Asrock P67 Extreme4 review

[Ket]

Introduction


Review Date: March 1st, 2011
Manufacturer: Asrock
Website: www.asrock.com
Best Price: £131.43 inc. VAT, www.ebuyer.com

Asrock, founded in 2002, have primarily been a budget mainboard manufacturer. In more recent times Asrock has made a concerted surge forward into the enthusiast market, with excellent offerings such as the 890FX Deluxe4, 890GX Extreme3, P67 Transformer, and P67 Extreme6. With offerings such as these it looks like Asrock are not only intent on turning the enthusiast mainboard arena on its head but also determined on utterly outclassing its rivals on features to boot.

Today we will be looking at the little brother of the P67 Extreme6, the P67 Extreme4 which is directed at lower high-end systems and enthusiasts without such deep pockets. Let’s see if we can rid that “Asrock stigma”.


Specifications

Specs

As you can see from the official specifications page on the Asrock site, the P67 Extreme4 may be aimed at enthusiasts who don’t want to spend huge amounts on a mainboard, but the Extreme4 certainly doesn’t pull any punches with the inclusion of on-board Power and Reset buttons, 4x SATA3 ports, 4x USB3 ports (2 via a 2.5” mounting bracket that can be installed in a 2.5” FDD bay), a UEFI POST code display, rear mounted clear CMOS button, and a very beefy MOSFET cooling solution to name just some of its features.


Gallery – P67 Extreme4




Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the P67 Extreme4. The board is quite a work of art really, it’s clear to see Asrock put a lot of thought into the design layout of the Extreme4. If there’s one thing to moan about it would be the lack of a 3 pin fan header toward the bottom right of the board for a intake fan. Instead you will have to use a 3-4 pin converter.



If we take a moment to look the board over we will notice a 8+2 phase design. Some may argue 8+2 is “insufficient”, but I’ll take this opportunity to remind people those 8 phases for the CPU are well capable of supplying around 300 amps of current.

The board also features all solid state capacitors (as you would expect) very good expansion slot arrangement and a good deal of space around the CPU socket. You’ll also notice Asrock have decided to also build a 12v auxiliary connection onto the mainboard. Apparently it’s not necessary to plug a 12v connection in even when running a multiple graphics configuration. Therefore the best conclusion I can reach as to why Asrock built the 12v auxiliary connection onto the board is simply to help provide extra stable power, which may also help juice up the overclocks if the 12v auxiliary connection is plugged in. You may already of noticed there is one glaring issue – only a single ROM chip. Should a flash go wrong, recovery could be very difficult. Lastly, there’s two sets of mounting holes on the board for CPU coolers. One set is for Socket 775, the other for the new Socket 1155. Don’t worry 1156 owners, the hole spacing on the new 1155 is the same as 1156.

Let’s move on.



Here is the board from the side, the blue SATA ports are SATA2 and the white ports SATA3. Some may notice the fan header near the DIMM slots, convenient if you happen to be planning on using a RAM cooler.



There’s nothing particularly special to look at here all your regular ports are present and accounted for, USB3, USB2, PS/2 keyboard and mouse, 1394, etc. The Clear CMOS button is a nice inclusion.



Above is the heatsink used for the PCH chip on the Extreme4. You will notice it’s just a lump of metal designed for “bling” and not a practical or particularly functional heatsink. Given the frontal appearance I did expect to find a copper block for the base but as you can see that’s not the case here. I do wonder why Asrock chose this design for a heatsink, its inefficient, unnecessarily big, and just flat out rubbish. The PCH heatsink used on the P67 Pro3 would do a better job.



This must be one of the most interesting things to note. Asrock have stepped away from the commonly used NEC USB 3.0 controller and chosen to use the EtronTech EJ168 USB 3.0 controller.

The EJ168 certainly sounds like it can do the business, according to the documentation provided by EtronTech they are a world class IC design company. The chip itself is touted as being the world’s fastest USB 3.0 controller and the first to be interoperable with USB 2.0 and 1.1. EtronTech also claim their drivers are WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) tested and certified.


Test setup

The test setup being used today will be;

Asrock P67 Extreme4, UEFI 1.42A
Core i5 2500k
2x2GB PC12800 Ripjaws 7-8-7-24 1N
1GB GTX460
Xonar DX 7.1
640GB Western Digital Caviar Black, 32MB cache
XFX 750w modular PSU
Win 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1

Drivers:

Intel INF Update 9.2.0.1025
Realtek 7.041 RTL8111E driver
EtronTech driver 0.96
Marvel SE9120 SATA3 driver 1.0.0.1051
Xonar driver .1792


The UEFI

The UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is the spangly new replacement for the legacy BIOS. Some hate it, some love it. However you see it, UEFI is set to become much more common (at least on Intel boards) since Intel made UEFI a requirement of the new 67 chipsets. Some manufacturers have dug their heels in though (such as Gigabyte) still currently favouring the legacy BIOS combined with a workaround to support HDDs of 2.2TB and over.

Let’s take a look at the most interesting of the UEFI pages: OC Tweaker.






As we can see there is a lot of OC options to tweak pretty much everything you need. It should be noted the Extreme4 managed to take a set of PC12800 G.Skill Ripjaws to 2133MHz with timings of 8-10-8-25 1N 10-90-7-9-9-30 @ 1.65v. This is awesome, plain and simple. With more voltage you could likely tighten up timings even further.


Overclocking & Temperature

As many of you must be aware of by now Overclocking Sandy Bridge has changed to what it used to be. No more can you just buy a cheap chip and ramp up the BCLK. Instead, now your only option is to buy a “K” series CPU and adjust the multiplier, otherwise you are restricted to 4 speed bins up. Sandy Bridge certainly takes out a lot of the tweaking and anticipation of what you may be able to achieve, I can’t help thinking Overclocking has taken several steps backwards, but at least it’s easy for those not used to Intel.

Here is what I achieved with zero effort:



That is really quite impressive. 5 minutes in the UEFI and just like that the i5 2500k is running at 4.5GHz and memory at 2133MHz. This overclock passed 2 hours OCCT, 2 hours HCI Memtest and 2 hours of BOINC. These are the overclocks used in the ocerclocked tests.

Temperatures also remained perfectly within limits using a Hyper 212 Plus. I would not recommend using the intel stock cooler as the heatsink is positively tiny and just not up to much Overclocking despite intels new CPUs not outputting much heat.


Extreme4 Stock & OC’d Performance

AIDA64 Results















Undoubtedly these results are good. Particularly impressive are the AES and memory bandwidth scores. If you didn’t already know you could be understood for mistaking the memory bandwidth scores for triple channel. The results now capable from “just” a dual channel configuration on the new socket 1155 platform are incredible.


Conclusion

Using the Asrock P67 Extreme4 was quite pleasant. For the ridiculously cheap price you get a mainboard that absolutely, unequivocally, utterly blows any similarly priced competing P67 based mainboard out of the water. Yes it’s that good. In comparison to other P67 based boards at this price you get 2x extra SATA3 ports, 2x extra USB3 ports, a excellent MOSFET heatsink, on-board Power and Reset buttons, and a easily accessible Clear CMOS button. If all that isn’t enough there’s a good wealth of OC options in the UEFI. (I recommend using UEFI 1.61.) To even come close to finding another P67 mainboard that sports all these features you are going to have to spend another £30, and even then you are likely to still be missing a Clear CMOS button along with a couple SATA3 or USB3 ports.
What the Extreme4 has done with the precision of a deadly assassin is deliver a balls-to-the-walls Overclocking board that’s packed to the hilt with features without any of the additional fluff manufacturers charge for with more expensive boards. Sure, you’re going to be missing a few USB3 and SATA3 ports compared to £170+ boards (and I do literally mean a few) but do you want to pay a extra £55+ for those?
Anybody considering the switch to Socket 1155 should give the Asrock Extreme4 serious consideration. The Extreme4 represents excellent value for money, packs in a plethora of features, and is in general a great board to OC with.

The Good:
- 4x SATA3 ports
- 4x USB 3.0 ports
- Great MOSFET heatsinks
- Good array of OC options
- Well thought out expansion slot arrangement

The Bad:
- PCH heatsink is rubbish
- No dual CMOS
- Save some trees Asrock, stop giving us a 302 page manual stuffed with all kinds of other languages. Just give us the 44 page English bit.


Features: 10/10
Performance: 9.5/10
Design: 9/10
UEFI: 9/10
Value: 10/10

[sin0822]

I think you did a good job. doing all those benchmarks isn't easy.

[Ket]

I was going to do more benchmarks but decided against doing so as its about system performance and not gaming performance. I still might add some 7zip results though.

[Olivon]

Nice ket and big bang for bucks card from ASRock

[aslanwas]

Have you some OC comparison with another Low-End MoBo from other vendors, like the P8p67 or one of the MSIs ? Asrcok seems to increase the qualitiy of there MoBos in the last time
Anyway, nice MoBo for that cheap price, here under 100€

thanks for sharing and all those testing ,

[Ket]

Nice ket and big bang for bucks card from ASRock

Most deffinately. Asrock really pulled a rabbit out the hat with the Extreme4. I can't understand why anyone would want to buy anything else other than a Extreme4 or Extreme6. The UEFI on both boards is practically bugless and the boards are a absolute steal at their current prices.

[Ket]

Have you some OC comparison with another Low-End MoBo from other vendors, like the P8p67 or one of the MSIs ? Asrcok seems to increase the qualitiy of there MoBos in the last time
Anyway, nice MoBo for that cheap price, here under 100€

thanks for sharing and all those testing ,

The Extreme4 is most deffinately not low end, just low price I haven't got any other P67 boards to test unless manufacturers want to start sending me some review samples You can cross Asus off the list straight away though, I'm pretty sure their still pissed at me for hacking their P45 P5Q Series BIOSes apart and fixing up a good number of things they couldn't be arsed to do, nevermind making it so a P5Q Pro clocked equally as well as a P5Q Premium and better than a Maximus 2 Formula.. they probably lost sales on all but the P5Q Pro because of me doing that.

[Khoral]

I can't understand why anyone would want to buy anything else other than a Extreme4 or Extreme6.

Cause it's blue, and not black or red.
Seriously.



Edit : Oh and I just checked, it's not easily available in France.

[Ket]

Erm... are you blue>black colour blind? The Extreme boards are BLACK

[Khoral]

Slots are blue

[Ket]

So are the slots on many other black boards though lol

[sin0822]

Most deffinately. Asrock really pulled a rabbit out the hat with the Extreme4. I can't understand why anyone would want to buy anything else other than a Extreme4 or Extreme6. The UEFI on both boards is practically bugless and the boards are a absolute steal at their current prices.

I think that 50%-70% of whether someone buys the board or not is because of brand loyalty, those with more resources will buy them all but those with less will buy the board from the brand they like. There is no denying that asrock has a very small following in the OC community and that is why people wont buy this board, simply because of their experiences with other brands and seeing other people OC and make WRs on other boards. I personally think its nice asrock crams so many features for such a little price but you always wonder why its so cheap, where corners were cut. I am glad you did a write up on this board, its a nice board i think. Hey maybe asrock knows a secret we don't when it comes to the price of the components. Or maybe they just buy in large enough bulk.

[danielkza]

Or maybe they're trying to profit on volume over raw margins. I hope they succeed, indeed an awesome board for its price.

[Ket]

Asrock are a spin-off of Asus, they probably share stocks. As for OCs, I've seen the Extreme4 hit 5.1GHz+ comfortably so it can't even be considered inferior to the likes of the Asus ROG boards. IMO all Asrock are proving with the Extreme boards is that a lot of manufacturers charge extra just for their name being printed and charge you over the odds for a lot of fluff in the box you'll never use. I hope Asrock stick to offering awesome boards without the fluff and just give OCers what they want.

[Olivon]

Air overclocking on P67 boards is more a cpu-lottery affair, with its good prices ASRock has a good card to play.
But, to be honest, I don't know about extreme overclocking capabilities of the ASRock P67 series.
Pt1t has done some tests and and is able to give more informations on that.

[Ket]

Thats one reeason why I deliberately settled on 4.5GHz. Its at a level thats very common and easily comparable without anything becoming a limiting factor. I had 4.5GHz stable with 1.28v but notched it up a tad to 1.3v to make absolutely sure it was stable. Based on those results its equal with any other board you care to mention. At my current 4.6GHz heat is deffinately a factor for me, IBT tops out at about 80c with a Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus. I'm hoping with a couple custom tweaks the CoolIT ECO I have coming will get that temp down to 65-70c or thereabouts. I'm considering getting a Extreme6 for comparisions as well, so stay tuned

[Falkentyne]

Asus could EASILY sell the P8P Pro for $100, and the Maximus IV Extreme for $200 and make a killing. A Big killing. But they won't. Because they know people would pay the higher price. Does anyone REALLY believe that these boards cost more than $20 to silkscreen and assemble?

(excluding the Gigabyte Sniper and assassin, as they include onboard X-fi's and Killer Nic's).

It's like buying toilet paper from the store. Each set of toilet paper costs PENNIES to make. Yet you wind up paying $6.00 for a set of rolls.

[aoch88]

I have the same board and I have a question. I have set multiplier 46x and this should give me 4.6Ghz but even after disabling EIST and all the "C" states, CPU-Z shows 4.6Ghz in Windows but the moment I run Prime or LinX, it drops to 43x and 44x. What on earth is happening? Is my board faulty?

The BIOS seems to be the latest (v 1.6)

[radier]

@aoch88

Set Turbo Power Limits to 255/255 and Core Current to 300.

Also feel free to check my settings http://min.us/mvrHs6

[aoch88]

@radier

Thanks a lot there I'll give that a shot but I still don't understand, lol. What are those values for and what does it mean? It would be better to understand so I know what to tweak if it's needed.

[radier]

These are Turbo Power limits. Overclocking Sandy Bridge is about overclocking those Turbo states. It means how far you can go with max Turbo multiplier on all 4 cores. So if you put higher limits, the less likely that it will try to throttle down.

[Yorick_Rise]

Asus could EASILY sell the P8P Pro for $100, and the Maximus IV Extreme for $200 and make a killing. A Big killing. But they won't. Because they know people would pay the higher price.

Maybe I wil give you some other perspective - living in Poland, Europe:
I've bought Maximus II Formula back in 2008 when it was quite new and the cost was ~750 PLN now. Now the Maximus IV costs roughly 1200 PLN. That is absurd price difference and the 750 PLN is sufficient only for P8P67 Pro. Of course the exchange rate affects it with $ worth 40% more , but still that is 15% more for the board that has lesser influence on overclocking result. but for me while MIIF was ok for that time now Asus went crazy prices - for local perspective. So thank you Asus - with prices higher due to limited amount and high demand I've bought Extreme 4 for 570 PLN. And I'm pretty happy with it. Some additional temp sensors, PCIEx slots and power phases are not worth double price

[Ket]

Thats exactly why I will not buy Asus boards anymore (unless they are actually a decent price of course) as Asus seem to think their name printed on the board magically makes it better. News flash Asus: it doesn't. If I'm to be totally honest the Asrock P67 Extreme4 is probably the best I've ever used, reliable, stable, and the UEFI is practically bug free. A real pleasure to use really.

[sin0822]

Maybe I wil give you some other perspective - living in Poland, Europe:
I've bought Maximus II Formula back in 2008 when it was quite new and the cost was ~750 PLN now. Now the Maximus IV costs roughly 1200 PLN. That is absurd price difference and the 750 PLN is sufficient only for P8P67 Pro. Of course the exchange rate affects it with $ worth 40% more , but still that is 15% more for the board that has lesser influence on overclocking result. but for me while MIIF was ok for that time now Asus went crazy prices - for local perspective. So thank you Asus - with prices higher due to limited amount and high demand I've bought Extreme 4 for 570 PLN. And I'm pretty happy with it. Some additional temp sensors, PCIEx slots and power phases are not worth double price

I just got confused

[Ket]

Basically, a old board sells for more now than it did when it was new and stark price differences between a board Asus sell, and a board a competitor sells thats very similar for quite a bit less. Asus rob their customers blind.