ASRock M8 Barebones Review: My Steam Box
by Ian Cutress on January 2, 2014 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Barebones
- Intel
- ASRock
- Motherboards
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Z87
Due to the high end level of the systems that Dustin has benchmarked, our M8 configuration does not appear to fair too well on some of the synthetics – however frame rates in modern games are more than applicable and should systematically beat any console title if settings were equilibrated between the systems. For the price difference, one would hope so! Given that these are all tested against laptops, we see that while our low powered CPU may not be as fast as we had liked, the gaming frame rates are still at the high end.
PCMark 7
3DMark Fire Strike
Cinebench R11.5
x264 5.0 HD Benchmark
Bioshock Infinite
Grid 2
Sleeping Dogs
Tomb Raider
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Death666Angel - Monday, January 6, 2014 - link
Other way around: How is 50% more expansive in the M8's price range? :)HeavyClocker - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
I'm definitely going to build something with that chassis.It's portable as I desire :) I am currently using SG09 for portability :)
Origin64 - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link
At least it looks like a computer for 2014 instead of 1992 like the grey uninspired rectangles most brands still sell today. Also Steam machines will end the console as we currently know it; an x86-pc with a very limited OS and a very big pricetag. In its place: linux for free. A dream come true.Death666Angel - Monday, January 6, 2014 - link
I haven't seen something grey in retail for close to 5 years. It's all black and silver these days.cylemmulo - Monday, January 6, 2014 - link
Now that cyberpowerpc announced their $499 steambox, this seems like a horrible deal for 500 with nothing in itDeath666Angel - Monday, January 6, 2014 - link
Interesting. I wouldn't mind something like this, but get rid of the BMW stuff, which presumable just makes the thing cost more. And give me a CPU cooler that is tailored to the case, plus some more power phases for driving an i7 at around 4.2 to 4.5GHz. And a 500W PSU would put my mind at ease while running an overclocked CPU and a 300W GPU. :) Riser cards really need to take off, when I tried them once nothing worked. :/chenedwa - Tuesday, January 21, 2014 - link
I've had good success with a LianLi PC-Q27B. Accomodates full size power supply and full height card. Anyone else have success with this?koreandude - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link
How much smaller is it than a EVGA Hadron Air? I've currently got a EVGA Hadron Hydro with a i7-4770K, GTX 780, and two SSDs. I can't imagine this would be that much smaller than the Hadron.