ASRock 970M Pro3 (970 refresh board)

[mr.squishy]

Alright, so this is my first review, so forgive me if it is badly formatted or strangely/awkwardly done. I've had this board for 5 days so far and it is absolutely fantastic.

 

Here is the newegg link to the board and a picture from ASRock's website:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157582

 

Noteworthy specs/ features:

4+1 power phase design

Usb 3.0

Sata 3

4 RAM slots

2 PCIe 2.0 slots (x16/x4)

Solid black finish

Matx Form Factor

 

Initial thoughts:

It looks fantastic. It looks even better in person than in the image. It just looks great and feels solid in your hands.

It has all of the usual good things about a board, good connectors, easy to install, has things.

The board comes with an incredibly sturdy little metal back plate for the included cooler mounts, although most users will replace those with their own mounting plate.

The layout for peripherals/ports makes sense (except for the front panel usb 3.0 header, that one is in a place that makes no sense whatsoever but that doesn't apply to me since I don't have front panel 3.0)

An interesting observation I made to myself was that most of the onboard connectors were in placements that made a lot of sense, although that's possible due to my previous board being poorly laid out. The Sata ports are in places that make sense and the fan connectors are in good spots too.

Having 4 RAM slots on an Matx board is awesome and super handy. And also really nice.

The second PCIE slot is an awesome idea too, although in practice doesn't make a lot of sense since it is at the bottom of the board and therefore a second 2/3 slot card won't fit, since most Matx cases only have 4 expansion slots, but it's the option that counts. This is also a general issue with this form factor anyway, so I'm not too upset.

ASRock correctly placed the PCIe x1 slot on the board: they placed it at the top, where it is actually usable. I applaud this  and appreciate it immensely, as it allows me to use my wireless card that I paid money for without the slot being covered by a GPU. (glares at Gigabyte)

The Power Phase heatsink seems beefy enough to do some decent overclocking, and ASRock certainly didn't leave the Northbridge with a weak heatsink either.

I would be missing something though if I didn't mention just how difficult it was to plug the 8-pin cpu power cable into the motherboard with the cooler installed and the board in the case, although this was entirely the fault of my bad planning and weird choice to route the 8-pin cable in a clever and sneaky way behind and above/around the motherboard.

 

Now on to the good stuff. 

 

Bios:

The board's bios is intuitive and easy to use, and the included software has the usual bloatware but there are a few possibly useful stuff.

There really isn't much more I can say about it other than it is a clean UEFI Bios.

 

Overclocking:

I'm a really bad overclocker, to be honest. I've never really tried overclocking my FX 6300, but I've never really seen a reason to. However, the built in interface looks to be informative and easy to use, if you know what the numbers you are reading mean and what to adjust. The interface appears to be solid. To address a comment I saw earlier, my board's socket and my cpu stays at acceptable temperatures even under full load, although again, I run my chip at stock speeds.

 

General Experience:

ASRock includes some bloatware in the motherboard's installation disk, but thankfully it is optional. Some of the software is useful though, such as the network monitor and the included system monitoring software. I have found both of these to be fun to have in the past, although I have to note that the system monitor has improved greatly in the visual department from the last hardware monitor I got from ASRock.

 

Other thoughts/ comments:

Reinstalling windows to use this board was probably the best idea I've had in a while; my system is very light and not bloated and my inexplicably broken Geforce Experience drivers also now work perfectly.

 

Final thoughts:

I'm so glad I snagged this motherboard. I feel that it is the best Matx AM3+ board currently on the market. It's made me feel happier about my my system, which resides within my pride and joy; a lightly modified NZXT Vulcan. Although the lack of expansion slots in the case makes me sad when I see the unused PCIE 2.0 slot, I'd still like to find a use for it though, even though the board doesn't support SLI.

[harrynowl]

Ooh a 9xx based mATX board

 

Shame it's a few years late

 

Nice review!

[KamiKatze]

Ooh a 9xx based mATX board

 

Shame it's a few years late

 

Nice review!

 

So true!

 

The first proper mATX board with 970 chipset come to market...... 3 years late.

[spwath]

So true!

The first proper mATX board with 970 chipset come to market...... 3 years late.

Yeah.

I wish this existed like a year ago.

I could have a matx system

[mr.squishy]

Yeah.

I wish this existed like a year ago.

I could have a matx system

Well, it's a great board to breathe new life into existing systems. Like mine

[spwath]

Well, it's a great board to breathe new life into existing systems. Like mine

Yeah, I really need to upgrade my board. 45$ 970 chip set,I can't oc due to bad power delivery, and I have a custom loop

[mr.squishy]

Yeah, I really need to upgrade my board. 45$ 970 chip set,I can't oc due to bad power delivery, and I have a custom loop

Doooo iiiiiittttttttt

[byalexandr]

I have this board and I have to say that it is really nice. Still waiting on my FX 6300, but I will see what kind of overclocks I can get on it with this board.

[RazerZ]

Yeah, I really need to upgrade my board. 45$ 970 chip set,I can't oc due to bad power delivery, and I have a custom loop

This board only has a 4+1 power phase design. If you're looking for an upgrade, look elsewhere.

[Interfectorem]

The 4+1 power phase design is a big turn off for me. Good review nonetheless! But it's actually a very nice price, I could get this for my little brother, since the HP OEM 760G motherboard he has sucks, and with this board, he could overclock his Phenom at least a little, from the measly stock 2.7 GHz speed.

[byalexandr]

Update with the board, as I had it for quite a while now. Running an FX 6300, this board doesn't produce any problems. As for overclocks, well I had to increase the bus speed because simply increasing the multiplier too much kept on crashing Windows. Before I had the bus at 215MHz (weird I know, but I actually didn't do this myself) and the multiplier set to something or another. Anyway, somehow I was at 4.2GHz. I wiped the CMOS and fixed everything (again I don't know how it got to that clock speed on it's own) and now I'm back to the regular 200MHz bus speed, with the chip overclocking itself to around 3.8GHz (at least that's what CPUZ tells me). So aside from the overclocking the board in itself is really good. The color is nice, there is no coil whine or anything, and there are tons of SATA ports, fan headers, etc. My only gripe would be the USB 3.0 header, as in my Cooler Master N200, the cable is pretty hort and I had to run the cable under my GTX 760 near the PCI-E slot, and then pass the graphics card by routing the cable between the PCI-E slot and the rear I/O of the card. I don't get why AsRock had to put the header here. Also, my Samsung 840 PRO 512GB was a little bit of a hassle at first, but once I updated the firmware, enabled RAPID tech and stuff, it worked like a charm. I had to enable a couple of things in the BIOS when I cleared CMOS, though, as it wouldn't let me boot into Windows, since it uses my RAM as a cache or whatever.

 

Overall an 8/10, pretty good besides a couple of gripes, which can all be worked around. My Seidon 120V comes in on Monday, so I'll see if that will allow for some better overclocking (I am using the stock cooler right now).

 

Anyway, just my two cents, hope you guys enjoyed my rant. Thanks!

 

EDIT: Yeah, the 4+1 VRM isn't the best.