The ASRock E3V5 Performance Gaming (C232) Motherboard Review
by Ian Cutress on May 4, 2016 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- Xeon
- Skylake
- Intel C232
CPU Performance, Short Form
For our motherboard reviews, we use our short form testing method. These tests usually focus on if a motherboard is using MultiCore Turbo (the feature used to have maximum turbo on at all times, giving a frequency advantage), or if there are slight gains to be had from tweaking the firmware. We leave the BIOS settings at default and memory at JEDEC (DDR4-2133 C15) for these tests, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.
Video Conversion – Handbrake v0.9.9: link
Handbrake is a media conversion tool that was initially designed to help DVD ISOs and Video CDs into more common video formats. For HandBrake, we take two videos (a 2h20 640x266 DVD rip and a 10min double UHD 3840x4320 animation short) and convert them to x264 format in an MP4 container. Results are given in terms of the frames per second processed, and HandBrake uses as many threads as possible.
Compression – WinRAR 5.0.1: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here.
Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7: link
The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, or POV-Ray, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 2-3 minutes on high-end platforms.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
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BrokenCrayons - Thursday, May 5, 2016 - link
If someone is compelled to overclock to eek out what usually ends up being a rather small amount of additional performance, it was probably a better idea in the first place to include faster hardware in the budget. Such as in the case of an overclocked FreeNAS box in the above comment, overclocking what ought to be a stable, appliance-like system might result in additional, otherwise unnecessary considerations like more expensive and complex cooling and a potentially more costly motherboard that supports overclocking among other things that add to the overall system cost and eat into the advantage of buying a less expensive CPU, but overclocking it to get more expensive CPU-like performance. It may end up not saving much and burdening the system owner with the sunk time spent troubleshooting additional problems.xKrNMBoYx - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
OCing still works with the factory BIOS or the newest beta BIOSUbercake - Thursday, May 5, 2016 - link
I can't take anything ASRock seriously no matter how big the bargain.I just don't want to build a system based on a cut-rate foundation.
wyssn11 - Thursday, May 5, 2016 - link
Sky OC still works on this board.http://forums.vr-zone.com/hardware-depot/3349860-t...
Jrood89 - Thursday, May 5, 2016 - link
Are you sure? I am in desperate need of a new PC and would get this if it works stillxKrNMBoYx - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
Still works. Have a 3.6GHz 1275 V5 running at 4.5GHzblack8dragon - Wednesday, May 11, 2016 - link
Hi,i found someone who ownes this MB. Did you also Test avx2 performance? Like linpack?
sajiby3k - Thursday, May 5, 2016 - link
If possible, review the MSI C236A workstation. Feature wise that is a good alternative and also good price.12k456 - Saturday, May 7, 2016 - link
Thats really a awesome gaming motherboard and good review ............. http://techgrabo.comEtern205 - Saturday, May 7, 2016 - link
Asrock gaming logo looks like the fangs of Brak from Space Ghost Coast to Coast.