i am about to buy an ASRock Z77 Extreme9 motherboard but i am being told by about everyone i know that ASRock is a poor board manufacturer and that i should go with an asus rog board instead. even if asrock has imporved upon their previous faults would they be a good choice for overclocking (with the board i mentioned above in particular)
i am moving from an asus rog board that i am using right now with my 2500k. the board that i have now is an asus maximus gene-z/gen3 i have 2 7950's in crossfire that have almost no room with this mobo inbetween the heatsyncs, causing my top card to be choked and rather hot during long gaming sessions (side note; with this asrock board would i be able to fit a card and then 2 slots without cards to allow for an extra slot worth of breathing room for the top card and then my second card?)
i am especially wondering about the stability of asrock boards when overclocking. currently on the maximus i have i am overclocked to 4.6 and have been for many months now and have been completely stable. (with the exception of a few bluescreens overnight that have happened once or twice for reasons i have been unable to track down.)
perhaps though, i should just go with the ASUS Maximus V FORMULA because it does have the 2 slots of room inbetween the pci-e's.
any reply of your experience or thoughts about asus and asrock are more than welcome. i am hoping to have a decision by the end of this weekend.
I'd also love some information on this. I'm in line to be buying their z77 extreme4. I've heard loads of people rave about them (including Logan) and say that they are unbeatable in their price ranges. Of course I have also heard the dark side. People who say theirs was faulty and how they now hate asrock. I think the people who like Asrock outnumber the rest, but still. Anyone got opinions?
I have had my AsRock Extreme 3 Gen 3 motherboard about six months and it works like a charm. I also have a 2500k but haven't overclocked at all so I don't know how stable it is.
While Asrock isn't among most people's trusted brands, I think it's perfectly fine for lower end stuff, it works, for higher end boards where you're spending more money, I'd look a bit more at Gigabyte and ASUS.
I have the AsRock Z68 Pro3 with an i5 2500K and it has been working with no issues for over a year now. I did set the the max frequency to 3.7 Ghz since the turbo boost never worked, even with high load etc.
Good board and it wasn't that expensive. Haven't done a BIOS upgrading though so I don't know how painful or painless that will be.
Also, what are you doing since you've OC'd the CPU to 4.6 Ghz? Unless you do video rendering or 3D work, theres no point.
Bluescreen = not stable (unless it's a software bug), have you tried running Prime95 for extensive periods of time?
I've heard nothing but good things about ASRock, and they're owned by the same parent company as ASUS. The Extreme 9 is their flagship board, so you should be getting a pretty high end board that will overclock really, really well.
If you want the best of the best, always go with the ASUS ROG boards though.
I have the ASRock Z77 Extreme4 board for 7 months now; no issues except for the part where I had to raise the RAM voltage from 1.25 (the G.Skill Sniper 1.25v series) to 1.3v. After that change, it has been running great.
Back up a several years ago and I wouldn't even think about getting an ASRock mobo, but now I would recommend to anyone.
alright, thanks for all the input everyone. does anyone know if i am capable of doing crossfire on the extreme 9 but with 2 pci slots inbetween the first and second card?