ASRock X79 Extreme4-M and X79 Extreme4 Review – Sandy Bridge-E meets mATX
by Ian Cutress on December 9, 2011 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- X79
ASRock have released a range of motherboards for X79, and today we have looked at the X79 Extreme4-M, a microATX board with all the Sandy Bridge-E credentials, and its bigger brother, the X79 Extreme4. Along with this, ASRock are also planning on releasing an Extreme3, Extreme7, and an ultimate version Extreme9, all at various price points.
It is good to see a microATX board on the X79 market, despite the host of problems that it presents – the premium of space, the ability to use (and abuse) all the additional benefits X79 to offer, and the potential of making the board a lot cheaper than the full ATX brethren. ASRock are offering the X79 Extreme4-M for one cent less than $225 (MSRP), compared to the larger X79 Extreme4, which weighs in at just less than $235 (MSRP). In an age of austerity, a few dollars here and there can count, even if you splash out on an X79 and Sandy Bridge-E system.
However, there are points to note. These two boards are considerably cheaper than the ASUS P9X79-V Pro and Intel DX79SI I have reviewed so far. So, as you would expect, there are a couple of features you might not get. The biggest one to note is the memory – while on all the boards we have quad channel, for the smaller sum of money you only get one DIMM per channel, compared to two DIMMs per channel on the more expensive boards. As a personal option, this affects fewer people than you may think – of all the people who are going X79, enthusiasts (as opposed to professionals) rarely need more than 16 GB of memory. Given the low cost of 4GB DDR3 sticks, these ASRock boards can easily be filled with memory at little cost. If you need more, you could look at 8 GB sticks just coming onto the market, otherwise yes, you will need two DIMMs per channel motherboard.
In comparison between the two ASRock boards, you get a lot more than $10 difference in terms of extras on the full size ATX X79 Extreme4 than the price difference suggests – more PCIe slots and space for add-on cards, more SATA 6 Gbps ports and more in the box in terms of cables and SLI connectors. Thanks to the extra space, the PCIe x16 slots are also more beneficial for airflow in dual GPU setups on the Extreme4. As a result, you may see the mATX Extreme4-M being sold with small discounts (e.g. currently $219 at time of writing, saving £6) to reflect the true difference.
The Extreme4 also performs slightly better, especially in the memory overclock, though that may be down to the updated BIOS version which ASRock had not released for the Extreme4-M at the time of testing. Nevertheless, the Extreme4 would be my choice if I had to choose between these two boards for performance. If you absolutely need a mATX board, the Extreme4-M is not a bad choice. However, you will not be pushing any of the boards too hard on a CPU overclock. And for the noise conscious, you will definitely have to change that default CPU fan setting of a constant 100%.
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LauRoman - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Considering that inserting a pcie expansion card in a x16 (x8) slot could, on old chipsets/moterboards screw around with your 2/3/4 way sli/x-fire bandwith let's not kill it just yet.ckryan - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Intel chipsets don't have native PCI support anymore. You have to use a PCIe to PCI PLX chip on the motherboard to get the support. That means you're giving up PCIe bandwidth (probably not a big deal), but also PCI support is spotty. I have one SB board (an Intel DP67BG) that doesn't really work with any PCI soundcard (they've not been able to fix this with UEFI updates).
But at some point you just have to decide that you're going to not use PCI anymore, and people who refuse to replace their old busted sound card or bunk networking device are holding us all back. PCI is terrible, and I'd much have a PCIe x1 slot or no slot at all.
Wireless adapters are just as cheap in PCIe x1 as PCI, and gigabit ethernet is hamstrung by PCI as it's just not very fast. Soundcards are available from Asus and Creative in PCIe for cheap. I've got a Asus Essence STX PCIe which was more expensive, but why the hell would you buy the PCI version (which was more expensive) in 2011?
sylar365 - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
My "old, busted" soundcard.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Got something that sounds better without bloatware available in PCIe? Besides, most audio chips currently being produced and placed on PCIe sound cards still require a PLX chip in order to convert from the PCI standard to use the PCIe form factor.
IMHO i wish they would kill PCI - AND THEN - make decent sound hardware available for PCIe slots. Admittedly there have been a couple of products in the past couple of months starting to emerge, but FFS it is time to go mainstream with some high quality PCIe sound hardware already!
JonnyDough - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Agreed. I have a Creative X-Fi myself, wish I'd gotten the HT Omega instead but it either wasn't out yet or I wasn't that informed on sound cards at the time. PCI slots are still very much needed. I have network cards both GB ethernet and wireless that utilize the old PCI slot too.yk - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
What about HT | OMEGA eClaro 7.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Express x1 Interface Sound Card?Siorus - Monday, December 12, 2011 - link
Useless. Only one socketed opamp and the surround channels look to be handled by JRC garbage (at least it's a step up from the tin-can-telephone-on-a-chip stuff that Creative dumps on people). I think one of the Asus Xonar PCI-E cards has swappable opamps for every channel but I'm not positive.Either way, until I can get that on a PCI-E card, I'll need to keep my PCI stuff.
twoBitBasher - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
For now I'm still happy that Asrock is sticking with the PCI and the best part is that you can populate the whole board with dual slot graphics and still use the PCI! Most boards have already dumped PCI or implemented it so that if you go SLI or Xfire you are out of luck.Try to find decent cards with balanced 1/4" jack outputs and not go external!
Shadowmaster625 - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
PCI is what makes a PC. There are hundreds of thousands of different PCI products, and most of them have no reason or need to be migrated to a different form factor.Chubblez - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
The same thing has been said about ISA, EISA, and VLB. Where are they now?JonnyDough - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
They are more dated. PCI came after, and is a variant of ISA. Things are shifting, but many would argue that the slot is still needed. Besides, its cheap as hell to add one. If anything needs to die its PS2.