october 20 2010 review by thinkcomputers

The BIOS is easy to use and has loads of features. Four SATA3 connectors and 4 USB3 ports is a lot more than you get on most boards. Installing the motherboard was easy due to ASRocks detailed instruction manual. The memory slots could interfere with larger heatsinks.

Test Setup:

• Computer Case : Thermaltake Armor A90 Case
• CPU Cooler : Thermaltake Frio
• Memory : 8GB DDR3 1600MHz
• SSD : 40GB G.Skill SATA2
• Video Card : ATI Radeon HD 5850

Overclocking:

Using the ASRock Turbo 50% setting an Intel i5-750 Processor was OCed @ 4GHz.

Benchmarks:

3D Mark Vantage, Aliens vs Predator, Far Cry 2, PC mark vantage, Sisoft Sandra, SuperPi.

august 11 2010 review by kitguru

The 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.

Test Setup:

• Computer Case : Antec Dark Fleet DF 85
• CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Frio
• Power Supply: Thermaltake XT775W
• RAM : 2X2GB ADATA DDR3 2200mhz
• SSD: OCZ Agility 2 120GB
• Video Card: HIS HD5870 iCooler V Turbo

Benchmarks:

3DMark Vantage, PCMark Vantage, Super Pi, FRAPS Professional, SiSoftware Sandra 2010, Cinebench 11.5, KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark 1(4), 3D Studio Max 2011, Handbrake, Encoding, Colin McRae Dirt 2, Alien V Predator, Crysis Warhead.

Compared to:

This motherboard was not compared to another board, but instead it was compared to its own overclocking results.

august 7 2010 review by hardwaresecrets

This 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.

Overclocking:

The reviewers did not perform any overclocking, there's a dedicated page for the BIOS options and a page that deals with the VRM. This mobo has a 10 phase voltage regulator circuit (8 CPU, 2 Memory). In their conclusion they write that the ASRock P55 Extreme4 has decent overclocking options and a decent voltage regulator circuit, but there is an absence of advanced overclocking options.

Compared to:

This mainboard was not compared to another board, nor are there any benchmarks tested.