H67 – A Triumvirate of Tantalizing Technology

56 Comments

View All Comments

• bupkus - Monday, March 28, 2011 - link

  Agreed. The i3-2100 is a true budget cpu, imho. It should be matched with a true budget mobo-- namely the H61. I hope to see some more info on boards made with that chipset.

• Taft12 - Monday, March 28, 2011 - link

  It's not accurate to call the i3-2100 a "true budget CPU" while we've got stuff like the Athlon II X2 and Pentium E5xxx on the market.

• cjs150 - Monday, March 28, 2011 - link

  I am pleased you said this, because this is something I do not understand either, H67 looks to be a waste of time
  
  ASrock seems the best of this silly catagory. I have one of their boards in a file server, nice board, just works without fuss. Perfect for a server. May look at them for next build, instead of my usual ASUS fetish.
  
  One thing though that really bugs me. Why on all the Micro-ATX boards out there do they insist on having the top PCI-E so close to the bottom end of the memory sockets. Have the MB manufacturers not noticed that high end memory is shipping with cooling fans? Several times I have found it impossible to fit a graphics card and the memory fan, virtually every time at the very least I have to ensure that there are no possible shorts by putting electricians tape around the bottom of the memory fan clup on. MB manufacturers it is not difficult, move the PCI-E slot down by 5mm or the memory sokets up by 5mm

• bigboxes - Monday, March 28, 2011 - link

  Not a bash, but fans on DDR3 ram is mostly frivolous waste. Heck, most ram today doesn't even need fancy heatspreaders because they run so cool. This is about the H67 chipset so I don't think many would waste time/money on buying high end memory that offers little in the terms of performance. Don't worry, Z68 is coming soon and you'll be able to buy your full ATX board that you can load up with the latest and greatest in parts to get that XTREME o/c. This chipset is not marketed for you.

• ArtShapiro - Monday, March 28, 2011 - link

  I'd like to think that I (a decided non-gamer) am the target audience.
  
  I currently have a physically large (huge?) desktop system in a Chenboro 105 case. No way this monster can fit in the alcove in my computer desk, so it sits on the floor with the usual scads of cables coming from the desk. What a royal pain to move, clean, etc.
  
  I suspect this summer I'll have an H67 system in a tiny (maybe Antec 300-150) case, little bigger than my tiny Asus TS mini Windows Home Server machine. With no graphic card, this thing should be efficient and dwarf the performance of the existing monster.
  
  The H67 setup fits my needs to an alarming degree!
  
  Art

• Concillian - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link

  I suspect this summer I'll have an H67 system in a tiny (maybe Antec 300-150) case, little bigger than my tiny Asus TS mini Windows Home Server machine. With no graphic card, this thing should be efficient and dwarf the performance of the existing monster.
  
  The H67 setup fits my needs to an alarming degree!

  
  
  What about this system cannot be handled by a significantly cheaper H61 motherboard? I missed that part of why H67 was perfect.

• Taft12 - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link

  He's not a gamer, but maybe he wants the SATA 6Gbit ports? 4 memory slots? USB 3.0?
  
  H61 boards are lacking, well, a lot if you're want anything beyond ultra-entry-level.

• ArtShapiro - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - link

  Pure power. The cost is irrelevant (within reason); the increased processor of, say, the 2500/2500K will be a nice thing in processor-heavy applications and will probably ensure a longer relevant lifetime for the machine.
  
  I figure it's worth it to shell out a little more upfront for the H67.
  
  Art

• bobbyto34 - Monday, March 28, 2011 - link

  Thanks a lot for testing DPC Latency. This can be a major issue for DAW's users.

• Spoelie - Monday, March 28, 2011 - link

  I would concede that an integrated GPU is a very valuable tool for any computer user. It can be used to eliminate variables when troubleshooting a system, and to prevent downtime when the discrete GPU passes away. For this reason and this reason alone I personally don't buy a system without an integrated GPU anymore, even though I always have discrete GPUs. At least in 2 cases this has helped me tremendously.
  
  My personal preference is a cheap but good overclocking mATX board with (support for) iGPU & at least 1 eSATA port. Couldn't care less about SLI/XFire & RAID5, so the 785+SB710 board I now use was perfect, but without USB3 and SATA6 it's starting to show its age. One of the reasons I haven't switched to SNB is that Intel can't provide me that platform yet.
  
  Here's to hoping for cheap mATX Z68 and cheap(er) K series CPUs.