Intel S1155 by stefan @ 2011-01-22
The Extreme4 P67 motherboard from ASRock is a feature-rich product which incorporates the latest technologies like USB 3.0/SATA3/eSATA3, supports the Sandy Bridge CPUs from Intel and comes with a very easy to use UEFI BIOS; the motherboard comes with a 8+2 power phase design and is offered at a competitive price. In this review we use the board to push our 2500K CPU to 4.8Ghz with air cooling.
At first I would like to thank ASRock for offering me a sample of their P67 Extreme4 Motherboard for review.
"ASRock Inc., established in 2002, target at entry to mainstream segment MB business, is an energetic company with the combination of technology and humanity. Devoting efforts to bring customers the innovative and reliable motherboards with the design concept of 3C, "Creative, Considerate, Cost-effective", ASRock has successfully established a well-known leading brand of the best price-performance motherboard in the industry. ASRock products' high recognition stems from company’s devotion to bring the most cost-performance products to users.
Besides creative features and solid products, ASRock engineers also pay special attention to EMI, thermal, acoustics and details to achieve complete customer satisfaction. In addition to price-performance, creative and considerate features, ASRock also pay special on the issue of eco-environmental protection with the released of ROHS products and energy saving functions to save the environment.
To succeed in this ultra-competitive industry, ASRock provides great products with speed-to-market, cost and service to customers.
Facing the constantly changing technologies of motherboard, ASRock will always keep the vision of the future and develop future-proof products upon our 3C design concept to our customers.
It is the commitment to our customers and products, like the spirit presented in our maxim:
"Motherboard, We Master It!" "
ASRock XFast USB Technology - Faster Than Your Imagination!
ASRock XFast USB Technology redefines the new standard in high performance computing. Proving once again to be the pioneer in motherboard industry, ASRock XFast USB Series Motherboards integrate with the latest XFast USB Technology which delivers the world's fastest USB data transfer speed. According to the below graph, it shows that the ASRock XFast USB technology can even boost USB 3.0 performance up to 97.7%!
C.C.O. (Combo Cooler Option)
C.C.O., stands for Combo Cooler Option, is another exclusive hardware design on ASRock boards. C.C.O. provides the flexible options to adopt different CPU cooler types and matches your socket LGA775, LGA1155 / LGA1156 CPU cooler in the respective holes. Once again, ASRock has successfully expanded the utilization of PCB by the exclusive C.C.O. design.
DuraCap
ASRock DuraCap featuring all solid capacitor design, 100% Japan-made high-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors which can last 2.5 times longer lifespan.
Digi Power
By adopting digital Pulse-width modulation (PWM), the ASRock motherboard can provide CPU Vcore voltage more efficiently and smoothly. Compared to analog PWM, digital PWM can optimize the CPI power solution and provide a proper and stable Vcore for the processor.
THX TruStudio PRO™
THX TruStudio PRO™ solution ensures you the premium audio quality, effects and features for PC systems equipped with onboard audio. For instance, the TruStudio Surround technology expands your stereo content into surround sound; the TruStudio Crystalizer technology restores the compressed sound source and can let you hear every detail in riveting surround sound. Combined with the THX TruStudio PRO and the ASRock high performance HTPC system, you will be assured to enjoy a rich variety of PRO gramming and be entertained by a better way!
Front USB 3.0 Panel
The Front USB 3.0 Panel supports 2 x USB 3.0 ports and provides a 2.5” SSD/HDD rack.
AXTU - The All-in-1 Tuning Software
ASRock Extreme Tuning Utility (AXTU) is an all-in-one software to fine-tune different features in an user-friendly interface, which includes Hardware Monitor, Fan Control, Overclocking, OC DNA and IES. In Hardware Monitor, it shows the major readings of your system. In Fan Control, it shows the fan speed and temperature for you to adjust. In Overclocking, you are allowed to adjust the CPU frequency, ratio and some voltages for optimal system performance. In OC DNA, you can save your OC settings as a profile and share with your friends. Your friends then can load the OC profile to their own system to get the same OC settings. In IES (Intelligent Energy Saver), the voltage regulator can reduce the number of output phases to improve efficiency when the CPU cores are idle without sacrificing computing performance.
UEFI – The Revolutionary BIOS Interface
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a revolutionary BIOS utility which offers tweak-friendly options in an advanced viewing interface. Compared with traditional BIOS design, the latest UEFI utility provides lots improved functions. The major features of UEFI include:
1. Graphical Visual Experience – UEFI provides an improved visual interface with colorful icons and makes your computing environment more versatile to replace the traditional dull BIOS page.
2. Mouse Enabling – Besides keyboard control, you can freely use mouse to select your ideal settings in UEFI as well.
3. Support bootable HDD over than 2TB – UEFI breaks the limitation of 2TB bootable HDD on traditional BIOS. With UEFI, you can enjoy the bootable HDD size over than 2TB!*
ASRock SmartView
It is the smart start page for IE that combines your most visited web sites, your history, your Facebook friends and your real-time newsfeed into an enhanced view for a more personal Internet experience. ASRock motherboards are exclusively equipped with the SmartView utility that helps you keep in touch with friends on-the-go.
ASRock Software Suite
ASRock software suite is designed with the customer-oriented concept, delivers the best possible experience for today’s most demanding users.
The Extreme4 motherboard from ASRock comes with the Intel P67 chipset and permits the installation of the latest LGA1155 Sandy Bridge processors. The box in which the product comes shipped has a very nice and clean design; on the top side we can see the ASRock logo, along with the full name of the product:
On the bottom of the box, we are explained the main components of the motherboard, along with the benefits of using the ASRock XFast USB Technology and the new technologies are also introduced:
After we open up the box, we can see that it is split into 2 layers; the top layer holds the documentation along with the bundle and the bottom one contains the motherboard:
In the box we can find:
- 1x front USB 3.0 Panel
- 1x I/O Panel Shield
- 4x HDD screws for the USB Panel
- 1x Rear USB 3.0 Bracket
- 2x Serial ATA HDD power cables
- 1x Ribbon Cable for a 3.5-in Floppy Drive
- 4x Serial ATA Data cables
- 1x ASRock SLI_Bridge_2S Card
- 6x Chassis Screws
- 1x ASRock Driver+Applications CD
- 1x Quick Installation Guide
- 1x UEFI Settings Guide
The Front USB 3.0 Panel is a 2-in-1 device, meaning that with it we can expand our conectivity with two extra ports in the front of our case, but we can also use it for housing a 2.5'' HDD or SSD:
The Front USB 3.0 Panel has a connector that can be plugged straight into the dedicated header on the motherboard:
The Quick Installation Guide shows us step by step with pictures and photos how to install the motherboard on our system, along with the other components; the newly adopted UEFI BIOS is described in another separate little manual:
For added protection during transport, the motherboard is wrapped in an anti-static bag:
The Extreme4 has a very clean design and there is enough space left between the first and second PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots for installing video cards with beefy cooling setups:
To the right part of the board, we can locate the nuvoTon IO controller:
Near it, we can also find the Realtek RTL8111E Gigabit Ethernet controller:
The sound interface is provided by the Realtek ALC892, a 8-channel HD audio CODEC:
Between the VRM heatsink and the first PCI-Express x1 slot, we can find a MOLEX header, along with two 3-pin fan headers:
On the bottom, we can find lots of other headers (from left to right):
-Front Panel Audio Header
-COM Port Header
-Floppy Connector
-Infrared Module Header
-Front Panel IEEE 1394 Header
-3xUSB 2.0 Front Panel Headers
-1xUSB 3.0 Front Panel Header
-Chassis Speaker Header
-System Panel Header
The Asmedia ASM1083 is located between the two bottom PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots and it is a x1 PCI Express to 32-bit PCI Bridge; this controller was installed because the P67 chipset does not support PCI lanes anymore and ASRock gives a chance to people that still have good cards on this interface to continue to use them (TV tuners, audio cards and so on):
One of the EtronTech EJ168A USB 3.0 controllers can be found on the low right side of the board, near the USB 3.0 Front Panel Header; the second identical controller can be found between the VRM and the I/O panel connectors:
A LED display, named Dr. Debug by ASRock, shows us the states through which the motherboard passes during boot time, but also error codes:
On the right side of the PCB we can find the Power and Reset buttons (which are very useful when testing up the board, before inserting it inside a case), along with the 64Mb SPI Flash UEFI chip:
The SATA connectors are color coded, the blue ones being SATA2 and the white ones SATA3:
Near the ATX Power connector, we can find another 4-pin fan header and a Clear CMOS jumper:
Two of the SATA3 connectors are provided by the Marvell SE9120, which supports NCQ, AHCI and “Hot Plug” functions:
Very near to the P67 chipset cooler, we can find the PLX PEX8608 PCI Express switch chip, which offers 8 PCI Express 2.0 lanes:
The Extreme4 offers a 8+2 Power Phase design and the VRM heatsinks have been redesigned from the previous generations:
The VRM heatsink is split into two parts and linked with one heatpipe:
Near the DDR3 memory slots and the VRM heatsink, we can find other two fan headers, one 4-pin and one 3-pin:
The memory slots channels are color coded:
On the top left side of the motherboard, we can find the ATX 8-pin Power connector:
Very near to the ATX 8-pin Power connector, we can find another 3-pin fan header:
The P67 chipset heatsink has a cool appearance, with the ASRock logo and a V8 printed on it:
The LGA1155 socket components keep about the same color theme as the rest of the heatsinks located on the board:
The I/O Panel ports/switches are the following:
-PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard port
-Clear CMOS Switch
-Optical and Coaxial SPDIF Out port
-6x USB 2.0 ports
-2x USB 3.0 ports
-1x LAN RJ45 port
-1x eSATA3 connectors
-1x IEEE1394 Port
-6x Audio jacks
The new UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) from ASRock looks much better that the previous generation BIOS, and it comes with a green/blue/grey theme; the main BIOS sections are represented with buttons on the top side of the interface and the current date/time is shown in the bottom right portion of the screen.
The Main section contains information regarding the currently installed UEFI version, the CPU name along with its rated speed, the current processor speed, microcode update, the CPU cache size, total memory installed and how the memory is distributed in the slots:
The OC Tweaker is the most interesting section of the UEFI, because here we can modify the CPU multiplier (if we do own a K series CPU), set custom voltages, memory timings or even save our settings in 3 different slots; in the first section we can also observe the Internal PLL Overvoltage option, which allows better CPU Turbo Ratio overclock capability with D2 stepping CPUs, the fully adjustable power throttle (we can customize both short and long power duration limits) or the Core Current Limit:
Further down, we can set advanced memory timings, or we can simply enable the embedded XMS profile:
Next, we can set various voltages like Vcore, DRAM voltage, PCH, PLL, VTT (VCCIO), VCCSA or select the Load-Line Calibration levels. The modifications we've made can be saved with the name of our choice. I have seen that the save and load time of the profiles is much, much faster compared to the ones in BIOSes:
The Advanced section contains some more sub-menus that we can configure:
In the CPU Configuration sub-menu, we can set how many CPU cores we want enabled, enable disable the Hardware Prefetcher or the Adjacent Cache Line Prefetch function; the CPU Thermal Throttling can be enabled or disabled from the same menu, along with the Intel Virtualization or No-Execute Memory Protection:
In the North Bridge Configuration sub-menu, we can customize the Low MMIO resources alignment, the Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O can be enabled or disabled and we can also specify which will be the first Primary Graphics Adapter to initialize:
In the South Bridge Configuration sub-menu, we can enable/disable some of the onboard chips, like LAN, Firewire, HD audio or we can enable/disable the Front Panel audio:
The Storage Configuration sub-menu allows us to change the functionality of the onboard SATA3 Marvell controller, or we can set the SATA mode for the SATA2 ports, enable/disable S.M.A.R.T. and so on. In the same menu, we can see listed the detected drives connected to the motherboard:
In the Super IO Configuration submenu, we can enable/disable the Onboard Floppy Controller, the Serial Port or the Infrared Port:
In the ACPI Configuration sub-menu, we can modify some of the power management settings:
In the USB Configuration sub-menu, we can enable/disable the USB controllers, or enable legacy support for older devices:
The H/W Monitor section shows us extended live information regarding the temperatures, connected fan speeds or the voltages; in the same section we can set the fan speeds on different levels, or we can enable/disable the Over-Temperature Protection feature:
In the Boot section, we can set the boot option priorities, enable/disable the Full Screen Logo, LAN boot or the Boot Failure Guard:
In the Security section, we can see options most of us are familiar with from the older BIOSes; here we can set the Supervisor or User passwords:
Finally, the Exit section contains options to save, discard or load default UEFI values; there is another new option available, which makes the launch of the EFI Shell from a file system device possible:
CPU : Intel I5 2500K Retail
CPU Cooler: Noctua U12P SE2
Motherboard : ASRock P67 Extreme4
RAM : G.Skill Ripjaws F3-12800CL8D-4GBRM
Video : Sparkle X460 Calibre 1GB
Power Supply : Cooler Master 850W
HDD : Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200.10
Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840
Reaching 4.8GHz with this board was not difficult, but to make the system fully stable, some manual voltage adjustments were needed:
Here is also the 4.8GHz validation:
With the latest version of AIDA64, we can extract more information regarding the motherboard, the CPU IMC and the P67 chipset:
The ASRock Windows system customization utility was reworked and now contains features like OC DNA, IES (which were offered as separate applications in the past). In the first tab, we can find the Hardware Monitor, where we can see the current clock speeds, temperatures, fan speeds and voltages in real time:
The Fan Control tab allows us to customize the speed of the installed fans:
The Overclocking tab permits us to modify the clock frequencies, CPU ratio and voltages on the fly:
In the OC DNA tab, we can see listed the motherboard model, its currently installed UEFI version and UEFI build date; here we can also save or load current profiles, without entering the UEFI interface:
Finally, in the IES tab, if we have Power Saving enabled in UEFI, we can see this option turned on and the application also shows us how many phases are used in real time:
The ASRock XFast USB is another interesting application that comes with the motherboard and permits to boost the read/write transfer speeds of any USB storage device:
To see if this application has some impact to the transfer speeds, I have inserted a USB 2.0 flash drive and did some read and write tests:
XFast USB Read Normal
XFast USB Read Turbo
XFast USB Write Normal
XFast USB Write Turbo
SmartView is another application on the ASRock CD, that acts like a portal with multiple functionalities:
The Extreme4 motherboard does also come with the Instant Boot application, which boosts considerably the computer boot time:
On the CD we can also find a trial version of the Creative X-FI MB, CyberLink DVD Suite and a standalone THX TruStudio PRO™ application.
AIDA64 CPU Queen
AIDA64 PhotoWorxx
AIDA64 Zlib
AIDA64 AES
AIDA64 CPU Hash
AIDA64 FPU VP8
AIDA64 FPU Julia
AIDA64 FPU Mandel
AIDA64 FPU SinJulia
Cinebench R10
Cinebench R11.5 CPU Score
CrystalMark
PCMark05 System Suite
PCMark Vantage Suite
3DMark 2001 Default Run
3DMark 2003 CPU Score
3DMark 2005 CPU Score
3DMark 2006 CPU Score
3DMark Vantage CPU Score
3DMark11 Performance Score
PerformanceTest 7 CPU Mark
SuperPI 1.5 XS 2MB
wPrime 32M
Crysis Very High DX10 1920x1200
Street Fighter 4 1920x1200
Far Cry 2 Ultra DX10 1920x1200
I have really enjoyed working with the Extreme4 P67 motherboard from ASRock; the new UEFI is really easy to use and I observed that the realtime RPMs/voltages and temperatures are displayed with a higher refresh rate in the H/W monitor section compared with the BIOSes from older boards. The latest beta UEFI did also have a catchy feature: I was able to take snapshots of the UEFI menus and save them directly to USB storage, only by pressing F12. The output files are BMP, with the 1024x768 resolution!
Getting to 4.8GHz is not a very difficult task thanks to the new CPU architecture and 32nm process (considering that we already have a K CPU handy, with the unlocked multiplier); however, getting to this speed with the lowest voltage possible takes a little time, and the voltages at which the CPU is stable are very different from one CPU to another.
During overclocking, I did not need to use the CMOS Reset button once, the system being very stable in UEFI. The Extreme4 UEFI is also provided with a Boot Failure Guard, which kicks in in case of trouble. Overclocking to 4.8GHz seems to bring a lot of extra performance compared to stock in productivity applications, but less in games. The new CPUs are also much cooler compared to the previous generation; the hottest CPU core did not exceed 68 degrees in Prime95 after one hour, while the multiplier was set at 48, and CPU voltage at 1.265.
The only UEFI problem that I had was related to mouse hardware support in the UEFI interface: with my ROCCAT Kone the mouse pointer was not moving at all, and when trying with another wireless mouse, the pointer could be barely moved up and down. It seems that this is not an isolated issue and it can be found at other manufacturers too as people report on some forums.
The Extreme4 also offers the latest USB3.0/eSATA3/SATA3 interfaces, so we do not have to bother with addon cards. The board is also shipped with an USB 3.0 Front Panel (which also has the possibility to house a 2.5'' HDD or SSD), that can plugged right into a dedicated USB 3.0 header on the board.
The board layout is not crowded at all and there is plenty of space left between the first and second PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots, to fit video cards with large cooling systems. Also, the VRM cooling has been reworked and I did not have any problems with the system overheating (for example, sudden shutdowns). Also, the ASRock team has also thought of the people that still have older LGA775 water blocks/CPU coolers and want to re-use them, by featuring the Combo Cooler Option.
The P67 Extreme4 does also have a good price/performance ratio and can be found in shops for about 126 Euros.
I would like to thank ASRock for allowing us to test their latest products.