I am amazed from how consistent Asrock is in their lineup generation after generation!…

@plebestrian9323

2 жыл бұрын

as consistent in quality as nickelback

@zavoxd7604

2 жыл бұрын

IKR, dogshit for years

@niks660097

2 жыл бұрын

@@zavoxd7604 lol..

@AKMcF

2 жыл бұрын

The fact thay are able to leads me to suspect that alot of these boards are going into prebuit systems.

@Cytro

2 жыл бұрын

my ASRock z590 Extreme has served me well for quite a while now, surely not all of them are terrible, right?

Asrock presumably thinks this atrocious performance won't be noticed by the budget buyers at this end of the market, but they are making a serious commercial miscalculation by putting out this garbage because enthusiasts get a bad impression of the whole brand and they end up influencing which brands even budget buyers will purchase. Thanks Steve for doing the hard work to call out this bs

@GewelReal

2 жыл бұрын

you're saying that as if AsRock was ever worth it

@zalankhan5743

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah and most budget buyers like me. Waits and watches reviews before buying

@HelloOnepiece

2 жыл бұрын

@@GewelReal b450 pro 4 was a decent board for its price , but yeah, just like biostar only buy it if you need a cheap board fast (in my country sometimes they can be found with 50-60% sale)

@oimazzo2537

2 жыл бұрын

I have used quite a bit of well made asrock boards that both lasted and performed. I truly think their choices for the low end ones hurt their business much more than they save cutting corners on the low end ones to be fair

@MrReese

2 жыл бұрын

I disagree, they have made terrible boards for years now and seem to not be stopping. They not only don't care in the budget market but in general.

Good motherboards are now jealous because of those beautiful B-Roll shots.

@mm-yt8sf

2 жыл бұрын

haha! i was thinking how surreal it was to see the product seductively rotating while hearing bad things about it. like when a movie has nightmarish violence, but peaceful background music :-)

Interesting how most Z690 motherboards seem to vary between significant and extreme overkill in the VRM, while Asrock sits in the corner alone eating paste while not even being cheaper in many regions. I'd love to be a fly on the wall during whatever kind of meeting decides their market strategy - for some reason the villain roundtable from Austin Powers comes to mind.

@standarsh8056

2 жыл бұрын

All the non budget asrock boards are fine. Even some of the budget ones are also fine.

@ElectroLM10

2 жыл бұрын

@@standarsh8056 Too bad most of their budget boards are just hot garbage, their false advertising makes it even worse. Even most of their high end boards have horrible VRMs

@standarsh8056

2 жыл бұрын

@@drunkhusband6257 yes there is, if the cpu would melt itself before the vrms would hit max temp. It's overkill

@thelawnet

2 жыл бұрын

gigabyte makes the garbage trash z690m ds3h board which is every bit as bad as this.

@testtarget1030

2 жыл бұрын

It really is interesting, since other brands can hit the price point with much better performance, so you can make money at that price point and not be a jerk. How much do they really expect to make by cutting/erasing the corners?

Careful Steve, ASRock might start trying to sabotage you for calling them out lol. I bet they'd rather hire hackers and bots than to design a motherboard that's just mediocre instead of electronic garbage.

@MyrKnof

2 жыл бұрын

Their thought with this board is probably, that no one in the right mind will buy the cheapest board to pair with the most expensive CPU. Put a 12100F or 12400 on there, and it would be just fine. It's their marketing thats wrong, not the board design. Like putting a 5950x in an A520, where i'd also not expect the MB to wrangle max performance out of that CPU either.

@WhenDoesTheVideoActuallyStart

2 жыл бұрын

@@MyrKnof The problems with that train of thought is that VRM heat is always bad, since it means that the lifespan of the motherboard's components is affected, and that this motherboard is just far below it's price class in VRM efficiency/heat dissipation. And the comparison with it's price class is what matters, the chipset is just one of the features a motherboard can have.

@NightKev

2 жыл бұрын

@@MyrKnof It's not even the lowest end chipset though. Saving money on the motherboard to get a better CPU (say, the 12600k/12700) is perfectly reasonable and the other boards in the video showed it *can* be done for around the same price.

@WhenDoesTheVideoActuallyStart

2 жыл бұрын

@@NightKev Yeah, you can theoretically get the full performance out of a 5950X in a motherboard that literally lacks a chipset (X300, PRO 500), and some enterprise consumers will do just that. The chipset is just one of the things that determines the featureset, segmentating better VRM's behind better chipsets is just an artificial - if generally reasonable - policy of most motherboard vendors. If you don't need the features the chipset gives you, like the 14 max SATA ports (!?) on X570, they're simply wasted. IMO anything that runs 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes is enough for a gaming motherboard, so a B660 is an entirely reasonable choice and a well-designed "gaming motherboard" VRM should run an 8 P-core CPU at full speed, without cooking itself to death in the process.

@videogamefreak221122

2 жыл бұрын

@@MyrKnof Actually, Tech Yes City did a video where he put a 5950x in a cheap A520, and performance wasn’t far off from better boards

I'd say this goes beyond just false advertising, it's straight up a scam. It's a terrible product that should not be purchased, period. Anyone that bought one should return it if they still can.

@aarongarza4769

2 жыл бұрын

Chinese Ethics. If you can cheat someone, you should.

@libertyprime9307

2 жыл бұрын

I thin "Machiavellian ethics" describes it better than "Chinese ethics". Sure the CCP does that, but Chinese ethics could easily describe Confuscianism.

@jomeyqmalone

2 жыл бұрын

I can say they're not a scam nor a terrible product. I bought two of these. They work great with my i3 12100s using the stock cooler, and I'm absolutely not returning them. They're great. I didn't want to waste money on a pointlessly overpowered VRM that these systems are never going to need. Hopefully HU includes a 6 core i5 in their b660 roundup, as I'm curious if this board will be a good match for those chips (and hopefully they use the stock intel heatsink these chips come with rather than a tower or liquid cooler that starves the VRM of airflow).

@glow4417

2 жыл бұрын

@@jomeyqmalone you are supporting a bad company though, who shouldn't be able to get away with these boards being this poor

@smb2267

2 жыл бұрын

not really this board has its market is for cheap Pentium and Celeron and this guy its just exploiting the board for KZread views , he could easy make a video about the Asrock B560 or B660 and say : hey this board is too week to go anything more power hungry that i3 don't use this with a i5 , i7 or oblivious the i9

Man, ASRock fell of the cliff with quality of their products - like seriously, at this point it's just mostly hot overpriced garbage indeed

@amirhadis1698

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah same thing with its graphic cards !!

@TheFirestriker101

2 жыл бұрын

Hdv was always cheeks

@thelawnet

2 жыл бұрын

@@TheFirestriker101 yeah but this one is actually downgraded from the last gen (B560M), lol. One fewer power phase there. These things are built to a price. Asrock have a shitty B660 board, a shitty H670 board, a shitty Z690 board, all designed to sell to people who buy by chipset. Actually it's not only Asrock, Gigabyte put out an absolute steaming turd of a shitboard in the shape of the Z690M DS3H, which takes the B660M DS3H (kinda crappy) and replaces the B660 for a Z690 to fool the 'must have Z690' users. You don't have to buy these 'fake' boards tho, Gigabyte have some nice boards out there as well.

@musashigundoh

2 жыл бұрын

Asrock cannot design decent VRMs for anything but their high-end boards, it seems. Z690M-ITX has a hard 150W power limit, what's the point of a Z chipset on it then?

@sviktor4

2 жыл бұрын

ASRock quality never fall of the cliff, they compete on the lower level with Gigabyte for decades now, these boards cut down to bear minimum and significantly cheaper than other brands like MSI. Everyday users use integer workloads not powerviruses like reviewers, even if you want to use your CPU for video coding, probably steaming during gaming it's still realtime with just 60FPS with 6000Kbps. Look ASUS and their TUF series it's their bouild down effort, sounds fancy but bearly better than the base model.

These reviews (and the monitor reviews) are why I like this channel so much. Keep at it!

@aaronhiggs

2 жыл бұрын

Big Same. They are so thorough in all their critiques.

Your continued testing of these crap boards so we can avoid them is admirable, thank you

This is probably one of the best examples of how bad a budget product can get, and how not all motherboards are created equal.

I've been looking forward to this a great deal, real information about motherboards is almost nonexistent and you do wonderful work.

I appreciate the quality and honesty of videos like this. I'm planning a build later this year on AM5, and to be honest, I won't be buying from Asrock even if they have a quality board that I'm looking for and for the right price. OEMs need to be held to a higher standard, and it is very telling of their moral character, given their reaction to consumer representatives like you guys and others. What grinds my gears more here is what seems to be an attempt of ripping off people who can only afford cheaper boards anyway. So purposefully victimizing either those with little cash, or taking advantage of the uninformed. There is always room for forgiveness, given that they own their crap. Until then, I personally have Asrock blacklisted. Thanks for the hard work and top-quality content! 👌😊

@sonicboy678

2 жыл бұрын

You'd probably be better off buying from the company's former parent (Asus). Sure, you'd pretty much have to pay more, but you're much more likely to get a quality product (and, in all likelihood, better customer service).

I don't blame Asrock for this at all, making all those NFTs must be quite time consuming and resource intensive. You can't expect them to waste those resources on products with actual utility like motherboards. After all why would you sell something when you can sell literally nothing for even more money? It just makes sense.

@aaronhiggs

2 жыл бұрын

Savage.

@PreySim

2 жыл бұрын

Too bad you don't know what "literally" means.

@chrys9256

2 жыл бұрын

@@PreySim Don’t I? Then please tell me what exactly it is you own when you buy an NFT.

@PreySim

2 жыл бұрын

@@chrys9256 that wasn't the point... the word "literally" was totally unnecessary in your sentence. It's like having a word that adds no usefull meaning.

@chrys9256

2 жыл бұрын

@@PreySim I’d say it was about as necessary as saying that something is “totally” unnecessary. Apparently you think there’s varying degrees of unnecessary and didn’t want me to think my word choice was only a little bit unnecessary.

Thanks for the heads up... Very few do this kind of content to warn people of crap products. People like you guys made the budget community feel they are present.

I don't see how they would lose sales if they only listed the 65w CPU's. People getting anything with 125w CPU's wouldn't buy this anyway. By hiding the BIOS limit they just make themselves look shady for no reason at all

@MLWJ1993

2 жыл бұрын

Even for "65W" parts this motherboard can be considered a failure... $20,- to run the vrm a massive 50+ °C cooler is definitely not a "pass" for this piece of junk.

@javiej

2 жыл бұрын

Well, many of us upgrade our systems over the time, not in one go. And most other motherboards can easily survive two generations. Now I need a new motherboard to support modern hardware , initially I plan to populate it with a small i3 to keep costs under control but with the idea to upgrade to a superior CPU on my next investment. But with this model I will be a fail, The publicity of this product is certainly misleading , Ashrock

Crazy thing is.. They *KNEW* hub would rip them a new one for doing this. Yet they still (for a quick buck) chose to push out this product. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know then I don't know what does.

@benjaminoechsli1941

2 жыл бұрын

Clearly they calculated that the damage done by negative reviews was less than the profits the board will bring in. Will definitely do what I can to tip the scale in the other direction by recommending my friends not use this board.

I actually bought this knowing it is garbage.... my friend have very tight budget, and he is just running 12100, this board is actually same price as H610 board, so I guess the shop know this is hot turd.

@MyrKnof

2 жыл бұрын

it will be fine with that CPU. Not many upgrade options though.

@Verpal

2 жыл бұрын

@@MyrKnof I was hoping maaaaybe raptor lake 12400F replacement would be okay on this board, if Intel power draw is still somewhat under control, besides, I can buy a tray cpu for him and just reuse stock cooler.

@malphadour

2 жыл бұрын

@@Verpal You will be ok with a 12400, but nothing above that.

It's nice to see that Soyo is still making decent motherboards. Once again, y'all have made a great video for us!

@malphadour

2 жыл бұрын

I was playing games whilst listening to the vid...when he said "soyo" I had to stop playing and check I had just heard right. A name I've not heard for absolutely yonks.

@PainterVierax

2 жыл бұрын

Were do you guys live? Here in europe this brand is unknown unlike Biostar.

@mlxoc712

2 жыл бұрын

They are not quite the same, previously Taiwanese with US headquarters and now the rights exist in Shenzhen, China and mainly deal in that market. Judging by this review, they aren't doing a bad job with the name. I would like to see a full review of this board, same for any other Chinese brand such as Colorful.

@AshtonCoolman

2 жыл бұрын

@@PainterVierax I'm an American. I know Soyo because they made some of the best boards in the 90s and early 2000s. I have a Soyo Dragon II at home in a retro build.

@PainterVierax

2 жыл бұрын

@@AshtonCoolman I see Thanks. We had reputable brands like Abit during this era but AFAIK Soyo never entered our market.

My favorite part is the holes in the board for VRM heatsinks...for the 'higher end' SKU using this PCB. What'd they save, $5?

looking forward to the b660 roundup, hope there are some ITX mobos included, niche I know but still good to have them being reviewed as they are a challenging product to make and be good to see if their more cut down vrms are performing well.

I'd be reluctant to ever consider any ASRock board knowing how much they skimp on their budget Intel boards.

@shaneeslick

2 жыл бұрын

I had multiple ASRock Mobos in the past but now I have totally turned my back on all their products due to their useless BIOS & Poor Quality

@Morpheus-pt3wq

2 жыл бұрын

It wasn´t always like that. My ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer was a very good one. It had Dual BIOS (and both BIOS chips were removable) and lots of other functions, that are nowadays only on very expensive "premium" motherboards. Its only issue was the Killer LAN, which didn´t work properly at all, but it had an easy fix, since it was Qualcomm LAN chip, it only took replacing Killer driver with standard Qualcomm driver. I also have ASRock B450M-Pro4. Good so far. Although i don´t understand ASRock discouraging users from updating the BIOS. Every manufacturer has some kinks & issues.

@raul0ca

2 жыл бұрын

It's OK on the AMD side. Just don't overclock your CPU or RAM

@damara2268

2 жыл бұрын

@@raul0ca Yes I got the b450m pro 4 and it runs even Ryzen 2700 fine .. and that is a budget board and the 2700 pulls around 140W at full load. This b660 HDV costs 40% more and has problems with sustaining 95W ..... trash It's the last 2 years that ASRock for some reason cheaps out on all Mobo components but keeps about same price as competition eventhough their product is trash.

im happy to see there are differences between the cheaper boards, because i was interested in getting one but didnt really know which one was better than the others

I am here... To thank you for your great work guys 😁 Could I take the opportunity to ask if you guys could look into and bring up the issue with the Asus Strixx 3080? I feel like Asus got a free pass on their unfriendly shroud design and QC issues on that card just because supply shortages meant that the outage was generally self contained.

@TAP7a

2 жыл бұрын

It's a whole thing. Expensive motherboards get masses of phases as well as incredible thermal interventions. This is stupid, as many phases and good VRMs actually produce less heat, so the good thermal solutions belong on boards with fewer phases and boards with many phases are more often able to get away with less comprehensive thermal solutions. The consumer has confused premium with necessity, as they expect expensive boards to have both lots of phases and big thermal solutions (of which only one is necessary) but also are fine with cheaper boards to have both fewer phases and nothing to cool the increased load with! It's a bit silly across the entire industry

Glad I dodged that bullet. Picked up a Asus B660-m Prime instead for my I5 12400f. I heard the rumors about this board and you guys have just confirmed what I have heard. Thanks for the good work in educating us.

@mirage8753

2 жыл бұрын

you could pretty much be fine with 12400 on this mobo

@brownjonny2230

Жыл бұрын

@@mirage8753 Yeah it's only problematic if you're going with 12600k, or 13400 which has e cores that cause a lot of heat and power consumption.

You're winning Asrock back with each review, eh? 😂😂 Well done!!

This was eye opening for me. I had no idea that there were products on the market like this.

Can you keep us updated on Bios revisions of the MSI board that was sitting at 103 degrees? I'm wondering if they are launching the boards with agressive power profiles for reviews and then cut performance to bring down thermals in later bios releases.

HDV series is always the most basic board to run low end CPU, sadly they claim that this board support high end CPU 🤣

@Morpheus-pt3wq

2 жыл бұрын

This video made me remember this very old video: kzread.info/dash/bejne/aq6I3NKSmrSYfbA.html We should be happy, the fire didn´t happen here.

@topli1580

2 жыл бұрын

Agree 👍 this channel don't get ASRock high end motherboard for review

Stoked for the round up

As usual, thank you for your content, very usefull, same as B560 and B450/550 ! i hope you will continue on this way!

Asrock really saving pennies out here by running VRM naked and without a basic heatsink

When you are making that 20 B660 board roundup, please also include a chart where we can see which board can run for example 12700 at higher power limit indefinitely and which boards will dial down the performance. Basically, best B660 boards from lowest budget that can deliver the full potential of 12700 & 12600K. Also, an opinion on pairing the K SKUs with B series boards, considering the user never plans to do any overclocking (like 12600K + B660).

@mirage8753

2 жыл бұрын

the ones with heatsinks on vrm obviously, but they more expensive usually

@omarkhalidshohag1474

2 жыл бұрын

@@mirage8753 You just watched the video, budget boards have vrm heatsinks too, and there will be more in future. But not all heatsink boards can handle 12700/12600K/12900 at its full capacity indefinitely.

@mirage8753

2 жыл бұрын

@@omarkhalidshohag1474 there is an old rule, if you want to get everything out from your cpu then buy more beefy board. its the case for latests gens of cpus. i mean what the point to buy cpus you listed on b mobos? i think all 6+ core intel cpus for intel 8gen+ require z mobo if you want to get everything from cpu, especially if you want to overclock. its not the same as amd on b450/550. also im pretty much sure all mobos in this video can handle 12400/12500 without any problem. also Steve could disable some cores on 12600k to check this, but he didnt

I love the board comparisions where you have plenty of them tested to make clear which one are worth their money and which designs scream "dont buy me if you wanna live without a fire hazard" Thx for the work, its amazing

I never imagined that a motherboard could have such a significant impact on performance. I can't believe the power delivery is so bad. How can you do a thing like this and call it anything but a reputation stain? Kudos for you to exposing it.

as soon as i see only 2 mem slots on an atx/ micro atx board, i run away.

Some motherboard manufacturers just never learn :)

Thank you for making videos like this!

I see you got the B660 Pro RS in your background, now can we get a roundup of all B660 motherboards comparison ?

We picked this up on sale for under $65 and paired it with a 12400f for a super budget but modern build, stuck some aluminum heatsinks on the VRMs and power phases, and called it good. We had low expectations and knew what we were getting, but for the price, it's been great. The deceptive marketing is another matter.. I'd guess most potential buyers aren't scouring KZread and reddit for info.

@azez5812

Жыл бұрын

Hi bro I got the b660m-hdv with core i5 12400 and rtx 3060 But I saw this video now Should I change the board or it is ok with i5 12400? Like this comment if you reply 🙏

@hernan7905

Жыл бұрын

@@azez5812 Test the board with your current gear and see if it was worth it then show us your results.

I have a slight issue. The Intel stick down draft cooler does provide VRM cooling. Using a watercooler while better for the CPU just doesn’t provide airflow to anything else

This is the cheapest B660 board over here, so it seems like a good buy at first. Kinda sad, my Asrock Z97 anniversary going strong.

My wife's motherboard is an ASRock x570 and the chipset fan died. It took over a year to get a new fan sent to us - as we started the process when it was still running but making horrible noises -and when it arrived the old one was impossible to remove to the point where we broke the connection off the motherboard before we could get it to disengage. So they sent a replacement board, but of course that involved down time with the old one being sent back and waiting for the new one to arrive. So in the end it was over a year from "hey we got a problem" to a fix, with numerous false-starts on them sending the fan that couldn't be replaced anyway. We're steering clear of ASRock from now on. 👎

When will the full B660 motherboards review be coming? thanks.

I would love to see a laptop round up, comparing things like thermals, performance, and battery. Just because I find laptops to be subjective, and there's a lot on the market right now.

PC parts get reviewed by non company shills, so I find it incredible that companies still market substandard parts with misleading or just false advertising on purpose. As others have commented, putting out garbage reflects on a company's ENTIRE brand. Corsair's stock case fans I have found to be decent, but I have upgraded every PC I've built (6 so far) to Noctua fans. I have also used Corsair PSU, AIO, ram and cases in every build. After 6 years, 2 of their AIO have died along with 1 ASUS X-99 MB and due to price, reviews and stock issues, I went with Arctic LFII 280 AIO and GSKILL 4x8 ram for X570 MB replacement AMD build. I suggested to my friend to replace his dead AIO (ours died at almost the same 6 year mark) with an air cooler as at the time no one had AIO in stock and an air cooler would be "good enough". For me, Corsair has earned my brand loyalty, but they start purposely putting out substandard parts ON PURPOSE like ASROCK, well, lots of options out there.

The problem with Assrock is that yes, they do sell to first time system builders on Newegg if they can, but their main bread and butter is 2nd tier system integrators like NZXT. The integrator will list all the sales points like GPU, CPU memory and storage, and then right at the bottom will be the Assrock e-waste. There's a reason why Assrock's company name is so close to Asus.

@0mongo0

2 жыл бұрын

The reason ASRock's name is so close to ASUS is because they were started by ASUS then spun off into a separate company in 2002.

Nice board. Thanks for the recommendations.. I'll go pick up an asrock b660 asap.

Well to be fair it's one of those "HDV" series that's not meant to be used with Core i9 in the first place. It's listed as supported because it's a "CPU support list", that's not the same as "best pairing list". tl;dr - don't use highest end CPU with almost lowest-end motherboard. It won't work out well.

@MohdKhairulZaman

2 жыл бұрын

Good day sir, mind if i'm asking, If i'm in a tight budget, this motherboard would still be fine then?

@goldfries

2 жыл бұрын

@@MohdKhairulZaman What CPU will you be using? If i3 12100f - i5 12400f for gaming purposes, yes works just fine. There's even the H610M-HDV/M.2. However if you can save up a bit more I recommend the Pro RS model or even better, the PG Riptide.

@MohdKhairulZaman

2 жыл бұрын

​@@goldfries thanks for the reply and the recommendations, i'll be using i3 12100f for the cpu and gtx1060 for the gpu.

Oh man, I really love HUs endless vendetta against ASRock 😂

Hey Steve what do you think about the Asus TUF B660 boards and do you plan to compare various B660 and B660M boards soon?

@gladcomming

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, we will do video soon on b660 tierlist

Hardware Unboxed doing God's work! Bar none #1 hardware review KZreadr in this category of reviews!

@smb2267

2 жыл бұрын

not really this board has its market is for cheap Pentium and Celeron and this guy its just exploiting the board for KZread views , he could easy make a video about the Asrock B560 or B660 and say : hey this board is too week to go anything more power hungry that i3 don't use this with a i5 , i7 or oblivious the i9

Are you still planning to review the Z690 Phantom Gaming? Really curious how those VRMs perform. I plan to pair a 12700 with the H670 Riptide PG which has the same 9+1 power delivery setup as the Phantom 4. Even has the same heatsinks.

Very nice find! I have to point out that at 12:24 the last bar, I don't think the CPU was running at just 3150 MHz. It wouldn't make much sense. The rest checks out though.

@Hardwareunboxed

2 жыл бұрын

It's the average clock frequency. So at times it was much lower than 3150 MHz, other time it was higher.

@Winnetou17

2 жыл бұрын

@@Hardwareunboxed Oh. I thought it's the average, but expected to be somewhat correlated to the score. And the score is around 20%? better than the 3190MHz one. Interesting.

@Hardwareunboxed

2 жыл бұрын

The score is the final result after the hour long loop, CB23 doesn't give an average score.

@Winnetou17

2 жыл бұрын

@@Hardwareunboxed Oooooh, that clears it up, now it makes sense. Thank you!

I was contemplating my first Asrock MB purchase (This board actually) for a more budget build. After seeing this I plan to avoid the brand altogether. I am sure they make some good products but I do not want to have to wade thru a minefield of bad ones (Hopefully finding a video to point them out but not always the case) . I would rather buy from a trusted brand paying a little more knowing they just work and there will be no issues. Thanks Steve.

@malphadour

2 жыл бұрын

Defining a trusted brand is in itself difficult in this arena. They have all produced shockers. You are still better going by reviews for individual products rather than just trusting a brands entire range. This goes for most components I've found. In recent times it does seem that Asus is on average producing the best motherboards (but there are stil some not so good ones), gigabyte is suffering some quality issues in this area (and I'm a very long time gigabyte fan so that hurts me to say so) and MSI motherboards in the last few years have done amazing things to drag their reputation out of the fire pit (which is where historically most of their products ended up...I say ended up...they usually cased the fires.....). As bad as this review is, there are still plenty of decent Asrock boards out there, but things like this do sully their reputation and I can understand that if there is an Asrock board and a similarly priced competitor of similar quality, people are likely to be swayed to the competitor.

@MLWJ1993

2 жыл бұрын

@@malphadour ASUS is usually okay, but you likely pay more than similar equipped boards. MSI seems like a decent brand in the lower product range in terms of price/featureset if you ask me. Gigabyte is usually horrible when it comes to having to do firmware updates on anything they produce 🙄 I wouldn't recommend unless you never intend to update firmware of their products (even their online guides don't align with the actual products either).

I would love to see boot times if you do another roundup of old and new boards. And thank you for warning people about these new and terrible models.

We need reviews like this!

As a customer who has previously had asrock hdv motherboards stay away from them had nothing but problems with them

@sotesz

2 жыл бұрын

I have a DVS board (just HDV without HDMI port) that can longer enter (UEFI) BIOS setup once I install my PCI-E M.2 adapter card "lol". (I recently confirmed that the card has no such problems in another board (newer chipset).)

This has been ASRock's way for as long as they have been in business. They are not going to change. They cater to the low end. MSI was the same when they were still called Micro-Star (frankly, I still view MSI as a bit "low end" because of previous experiences with Micro-Star, though I do currently use an MSI mobo). I agree with the advertising being misleading, thought its not technically false. There is a place for such boards. When I built my home theater PC I bought the cheapest mobo and cpu I could find. All it had to do was run a sound card and a video card. As long as it does its job and is reliable, it does not matter if it can run a monster chip at full performance.

Who would have thought that ASRock mainboards are trash...oh, wait :D. Would LOVE to see more mainboard reviews like this for B660, H670, and Z690 boards. You guys are my primary source for mainboard quality. I am so looking forward to the next mainboard video you announced!

@andersjjensen

2 жыл бұрын

They aren't. Only their budget shit is outright faulty. Their Taichi boards are award winning overclocking boards.

@MrReese

2 жыл бұрын

@@andersjjensen this channel has shown that every normal ASRock mainboard in recent years has been a disaster. I don't know who buys Taichi boards - just as an example, the B550 Taichi costs 258 EUR right now, the X570 Taichi costs 304 EUR, and the Z690 Taichi costs 560 EUR. Who spends that kind of money and then goes for ASRock of all brands?...

Love your indepth coverage of the entry level motherboards. It's always great content.

Excellent idea to review motherboards like these B660 products. I've historically been an AMD buyer, but I am now forced to take a strong look at Intel. Keep doing what you do.

With LGA 1700 motherboards, even LGA 1200, always research how much power the board can feed to the CPU. Even Z-series chipsets with unlocked multipliers will sometimes impose a power limit that you can't get around. And if a board has no VRM heatsinks, that should be a massive red flag. Boards have gotten so expensive now, I remember when for $80-90 you could buy a decent non-overclocking board and for $120-140 a decent overclocking board.

Are you still blacklisted by Asrock? Asrock about to hit you with the Vantablacklist.

Would like to see some reviews of the itx boards. ASRock B660M-ITX/ac is the only moderately affordable itx boards in my area, wonder if a 12400f can work fine on it. And I remember ASRock AM4 boards being decent (not great but still decent), are they trying to keep the same profit margin/price while Intel is charging them more for the chipset? Or Intel processors are just much more demanding on the vrm?

@raul0ca

2 жыл бұрын

That's a 65W to 117W part. That would be hard to drive full tilt with any motherboard. AMD is soo much easier to power

the -HDV series is one of the board ranges ASRock make for the MEA (Middle-East, Africa) region export market. I'm in South Africa and Namibia, this 'thing' is on the shelves of practically every PC store and in so many pre-builts. It sucks even worse here due to our higher ambient temperatures. Piece of Junk

@lsd310

Жыл бұрын

Asrock limiting power actually lowers your bloody pc temperature

Where the heck can I find the Watt limits for each motherboard?

Any plans to test mini-itx thin boards?

Any time, Steve says "minimum specification" I get a craving for potato chips.

@petenielsen6683

2 жыл бұрын

Because they are more readily available than most computer chips?

Thank you, Steve!

Have you guys noticed that Asrock has been making crap boards for at least 3+ years. Not sure why this is. They also are dropping the ball on the bios settings.

@sviktor4

2 жыл бұрын

ASRock always made build down motherboards, it is not a new phenomenon. They are close partner to Intel, in socket 1156-1155 era Intel tried to build even cheaper motherboards than ASRock, but failed miserebly due to bad BIOS support, basically BIOS update bricked their boards.

@adiirfan01

2 жыл бұрын

Tbf, this board is like the cheapest b660m on the market (half the price of that MSi board on the video), and in the same price range of other brand h610m, if you can afford better board, dont ever consider this board, but if budget limited and only can afford h610m or this b660m board, i rather take this board

@Cytro

2 жыл бұрын

My z590 Extreme isn't crap at all, what are you talking about

Companies that have multiple reviewers blacklisted is a red flag in and of itself.

man I remember when ASRock was a top tier brand . my ASRock z77 extreme 4 still works to this date but bought a b550 steel legend and was very disappointed by it's price and performance

@GTTMRC95

2 жыл бұрын

Same board here. Crazy high and stable OC on my 3570k.

@fpswhore9973

2 жыл бұрын

@@GTTMRC95 Ikr? was pushing my 3570k to 4.3ghz with a cheap cooler master hyper 410r without any problem

@mingyi456

2 жыл бұрын

From what I remember, the steel legend did not have any of the garbage vrm performance as shown here right? At most, it is just an medicore board which is overpriced for its tier right?

I'll be waiting untill Steve finished reviewing the VRM of all that B660 motherboard before making a purchase of Core 12th Gen and the motherboard. Hopefully there is a good board that comes at cheap price in the review line up.

well,its paired with 12100/12400 builds here in malaysia,prefectly enough for those cpus i think

Would be interesting to see, how the better cooled, but still cheap boards like an ASRock B660M Pro RS, GIGABYTE B660M DS3H DDR4 or ASUS Prime B660M-K D4 are working with a non-K processor like a 12400F. The MSI board seems to be too expensive for budget builds.

Asrock was my favourite motherboard choices during the AMD B450 time. But now I am going back to Gigabyte and MSI.

VRM heatsink sold separate as NFT

Kudos to Steve for attempting to trying to assist this product into achieving its claims by providing additional help in cooling and actually completing the workloads when obviously it wasn’t going to pass. It would have been very easy to call it a day after 10 minutes into the testing. I have always given Asrock a hard pass and will continue to do so in the future until I am shown they can show a legitimate ‘good’ product at a competitive price.

@andersjjensen

2 жыл бұрын

The funny thing is that 10 years ago ASRock was the brand that was forcing the price of good mid-tier boards down. Back then their boards were feature wise on par with the other big three but they just did a minimum of decoration and pointless fandangling in return for really good pricing.

Using the box cooler does help cool the VRM. That’s the reason for top down cooler. If used properly, it’s not a bad board. Yes, they should specify this in the documentation.

@andersjjensen

2 жыл бұрын

So you're telling me that the box cooler does a better job than the 120mm dedicated VRM fan Steve used... that has access to cold air instead of just blowing hot "spent" air in all directions? This board couldn't run a 12600K with a dedicated 120mm fan, three 140mm intake fans, a 140mm exhaust fan and three 140mm exhausting radiator fans... "if used properly" must mean something entirely different to you than it does to me.

B660M hdv can only maxed 65W, only for I5 nonK and I3 even though bfb can pass 95W i dont think without VRM heatsink it will stable... they should change their spec list that this board can run 125W... You should also test all cheapest board across all brands. Easiest choose motherboard now is see the VRM heatsink, mofset, and powerphase. All manufacturer making crappy board including last gen MSI B560M-A, asus prime, gigabyte ds3h...

The most surprising thing for me was learning that SOYO is still making motherboards.

I see mounting holes for VRM heatsinks. Maybe a candidate for a can we fix it video? 😅

I'm surprised that the board is even painted, considering the heatsink!

I have asrock's B350-HDV. It's cheap, it's bad, it was the only mobo I could find when Ryzen launched. Never gave me any troubles somehow.

I hadn’t seen many reviews on asrock boards. Now I know why. Thank you for the review.

Glad to see that the B660 testing is coming out now. Wish it was surprising that Asrock performance was so terrible. From the limited info available so far, it seems that most other manufacturers have taken steps to improve their low range boards over previous generations. Looking forward to the rest of the B660 board reviews.

Thank you, Steve. 🙌👍

That Soyo is really good also saw that in Brian's channel.

You should benchmark this with i3-12100, because only this combo is realistic

@ColMortimer50

2 жыл бұрын

I agree with you that a low end CPU is a better pairing for that board but it was Asrock who claimed that CPU was supported on this board as per their website. They state that "CPU performance may be limited due to power phase design" but fail to specify which ones in the list that applies to.

@cIappo896

2 жыл бұрын

I'd accept that for future x610 releases, this is just atrocious. Supposedly mid-range board should be able to run whatever CPU

Someone is not going to be on Asrocks Christmas list this year 😝

@Hardwareunboxed

2 жыл бұрын

We've been blacklisted for 2 years now, so probably not ;)

Highlighting bad products like this one is just as important as highlighting the good ones. Perhaps even more important. Well done! I have a project stalled because the only available solution (DDR4, B660, ITX) that doesn't cost a fortune is an Asrock board that looks to be every bit as bad as this one. Apparently there are alternatives from Biostar and Gigabyte but they're not actually available up here. And have yet to be reviewed (hint hint). Like all great reviews you prompt questions. You said you had a fan blowing on the VRMs; I wonder how the board would have fared if you had added heatsinks to those VRMs? If you do go back to the board, perhaps you could test that? I also wonder how the board would fare when so modified and paired with a low-end CPU like a 12100 or 12400?

I'll be looking forward to the 20 motherboards test. As for the B660, it's a shame that ASRock chooses to advertise it this way. I actually liked my AB350-HDV. It was advertised as supporting Ryzen to 65W, and it was a cheap way to play with B350 functionality instead of getting an A320 board.

now do an A520 benchmark in comparison! buildzoid was pretty excited for the A520M H (it's even a 2 slotter for DRAM, so OCing RAM might be easier X)

This board probably is best paired with an i3-12100 for those on a super tight budget, but then you have no upgrade path since higher end CPUs are gimped with the board.

I was hoping to see a roundup of all the assorted Alder Lake boards, but frankly, seeing ASRock getting dunked on works too

This is pretty bad, seeing as how I could previously use these boards with a T-series CPU, along with some stock RAM, an industrial SATA SSD, and some Intel-based Gigabit/10GbE cards as a super tiny firewall. The DTX variant with the lowest chipset version has been especially handy for this purpose, and they've been doing fine so far. Looks like I'll have to go looking for something else this year!

After using Asus and the odd Asrock for years, I'm trying my first ever MSI board - B660M WiFi DD4. Very impressed so far.

@andersjjensen

2 жыл бұрын

Buildzoid from Actually Hardcore Overclocking (also blacklisted by ASRock) gave that board a really good review.

Just cancelled an order for this exact board on Newegg a few days ago. It is still backordered over there so they are going to sell. If all you want to run is a 12100 or 12400 cheap as possible, this is as inexpensive as it gets (~$95USD at the time of this posting) for B660M support but you're absolutely right. The advertising is misleading at best...outright lying at worst.

@miweneia

2 жыл бұрын

man i wish i could get it for 95 usd, i paid 130 in my country. still was the cheapest by about 30 dollars and there wereore expensive h610m boards.

It doesn't help much, nor change much, but top-down blowing design does not = box cooler. But high performance aftermarket instead like Dark Rock TF 2, Big Shuriken 3, Jonsbo HX6200D white ARGB, Noctua NH-C14S and so on.(or NH-D15S style dual tower with 140mm fan in the middle offset under the heatsink which provides a bit of airflow as well). It's still not the usual build type, outside of budget builds and smaller form factor cases.

So my late 20s were really budget tight but I was spending my little spare cash on computing. I would do exactly stuff like pair the highest i7k of the time with the cheapest board that had crossfire (this was shortly before AMD bought ATI) and said it was supported then OC. I would have been pissed had it not worked and black or blue screened.