, for a minimalistic Home Theatre PC it's all you need. Compared to: ASUS Maximus III GENE, ASUS Maximus III Formula, Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6, ECS P55H-A, Intel DP55KG, MSI X58M, Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD4. ....More 
pro-clockers reviewed the Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3Conclusion: This mobo offers you almost everything a full-sized motherboard does, the PCIe 2.0 x16 slot has enough bandwidth for high-end graphic cards, and you'll be able to use the Core i5 and i7. Even the new Super Speed USB3 is included. The overclocking ability of this board was spectacular. A Core i5 was taken to astronomical levels. Unfortunately there's no onboard Wi-Fi. Overclocking: With the vCore voltage @ 1.35v and memory @ 1.64v, the reviewers reached 4482MHz with a Core i5 655K. Benchmarks: PCMark Vantage, 3DMark Vantage, SiSoftware Sandra Lite, SuperPI, treet Fighter IV, HD Tune USB3.....More 
insidehw reviewed the BIOSTAR TA880G HDConclusion: Although this mainboard doesn't have a IDE connector, there's the option of mounting additional brackets with support for the parallel and serial port. Standard reset and power buttons are also present on the motherboard itself, so that you can immediately test out the configuration before mounting the motherboard in the computer case. Default frequencies keep the chipset warm and the achieved results were in compliance with the specs, while overclocking increased the temperatures quite a bit, so a good airflow is needed in these situations. Overclocking: An AMD Phenom II X6 1090T BE was OCed @ 4080 MHz. The tested sample suffered from overvolting at times during overclocking sessions, with the motherboard increasing the set value of 1.5 V all the way up to 1.56 V.....More 
hardwaresecrets reviewed the ASRock P55 Extreme4This model has 4 SATA-600 ports, 1 eSATA-600 port and 4 USB 3.0 ports, there's also a front panel adapter with two USB3 ports. Next to that it also includes support for SLI and has a POST diagnostics display. Older socket 775 CPU coolers can still be used with this mobo. Conclusion: There's no PCI Express switching chip for improving performance when all SATA3 ports and USB3 ports are used at the same time, there's no FireWire, a RAID array is only possible on the first two SATA3 ports, and the eSATA3 port shares with the last internal SATA3 port. You'll still be doing a good deal picking this motherboard.....More 
tweaktown reviewed the ASRock 870 Extreme3Conclusion: The gaming experience with this mobo was great, but not the overclocking experience. ASRock will probably correct this with a future BIOS update, they did put a ton of overclocking tools into this board though. The reviewers did not get a chance to try out the Core Unlocker function. The ASRock 870 Extreme3 is fast, clean, easy to use and the retail price was spotted below $90.-. This mainboard could be one of the best AMD based motherboards in terms of price/performance. Overclocking: The overclocking with this mobo was not spectacular. The reviewers ran into quite a few issues once they pushed past 233MHz base clock. In the end they reached 3.84GHz stable overclock (240MHz x16) with an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T.....More 
ixbtlabs reviewed the ASRock 890GX Extreme3Conclusion: Without a doubt, this is a good representative of the AMD 890GX family. Original features include an eSATA 6Gbps bracket in addition to the regular eSATA 3Gbps functionality, as well as well-developed semi-automatic overclocking features. This mobo doesn't have a (legacy) PATA port. Overclocking: An AMD Phenom II X4 810 was overclocked @ 3705MHz. Test Setup:
ixbtlabs reviewed the ASUS Crosshair IV FormulaConclusion: The features of this mobo, like GameFirst and ROG Connect, are very useful. There's no PATA since this is a high-end solution. It's also very important that secondary functionality doesn't interfere with key features, this mainboard is among the leaders in terms of overclocking and performance. Overclocking: An AMD Phenom II X4 810 was overclocked @3822MHz and an AMD Phenom II X4 965 @4100MHz. Compared to: 
xbitlabs reviewed the ASRock 890FX Deluxe3Conclusion: The ASRock 890FX Deluxe3 was out of place in this roundup, not only because it failed to overclock the test processor to its max, but it was the consequence of all sorts of problems the reviewers encountered. There are a few functions in the BIOS of the ASRock mainboard that either do not work at all, or work incorrectly. The reviewers had to raise the processor Vcore way too aggressively during overclocking, which prevented them from hitting higher frequencies. Overclocking: The reviewers could not reach the maximum possible result with an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition CPU, the ASRock mainboard needed a higher CPU voltage than the other boards, the CPU voltage was set to 1.475V and this overclocked the CPU to 3.9 GHz, most other boards in this test reached 4.1 GHz. ....More Archives |
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