Three Sub-$100 LGA1150 Mini-ITX Motherboards
ASRock H81M-ITX
In the box, you get the H81M-ITX, manual, driver CD, two SATA cables and the I/O plate. Considering the board's features, that is a complete bundle since there are only two SATA ports.
- Stock H81M-ITX(L2)
- Stock H81M-ITX(L5)-rear
- H81M-ITX-oblique
There is nothing anomalous about the layout, and nothing appears to be blocked, although there is no header for a case speaker, nor is there a piezo on the board. All capacitors are solid, and chokes are the more efficient ferrite core rather than iron. For the simple systems for which this board is intended, that probably isn’t a big deal. The 24-pin power connector is on the front edge, as it is with most boards. The single USB2.0 header had to be placed behind the front panel connector. The battery, a common CR2032, is flat and easily accessible, not on edge as it is on some small boards. The CLR_CMOS jumper is not near the battery though, it is on the front edge to the right of the power connector, where it should be easily accessible. The CPU fan header is adjacent to the single chassis fan header (which is PWM, not 3-pin), and the front panel audio header is in its usual place behind the rear audio connectors. The RAM slots have locking levers on both ends, so you can be sure your RAM is fully seated. This board won’t make you guess about anything.
Here is the Main UEFI screen, showing version information:
If you want to overclock the Pentium, that's basically a one-click affair on the OC Tweaker page.
As expected, it gives us this result:
I was struck by just how sparse this board is in terms of features and ports. I can't imagine the average Tom's Hardware reader having much interest in it. Yes, it can overclock the G3258 quite easily, but how much does that matter? Two SATA ports is a deal-breaker if one of your backup strategies is imaging your system drive onto another disk, or even running a RAID 1 pair. After all, this board can't do RAID, and you cannot add a second drive unless you forgo an optical drive. Some power users are happy to do just that, but many aren't.
As I contemplated this article from my desk at work, however, I realized that the H81M-ITX would be a wonderful fit for a networked office PC. Its LAN port provides access to all of the storage you need. And you aren't connected to a network, remember how the IT guy used to come around with an external drive and back up the office workstations? This board's eSATA port makes that archaic practice feasible, if needed.
The H81M-ITX is cheap and competent enough for that market. Then again, few companies "roll their own" anymore. It's hard to compete with Dell, HP and Lenovo, which sell their cut-down small business boxes that include operating systems. For that reason, while there's nothing explicitly wrong with ASRock's H81M-ITX, it doesn't deserve an award either. If you plan to run Linux on this board, the competition's price advantage pretty much goes away.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2625445/build-log-consolidated-middle-school-builds.html
My students have been building successfully with the ASRock H97 ITX/ac and it does everything you say. What challenges there are, like getting those tiny connectors on the WiFi card to fit into the sockets on the antenna wires, add texture, and frustration, to the building experience.
All customers are satisfies at the moment and we are trying a Z97E ITX/ac build now.
The i5 4460/GTX970 configuration is being updated to a GTX 980 and 4k monitor.
Some folks may consider to pay a bit more for AsRock Rack boards if they are looking for personal or enterprise-grade storage (NAS server/box) based on ZFS. E.g., a typical home box config:
1) Core i3 4360T (35W) + C226M WS uATX board + 8GB ECC RAM
The more I think about it, the more I like the H97 chipset; the only thing you really give up is overclocking "K" CPUs. In the old days, you almost had to overclock to get good performance, but CPUs are so much faster today it seems less of a requirement unless you're down in Pentium territory; but that one can be overclocked on H97.
If you can justify the additional cost you should like the Z97E ITX/ac. I have both of these boards in different builds. While the H97M ITX/ac is a nice board, the Z97E ITX/ac is nicer all around. For me it is about a $30 USD premium.
I'm working on more boards now. Once again, ASRock has sent two. I bought one, and I believe Tom's is buying others.
As to the prices, they've jumped around in the last month or so.
One thing I think the article showed is that the price jump from H81 to another chipset buys quite a bit.
As to B85 vs. H97, it depends on your uses. In this case, Gigabyte's superior network adapters are worthwhile if you don't care about specific H97 features like RAID.
glad to see vendors participating, for a mobo segment that usually gets less attention than it deserves.
There is a small error in one chart though (correct in the text); the H81M-ITX only has two SATA 6Gb/s ports, not four. I'm sure this is my bad from copying parts of a template.
I've seen commentary elsewhere urging higher OCs on a Pentium, and I'll be testing that. I'm also going to find out if my original sample is just a dud, or if the VRMs on these boards just weren't suited to overclocking, despite staying cool, and despite being rated for 84W chips, not just this little 53W one. I decided to buy another G3258 myself. Overclocking isn't one of my primary interests, but I think it's necessary to find out what was limiting me to a mere 4.0GHz. I could hit 4.2 and boot into Windows, but it was not Prime95 stable. Temps were not the issue. RedJaron got his I believe to 4.3GHz, so I tried voltages that bracketed his, and got nowhere. I'm hoping I got a dud chip, as one of these on a H97 would be a reasonable daily driver if I can run up the clocks a bit. That's why I also bought another Gigabyte B85 board though (not mITX); I could not return the one Tom's bought for my tests because it is the first motherboard on which I've ever mangled LGA pins, in this case badly fumbling the plastic CPU socket cover. I chose one specifically for weak VRMs; it appears to only have two phases on it.
I've got a mere E8200 at work, with 4GB of RAM, and if it can handle layers of centrally-managed, GPO-enforced "stuff," MS Office, multiple browsers, remote access, and more, then for even older games, the G3258 with 8GB and a modest gaming card like a GTX650Ti or HD7870 ought to do quite well.
My Z97E ITX/ac came with a mysterious short screw in its own little baggie, maybe that's what it is for.
@dvanburen. My students are using locked i5s and the margin is a bit greater, my H97s cost just over $70, whereas the Z97E costs about $40 more expensive, only $40, but about 50%. I'd rather they spent the saving on PSU or GPU.
At school we are not allowed to use wired connections for security reasons, so the WiFi is mandatory.
I have a G3258 my students are going to work with on the ASRock Z97E, but I could toss it into an ASRock H97 as well if the info would be of any use to you. I know I don't need the Z97E for G3258, but we plan to overclock a 4690 and a 4790 in the same system for comparison and Science Fair research, as well as test 4Gb, 8Gb, 12Gb, and 16Gb memory configurations at various XMP profiles.
Edit: DonkeyOatie, I'm sure there are a fair number of readers interested in how well you're able to [easily] OC that Pentium. Note that it's only good for RAM up to DDR3-1400 (essentially lightly-oc'ed DDR3-1333).
Also, I'll check when I get home, but I'm pretty sure H81 can overclock the K chips, and not just the Pentium, provided the BIOS supports it. The K chips do of course draw more power, so you'll have VRM limits, but a mild OC could be possible.
Oh, and you can refer to me by name in the article, not just "a colleague."
I prefer a jeweler's screwdriver for that. I did the exact same thing to one of my review boards: the CPU socket protector snagged a few pins when I removed it. A steady hand and a little patience bent the pins back into place and I didn't have any problem with it.
Awesome board! I'm glad I bought it. I only payed $85 for it.