What do you think of the AsRock Extreme 4 P67 board ?

[harbin]

Has the initialization speed of the bios at start up been improved with boards that have uefI?

The boot time is shorter on ext4 than P8P67

 

[Bryf50]

From the pics it looks like the ASRock has 1 "big" molex power connector listed as one of the CHA FAN (chassis fans).....if I use that for one of my fans do you know if it will auto-adjust?

I think your reading the wrong label. The big molex connector is for providing extra power to the PCI-E slots mostly for the purpose of running sli or xfire.

 

[harbin]

Anybody got fan speed control working (via BIOS or via windows fan xpert program)?

I tried both, none of them seemed worked.

 

[Porco Rosso]

I've enabled usb3.0 on 1.4 bios no problems, it must of been the xfast utility.
I would like to know if anyone is using AHCI sata 3.0 to boot from, I looked up AHCI on a bios guide and it stated NCQ would be enabled. But my Corsair SSD will only boot in IDE compatible mode.

 

[coffeejunkee]

I got the Rosewill Challenger case, and I believe 2 of the 3 fans just have the big Molex power connectors. Does this mean I should plug those into the PSU directly, and I guess they just run at full power whenever the computer is on?

Or am I supposed to get some sort of a Molex to smaller 3 or 4-pin adaptor and plug them into the mobo headers?

I guess as long as the fans are pretty quiet I don't care if they are adjusting their speed or just running flat out......and I know 1 of the 3 fans can go into the mobo as it is now (it has the small header).

From the pics it looks like the ASRock has 1 "big" molex power connector listed as one of the CHA FAN (chassis fans).....if I use that for one of my fans do you know if it will auto-adjust?

Those of you who have the ASRock - any guidance on best way to hook up multiple fans?

The molex connector on the mobo is meant to give extra power to the graphics cards for overclocking. Therefore it receives power and doesn't give power.

If you can actually attach a fan to it, it must mean your fan has a female molex connector. Which wouldn't fit on the female molex connectors from your psu. If your fan has a male molex connector you wouldn't be able to connect it to the molex header on the mobo in the first place. It would fit on the psu molex headers but indeed run full speed all the time.

The best way to hook up your fans to your mobo would be to buy 3-pin fans. Or molex-to-3-pin female adapters. But since molex has no rpm wire you wouldn't be able to read out rpm values.

Anybody got fan speed control working (via BIOS or via windows fan xpert program)?

I tried both, none of them seemed worked.

Have you tried Speedfan? (you'll probably have to configure some setting first in Speedfan, Google might be of assistance).

 

[Hogan773]

The molex connector on the mobo is meant to give extra power to the graphics cards for overclocking. Therefore it receives power and doesn't give power.

If you can actually attach a fan to it, it must mean your fan has a female molex connector. Which wouldn't fit on the female molex connectors from your psu. If your fan has a male molex connector you wouldn't be able to connect it to the molex header on the mobo in the first place. It would fit on the psu molex headers but indeed run full speed all the time.

The best way to hook up your fans to your mobo would be to buy 3-pin fans. Or molex-to-3-pin female adapters. But since molex has no rpm wire you wouldn't be able to read out rpm values.



Have you tried Speedfan? (you'll probably have to configure some setting first in Speedfan, Google might be of assistance).

Thanks. The Challenger is back in the box so I don't have it handy. I just remember 2 of the fans had the "big" power plug.

So basically IF I want to run all the fans thru the mobo (and therefore allow the mobo to throttle them up and down) then I'd need to get new fans? Otherwise I can buy a "Molex to smaller 3 pin" adapter which should then fit on the mobo, but all I'm doing is just routing electrons through the mobo and up to the fan, but not getting speed control? If that's the case then I should just plug the fan directly into the PSU.

As long as the fans aren't too loud, then I'm prob not interested in investing more money to buy new fans with the little mobo plugs, and 2 of my 3 fans (actually 2 of 4, when counting the Hyper 212+) can just run whenever the computer is on.

 

[coffeejunkee]

So basically IF I want to run all the fans thru the mobo (and therefore allow the mobo to throttle them up and down) then I'd need to get new fans? Otherwise I can buy a "Molex to smaller 3 pin" adapter which should then fit on the mobo, but all I'm doing is just routing electrons through the mobo and up to the fan, but not getting speed control? If that's the case then I should just plug the fan directly into the PSU.

No, with the adapters you can still control the fanspeed. But you won't be able to read out the fan rpm in bios or using software.

 

[Hogan773]

sorry I'm a noob. How does the mobo control the fanspeed if it doesnt know the RPMs? Or is it just a relative power thing? (ie 25% of total available power)

Is there any benefit to doing it this way other than noise?

I know I can Google but what is best place to get an adapter like that for cheeeep? MicroCenter? Ideally I'd like to know what is the equivalent of monoprice.com for pc doo-dads.....trusted quality and cheap price

 

[Spike]

sorry I'm a noob. How does the mobo control the fanspeed if it doesnt know the RPMs? Or is it just a relative power thing? (ie 25% of total available power)

Is there any benefit to doing it this way other than noise?

I know I can Google but what is best place to get an adapter like that for cheeeep? MicroCenter? Ideally I'd like to know what is the equivalent of monoprice.com for pc doo-dads.....trusted quality and cheap price

If the mobo is like the physical fan controllers it just changes the voltages. I use a fan controller installed into one of my 5.25" bays and it changes the fans voltage between 7v and 12v. If you just plug a fan in it runs at the full 12v unless it has a switch, thermal sensor, or some other control built in to slow it down.

If your looking for a physical unit Zalman makes many good ones that can be found at multiple websites. Here is basically the one I have, though I paid a fair bit less for it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811999220

 

[Porco Rosso]

Re: my problem with AHCI on sata not allowing be to boot into win7, I found this browsing the forum:

In your BIOS, do you have AHCI enabled on your SATA port? You have to have in enabled for hot swapping an esata device to work. Be warned though, if you installed Windows on a SATA drive with AHCI disabled, then you enable it, you won't be able to boot into Windows. So if you do plan on changing it, following these instructions before you edit the BIOS:

http://www.windows7news.com/2010/05/25/how-to-enable-ahci-in-windows-7/

Just incase anyone else has this problem and thinks it's unique to a particular motherboard.

 

[Hogan773]

If the mobo is like the physical fan controllers it just changes the voltages. I use a fan controller installed into one of my 5.25" bays and it changes the fans voltage between 7v and 12v. If you just plug a fan in it runs at the full 12v unless it has a switch, thermal sensor, or some other control built in to slow it down.

If your looking for a physical unit Zalman makes many good ones that can be found at multiple websites. Here is basically the one I have, though I paid a fair bit less for it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811999220

ooohhh no that's too fancy for me. I just meant an 89 cent doodad with a Molex on one side and a 3 pin on the other, to allow my Molex fan plug to plug into the mobo

Thanks for the idea though!

 

[coffeejunkee]

sorry I'm a noob. How does the mobo control the fanspeed if it doesnt know the RPMs? Or is it just a relative power thing? (ie 25% of total available power)

Is there any benefit to doing it this way other than noise?

I know I can Google but what is best place to get an adapter like that for cheeeep? MicroCenter? Ideally I'd like to know what is the equivalent of monoprice.com for pc doo-dads.....trusted quality and cheap price

Like Spike said, it could work based on temperature sensing. If you look at a 3-pin fan, it has 1 wire for 12V, 1 wire for ground and 1 wire for rpm readout. A molex has 1 wire for 12V, 1 for 5V and 2 for ground. Since there's no rpm wire it can't be read out either. Which is logical because molex is usually used for (old) hdd's or odd's which require no rpm readout. If you use the molex-to-3-pin adapter it will have 2 wires, a 12V and a ground (but still fit on a 3-pin fan header).

But apart from that you could always control the speed using Speedfan. The only requirement is that the 3-pin headers on the mobo have a voltage regulation circuit. Since Asrock offers bios control options for all fans I'm assuming this is the case (Speedfan overrides any bios fancontrol).

 

[Hogan773]

Newegg was sold out for a few days, but I noticed they had restocked last night, so I ordered one of the ASR Extreme 4s. Very optimistic this is the best choice for me: price/features/and no reported glitches like the ASUS (knock on wood).

 

[bjamm2]

Ditto, ordered the Extreme 6 last night. Will hopefully get it to put it together monday!

 

[mosco]

Seems like its 2 years now according to newegg, if they would of had that upon launch i would of purchased this mobo, but since it was labelled as 1 year i didn't. Guess asrock is learning from its mistakes.

back to 1 year now...

 

[Hogan773]

back to 1 year now...

I don't believe it was ever 2 yrs on Newegg. The Extreme SIX shows up as 2 yrs. When someone mentioned this before I checked the 4 and it said 1 year.

 

[Bryf50]

Seems there's a new bios in the wild. Version 1.43A
http://91.121.148.119/downloads/BIOS/P67EXT41.43A

From what i read it includes PLL overvoltage, vcore adjustment up to 1.7v, and bclk adjustment in .1 intervals.
Ill have to give it a try tomorrow.

 

[Mem]

Ditto, ordered the Extreme 6 last night. Will hopefully get it to put it together monday!

Asrock have a new BIOS on their website for the Extreme6,looks like they went from 1.20 to 1.40 BIOS ,it states

1. Update "ME" code.
2. Update "MRC" code.

..

 

[cgh246]

Hi my name is Chris, This may be the right place to post this but here goes.
I have had the asrock extreme4 board for about 3 weeks now, and I have to say my experience so far is terrible, every few hours of so my computer crashes (screen freezes) and the only thing I can do about it is do hold the power button on my case. I thought the problem was a faulty hard drive as I kept getting errors in windows about the 1.5tb Samsung f3, even though it was absolutely fine in my previous system. So I removed the drive and still the problem persists. So I am thinking about returning the board and purchasing the Asus pro p67, any suggestions as to why this is happening. All drivers are update to date; it is all brand new hardware except for some HDD’s.

I also receive my WD My Book 2tb usb3 external hard drive today, and the speeds are worse than my old usb2 drive I can get a maximum of 60MB/s out of it, could this be the motherboard of the HDD itself.

System:
Asrock extreme4 p67
i5 2500k (stock speed)
corsair vengeance 8gb ram
5770 GDDR5
650W psu

Any help would be great, thanks.

Chris.

 

[Mem]

Hi my name is Chris, This may be the right place to post this but here goes.
I have had the asrock extreme4 board for about 3 weeks now, and I have to say my experience so far is terrible, every few hours of so my computer crashes (screen freezes) and the only thing I can do about it is do hold the power button on my case. I thought the problem was a faulty hard drive as I kept getting errors in windows about the 1.5tb Samsung f3, even though it was absolutely fine in my previous system. So I removed the drive and still the problem persists. So I am thinking about returning the board and purchasing the Asus pro p67, any suggestions as to why this is happening. All drivers are update to date; it is all brand new hardware except for some HDD’s.

I also receive my WD My Book 2tb usb3 external hard drive today, and the speeds are worse than my old usb2 drive I can get a maximum of 60MB/s out of it, could this be the motherboard of the HDD itself.

System:
Asrock extreme4 p67
i5 2500k (stock speed)
corsair vengeance 8gb ram
5770 GDDR5
650W psu

Any help would be great, thanks.

Chris.

I suspect you have faulty hardware somewhere , download and run memtest86+ http://www.memtest.org/ ,you need to test your ram first to if its faulty so run that for a few hours and let us know if any errors show up,I did have similar experience to yours a few years ago and in my case it was a faulty AMD CPU.

Don't rule out anything at this stage.

Btw you can make a new thread in Computer help here http://forums.anandtech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=9

You can try the clear cmos button on back too and load failsafe defaults in BIOS,see if this helps.

 

[cgh246]

I suspect you have faulty hardware somewhere , download and run memtest86+ http://www.memtest.org/ ,you need to test your ram first to if its faulty so run that for a few hours and let us know if any errors show up,I did have similar experience to yours a few years ago and in my case it was a faulty AMD CPU.

Don't rule out anything at this stage.

Btw you can make a new thread in Computer help here http://forums.anandtech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=9

You can try the clear cmos button on back too and load failsafe defaults in BIOS,see if this helps.

Hi thanks for the fast response, really nice to know someone is here to help.
I probably should have mentioned before, but i have already tried the clear cmos button before even after updating to the latest bios.
I ran the mem test for 5 hours and everything seemed fine, no errors.

anyway to see if I have a faulty cpu,

Regards

Chris

 

[tigerbait]

What kind of power supply do you have? Is it possible your voltages are out of whack?

 

[HumblePie]

What kind of power supply do you have? Is it possible your voltages are out of whack?

^^ This. Because a650 watt power supply means jack crap if it is something like a Deer, Allied, Dynex, Coolmax, Apevia, Raidmax, Topower, or any other of the plethora of horrid delivers of death from wattage.

When building a PC for the first time, it can go out of whack if one of your components is not right either and you do not have the amount of knowledge it takes to trouble shoot the problem. No sleight on the Chris with the problem, but sometimes it takes a bit of experience to tell pretty much right off what is the culprit for a problem.

Even in Chris's case, it may not even be hardware related at all. He could have done something silly like forget to plug in the fan on his CPU's heatsink (seen this done before), or used an older hard drive with the old OS on it and is getting conflicting or corrupted driver issues.

 

[Mem]

Also don't look over the obvious things like changing SATA cables,it has been known for one or two that come with the motherboard to be faulty,also double check all voltages in BIOS ie cpu,ram etc and make sure all connections are solid and correctly fitted,check CPU temperature in BIOS too.

It can be a pain to troubleshoot so you might as well start with the easy things like above.

Btw if you are using two ram modules try the opposite coloured slots ie white slots or if you are using whites slots try blue slots.
tigerbait's PSU question is a good suggestion since PSU is probably the most important part of a build,a lot of users like to skimp on a quality PSU(we are not saying you have but give us the make model etc...).

 

[cgh246]

Hi thanks for all of the replies, this is my 6th build, so I have some experience in building PC's maybe not so much in the troubleshooting side.

the power supply I have is a "XFX Pro Series 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Single Rail" I had problems with a PSU in a previous build as it was a cheap model, and since then I have not gone for cheap models, it may not be the best psu but i read a lot of reviews on it before i purchased it, so I though it was a good PSU.

In fact one of the 1st things I did was open up the case and check all connections, I then turned on the PC, and checked all fans, they are all running fine.

I have just checked the Asrock extreme Tune utility, and all temps seem fine to me, however I don't really know what to look for in the voltages, so I have attached a link to the print screen of the utility with the info on.

http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/1679/pcinfo.jpg

I will swap the ram into the other slots later on and report back 2 tomorrow.

Reagards

chris