ASRock H55DE3 motherboard review
Asrock introduced ten motherboards for Intel Socket 1156 processors, six on the P55 chipset and four on the newer H55. With one board from this four, namely with Asrock H55DE3, we will also get acquainted in this review. In addition, Asrock also released two motherboards of the format mATX, H55M and H55M Pro, as well as the top board of this line, the H55 Pro, which, however, is devoid of graphics output ports, typical of most motherboards based on the H55 chipset, and predecessors based on the P55 chipset. I note that the Asrock motherboards on the H55 chipset are already on sale and their cost is low enough against the background of the first wave of Socket 1156 boards, the price of which was slightly different from the Socket 1366 boards.
Of the innovations I want to note the combination of USB 2.0 connectors and eSATA, which does not require additional power connection. This board, like many other modern ones, has lost the support of outdated connectors for connecting IDE hard drives and DVDs, as well as Floppy drives.
The bundle delivered with the motherboard clearly shows its belonging to the lower price range - it includes only a pair of SATA cables, a cap on the back panel, a description and a CD with drivers and proprietary programs. Although, on the other hand, it may be better - you do not have to pay for sometimes unnecessary accessories.
The motherboard is made in dark brown color, PCI, PCI-E and DIMM connectors are in white-blue. In general, the board looks nice, but the lack of a radiator on the north bridge, as well as the bridge itself, still needs to get used to.
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The Asrock H55DE3 uses a LOTES processor socket, which is a definite plus, considering that the Socket 1156 Foxconn connectors were distinguished by a worse clamp of the socket pins to the corresponding processor contacts, which resulted in excessive heating and, sometimes, the connector’s failure, during processor operation overclocking with a strong increase in voltage.
The board has four slots for DDR3 memory. The bottom latches of these connectors do not rest on the textolite of a long video card. But in terms of compatibility, a different situation is possible - the width of this motherboard is 21 cm, that is, this is a truncated ATX format, so the memory connectors are close enough to the processor socket, which can make it difficult to install bulky processor cooling systems paired with memory modules with high radiators. In our case, while using a rather large Thermaltake SpinQ VT cooler and memory with just such radiators, fortunately, this conflict did not occur. The maximum amount of one memory module is 4 GB, in total you can install up to 16 GB of system memory. The maximum supported memory frequency is 1600 MHz in normal mode and up to 2600 MHz in overclocking mode.
Expansion slots: two PCI-E x16, two PCI-E x1 and again two PCI. The top slot PCI-E x16 runs at full speed (x16), the bottom one only in x4 mode. The board supports the possibility of combining two video cards using CrossfireX or Quad CrossfireX technology in case of using dual-chip video cards. A full-fledged PCI-E x16 slot and PCI slots on this motherboard are spaced as far as possible - this should please, for example, owners of external sound cards. The video card and the sound card will not warm up each other in vain.
The rear panel contains connectors for connecting a keyboard, six USB devices (two connectors are combined with eSATA), a network port, audio inputs and outputs, as well as three connectors for image output, D-SUB, DVI and HDMI. If there are not enough six USB connectors, you will have to buy either splitters or additional strips with USB connectors on the rear panel, the benefit of the outputs for connecting them on the motherboard is soldered as many as three. The graphics core built into the Intel Core i5 / i3 and Pentium G6950 processors has DirectX 10 support, version 4.0 pixel shaders and is capable of selecting up to 1759 MB of system memory for its needs. Also, following competitors in the production of motherboards with integrated graphics cards, Intel added hardware acceleration of high-definition video playback to this graphics core, which should relieve the CPU, reducing the power consumption of the computer when it is running in media center mode.
Four SATAII connectors are located at the bottom right edge of the board. The sound on this motherboard is answered by the rather rare 7.1-channel audio codec VIA VT1718S. For communication with the outside world - Realtek RTL8111DL Gigabit Ethernet controller.
On the Asrock H55DE3 used frequency generator ICS 9LPRS142AGLF. There is no support for this particular generator in the SetFSB program, but generators adjacent in number are great. The only advice, however common to any motherboard and frequency generator, is to avoid too large frequency jumps per press even at obviously stable frequencies, because this can lead to a system hang.
The processor power supply system includes four phases for powering the main processor core and one phase for powering the integrated memory controller and the graphics core, which are located under the same processor cover. Each phase has one choke and two mosfets. The cooling of the Mosphets is not provided, however, they didn’t warm up at all in any serious way, besides the absence of radiators on the power supply system eliminates possible conflicts with the processor coolers. When using a motherboard paired with the Clarkdale processor, this power supply system is more than enough - there were no extra drawdowns or power surges in the load.
For testing the Asrock H55DE3 motherboard, an open stand was assembled:
Intel Core i5 670 (ES) processor
CPU cooler Thermaltake SpinQ VT
Memory Kingston HyperX KHX2000C9D3T1K3 / 6GX 3x2048MB CL9 (two memory bars were used)
Asus 6600 video card, as well as built-in
Maxtor 6LS300S0 Hard Drive
Power Supply Cooler Master Real Power 850W
Arctic Silver Ceramique Thermal Grease
During testing, the operating system was Microsoft Windows XP SP3. The BIOS version of the motherboard is P1.10 of December 7, 2009.
Of the tests I was most interested in Wprime, in which the new i3 / i5 became recognized leaders among dual-core processors, as well as Winrar, very sensitive to bandwidth and memory latency, to confirm or deny conversations about the insufficient speed of the memory controller due to its separation from CPU core and use of QPI bus for communication between them.
The nominal multiplier of the processor Core i5 670 is 26, with Turbo Boost technology it rises to 27 in multi-threaded mode and up to 28 in single-threaded mode. Thus, the processor frequency will not fall below 3730 MHz in the load, regardless of its type. At this frequency, the result in Wprime 32M was 12.9 s. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that Intel quad-core processors of the past generation (Core 2 Quad), as well as modern AMD Phenom processors need to work at a frequency of 2900-3100 MHz to achieve this result. Really impressive.
Built-in test Winrar causes no excitement. Of course, the advantage over the past-generation dual-core processors is quite large, but it’s impossible to compete with quad-core processors. Clarkdale gains 2060KB / c with Hyper-Threading enabled and 1300 with disabled (Turbo Boost was disabled during the test). For comparison, AMD Phenom II x4 955 at its nominal 3200 MHz dials 2400KB / c, and Core i7 860 - over 3000.
The Thermaltake SpinQ VT cooler, which is not the most productive by today's standards, and a modest increase in voltage to 1.32V allowed to overclock the Core i5 670 to 4500 MHz while maintaining stability. At this frequency, the dependence of the result of the bench built into Winrar on the memory frequency and the system bus frequency was investigated.
According to the results, the conclusion is that the main frequency of the system bus (BLCK) is that the gain from its overclocking is very noticeable. It remains to find out whether the Asrock H55DE3 will become an obstacle in achieving high frequencies. I hasten to please everyone - I didn’t; she conquered the frequency of the 227 MHz clock generator. Such a frequency is enough to overclock any of the existing processors for Socket 1156 with non-extremal cooling, even the Pentium G6950, which has a multiplier of only 21 and is not supported by Turbo Boost technology.
Test the speed of the memory and processor caches from the Everest set at 4500 MHz:
Using the integrated graphic, by the way, did not affect the result at all - the difference compared with the use of external graphics was within the error.
The maximum benchmarking frequencies that were achieved on this processor instance with air cooling were 4793 MHz when tested in long Wprime and 4877 in short:
The more than adequate behavior of the board during air cooling and good overclocking seemed to me to be a sufficient reason to check the board at extreme cooling.
Unfortunately, the maximum voltage applied to the processor is limited to 1.6 V, which limits the entire overclocking to the frequency of 5400 MHz.
At this frequency, we managed not only to validate the CPU-Z, but also to calculate the short Wprime:
The rest, more demanding stability tests were passed at a frequency of 5300 MHz:
Conclusion
The Asrock H55DE3 motherboard made a very good impression. It can be recommended not only to the office computer, as I thought, for the first time looking at its image output connectors and the absence of cooling systems that are currently in fashion, but also to very productive computers under overclocking. The advantages of it are the ability to fix the multiplier increased by using the Turbo Boost technology, sufficient overclocking of the BLCK system bus frequency, overclocking both from the BIOS and from Windows, as well as the low price of the board.
The author - Andrey Markov
Of the innovations I want to note the combination of USB 2.0 connectors and eSATA, which does not require additional power connection. This board, like many other modern ones, has lost the support of outdated connectors for connecting IDE hard drives and DVDs, as well as Floppy drives.
The bundle delivered with the motherboard clearly shows its belonging to the lower price range - it includes only a pair of SATA cables, a cap on the back panel, a description and a CD with drivers and proprietary programs. Although, on the other hand, it may be better - you do not have to pay for sometimes unnecessary accessories.
The motherboard is made in dark brown color, PCI, PCI-E and DIMM connectors are in white-blue. In general, the board looks nice, but the lack of a radiator on the north bridge, as well as the bridge itself, still needs to get used to.
')
The Asrock H55DE3 uses a LOTES processor socket, which is a definite plus, considering that the Socket 1156 Foxconn connectors were distinguished by a worse clamp of the socket pins to the corresponding processor contacts, which resulted in excessive heating and, sometimes, the connector’s failure, during processor operation overclocking with a strong increase in voltage.
The board has four slots for DDR3 memory. The bottom latches of these connectors do not rest on the textolite of a long video card. But in terms of compatibility, a different situation is possible - the width of this motherboard is 21 cm, that is, this is a truncated ATX format, so the memory connectors are close enough to the processor socket, which can make it difficult to install bulky processor cooling systems paired with memory modules with high radiators. In our case, while using a rather large Thermaltake SpinQ VT cooler and memory with just such radiators, fortunately, this conflict did not occur. The maximum amount of one memory module is 4 GB, in total you can install up to 16 GB of system memory. The maximum supported memory frequency is 1600 MHz in normal mode and up to 2600 MHz in overclocking mode.
Expansion slots: two PCI-E x16, two PCI-E x1 and again two PCI. The top slot PCI-E x16 runs at full speed (x16), the bottom one only in x4 mode. The board supports the possibility of combining two video cards using CrossfireX or Quad CrossfireX technology in case of using dual-chip video cards. A full-fledged PCI-E x16 slot and PCI slots on this motherboard are spaced as far as possible - this should please, for example, owners of external sound cards. The video card and the sound card will not warm up each other in vain.
The rear panel contains connectors for connecting a keyboard, six USB devices (two connectors are combined with eSATA), a network port, audio inputs and outputs, as well as three connectors for image output, D-SUB, DVI and HDMI. If there are not enough six USB connectors, you will have to buy either splitters or additional strips with USB connectors on the rear panel, the benefit of the outputs for connecting them on the motherboard is soldered as many as three. The graphics core built into the Intel Core i5 / i3 and Pentium G6950 processors has DirectX 10 support, version 4.0 pixel shaders and is capable of selecting up to 1759 MB of system memory for its needs. Also, following competitors in the production of motherboards with integrated graphics cards, Intel added hardware acceleration of high-definition video playback to this graphics core, which should relieve the CPU, reducing the power consumption of the computer when it is running in media center mode.
Four SATAII connectors are located at the bottom right edge of the board. The sound on this motherboard is answered by the rather rare 7.1-channel audio codec VIA VT1718S. For communication with the outside world - Realtek RTL8111DL Gigabit Ethernet controller.
On the Asrock H55DE3 used frequency generator ICS 9LPRS142AGLF. There is no support for this particular generator in the SetFSB program, but generators adjacent in number are great. The only advice, however common to any motherboard and frequency generator, is to avoid too large frequency jumps per press even at obviously stable frequencies, because this can lead to a system hang.
The processor power supply system includes four phases for powering the main processor core and one phase for powering the integrated memory controller and the graphics core, which are located under the same processor cover. Each phase has one choke and two mosfets. The cooling of the Mosphets is not provided, however, they didn’t warm up at all in any serious way, besides the absence of radiators on the power supply system eliminates possible conflicts with the processor coolers. When using a motherboard paired with the Clarkdale processor, this power supply system is more than enough - there were no extra drawdowns or power surges in the load.
For testing the Asrock H55DE3 motherboard, an open stand was assembled:
Intel Core i5 670 (ES) processor
CPU cooler Thermaltake SpinQ VT
Memory Kingston HyperX KHX2000C9D3T1K3 / 6GX 3x2048MB CL9 (two memory bars were used)
Asus 6600 video card, as well as built-in
Maxtor 6LS300S0 Hard Drive
Power Supply Cooler Master Real Power 850W
Arctic Silver Ceramique Thermal Grease
During testing, the operating system was Microsoft Windows XP SP3. The BIOS version of the motherboard is P1.10 of December 7, 2009.
Of the tests I was most interested in Wprime, in which the new i3 / i5 became recognized leaders among dual-core processors, as well as Winrar, very sensitive to bandwidth and memory latency, to confirm or deny conversations about the insufficient speed of the memory controller due to its separation from CPU core and use of QPI bus for communication between them.
The nominal multiplier of the processor Core i5 670 is 26, with Turbo Boost technology it rises to 27 in multi-threaded mode and up to 28 in single-threaded mode. Thus, the processor frequency will not fall below 3730 MHz in the load, regardless of its type. At this frequency, the result in Wprime 32M was 12.9 s. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that Intel quad-core processors of the past generation (Core 2 Quad), as well as modern AMD Phenom processors need to work at a frequency of 2900-3100 MHz to achieve this result. Really impressive.
Built-in test Winrar causes no excitement. Of course, the advantage over the past-generation dual-core processors is quite large, but it’s impossible to compete with quad-core processors. Clarkdale gains 2060KB / c with Hyper-Threading enabled and 1300 with disabled (Turbo Boost was disabled during the test). For comparison, AMD Phenom II x4 955 at its nominal 3200 MHz dials 2400KB / c, and Core i7 860 - over 3000.
The Thermaltake SpinQ VT cooler, which is not the most productive by today's standards, and a modest increase in voltage to 1.32V allowed to overclock the Core i5 670 to 4500 MHz while maintaining stability. At this frequency, the dependence of the result of the bench built into Winrar on the memory frequency and the system bus frequency was investigated.
According to the results, the conclusion is that the main frequency of the system bus (BLCK) is that the gain from its overclocking is very noticeable. It remains to find out whether the Asrock H55DE3 will become an obstacle in achieving high frequencies. I hasten to please everyone - I didn’t; she conquered the frequency of the 227 MHz clock generator. Such a frequency is enough to overclock any of the existing processors for Socket 1156 with non-extremal cooling, even the Pentium G6950, which has a multiplier of only 21 and is not supported by Turbo Boost technology.
Test the speed of the memory and processor caches from the Everest set at 4500 MHz:
Using the integrated graphic, by the way, did not affect the result at all - the difference compared with the use of external graphics was within the error.
The maximum benchmarking frequencies that were achieved on this processor instance with air cooling were 4793 MHz when tested in long Wprime and 4877 in short:
The more than adequate behavior of the board during air cooling and good overclocking seemed to me to be a sufficient reason to check the board at extreme cooling.
Unfortunately, the maximum voltage applied to the processor is limited to 1.6 V, which limits the entire overclocking to the frequency of 5400 MHz.
At this frequency, we managed not only to validate the CPU-Z, but also to calculate the short Wprime:
The rest, more demanding stability tests were passed at a frequency of 5300 MHz:
Conclusion
The Asrock H55DE3 motherboard made a very good impression. It can be recommended not only to the office computer, as I thought, for the first time looking at its image output connectors and the absence of cooling systems that are currently in fashion, but also to very productive computers under overclocking. The advantages of it are the ability to fix the multiplier increased by using the Turbo Boost technology, sufficient overclocking of the BLCK system bus frequency, overclocking both from the BIOS and from Windows, as well as the low price of the board.
The author - Andrey Markov
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/80667/
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