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%.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
54 Comments
View All Comments
DanNeely - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
A lot more of them do have reasons to be migrated than you'd think. Even 5 years ago I started seeing L shaped cards at the low end ( a tiny strip of PCB along the bracked, and a second for the PCI plug); chopping the 2nd half of the L cuts manufacturing costs by an amount that more than pays for the engineering over larger production runs.Devices that need larger PCBs but which have minimal bandwidth needs are an ever shrinking segment of the market. Even when total bandwidth isn't an issue the fact that PCIe bandwidth is dedicated instead of being shared means you no longer need to put as much hardware into buffering to avoid latency bursts when something else is using the bus more heavily.
Finally, once legacy PCI starts disappearing on a non-trivial fraction of boards total collapse from mainstream devices is inevitable. Once supporting PCIe becomes mandatory it's only a matter of time until redesigning the core chip on the card to be native PCIe instead of PCI and using a PCI-PCIe bridge chip becomes the cheaper option (probably with the next scheduled redesign). While they might initially maintain back compatability with a bridge chip going the other direction; however being doublely niche parts AGP gfx cards from 3 or 4 generations ago is probably a good comparison example. nVidia didn't make any at all, and the handful of ATI 3xxx/4xxx cards went at significant price premiums.
Eventually it'll end up like ISA; if you're willing to pay a large enough price premium (eg because the industrial/lab equiptment you're controlling costs thousands or millions of dollars to replace) there will be a handful of companies willing to sell you semi-custom boards at a large price premium and technology lag. The last time I looked I couldn't find ISA on anything newer than LGA775, until after intel finally pulls the plug on the last 775. That probably won't be for a while; if you look at their CPU database intel hasn't discontinued its embedded p4's yet, and probably won't file a while. IIRC they typically have contractual agreements to keep embedded parts in stock for a decade.
darckhart - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
nope. still useful for pci graphics cards for troubleshooting video probs.Blibbax - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
The differences in load power consumption might just demonstrate the margin of error on that test. Worth keeping in mind for other comparisons.The other possibilities are that the 5850s use a lot more power when they're a little bit hotter, and that the power circuitry on the M-ATX board is just awful under high load.
Concillian - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
I was reading through the article and thought I had hit back instead of forward since I had read the page I was reading before.After finding all my marbles, I noticed that the article has two sets of Page 2 & 3. page order is 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 4, 5...
hal74 - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
I am always disappointed to find an article written by Ian. I know that I'll get an article written by someone who fails at plural vs singular when talking about a company and who doesn't come up with interesting comparison charts. Ian chose to throw in an E350 into the mix and didn't even add any comparisons with an x58, or any other core i7. Also, whats with fascination with older video cards in SLI?Is this seriously what people want in an article from Anandtech?
Spivonious - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Usually, I'll let grammar mistakes slide, but when I find multiple mistakes on a single page it really starts distracting me from the material.Can we get editors for the articles written by non-native English speakers?
Spivonious - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
And "tenacity" is used incorrectly."...given ASRock’s previous tenacity when it comes to box bundling."
Does this make sense?
"...given ASRock's previous stubbornness when it comes to box bundling."
JonnyDough - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Yes. It does. Maybe your reading comprehension is lacking. The sentence means that ASRock will not budge when it comes to box bundling.Can we get some editors for the comments written by non-literate English readers?
Spivonious - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
"3.2 GiB limit of 32-bit"*scratches head*
I thought 2^32-1 was 4GiB...
Aisalem - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
using 32-bit you are able to address 4GB but unfortunately you will not be able to use whole 4GB in most of the 32-bit Windows installations, that also depend on the additional hardware you have.Now you shouldn't *scratches head*.