Choosing the Best H55/H57 Motherboard - Part 1

ASRock H55M-Pro

ASRock's H55M-Pro is available at various retailers priced in the region of $95.

At $95, you're not going to get the very cream of components on ASRock's H55M-Pro, but the feature set is vast enough to deliver adequate performance on multiple fronts. You get VIA's VT1718S audio codec (bundled with a 30 day Creative X-Fi trial), five onboard SATA ports, a TPM header, one 1394 port, a socket mounted BIOS chip, three fan headers (two are 4-pin), and polymer capacitors used throughout. There are some cutbacks in the package though: you only get two SATA cables and the rear I/O shield to complete your build. We guess it's expected at this price point.

Software

ASRock includes an array of software tools with the H55M-Pro. Most notable is the OC Tuner, with functions for increasing voltage, BCLK, and controlling two fan headers.

We tested the software and found that changing BCLK and fan speed control worked fine, but changing voltages resulted in the board locking up, requiring a power cycle to repost again - the software needs work.

Other OS level tools are ASRock's own implementation of sleep mode software called Instant Boot. Once installed the Instant Boot software overrides Windows built-in sleep mode option with its own simplified GUI and encourages the user to use sleep states and also a fast boot standby/suspend mode to decrease OS loading times.  The fast boot feature works by partially reloading the OS when you opt to power down the system. Upon reboot, most of the BIOS start up routines are bypassed, taking you directly to OS resume to save a few seconds of boot up time. This feature is only of use when you're not using a windows login password though, otherwise every time you want to power down, you'll find yourself having to wait for the system to reboot and enter your login credentials before it will suspend - saving you no time at all.  It's also worth noting that Windows 7's recovery times from S1/S3/hibernate states are pretty good as is to save power and time, largely negating the need for specialized software to do the job.

The Board

We think ASRock have done a commendable job in laying out the H55M-Pro. Two PCI-E x16 slots are on offer (the latter running at x4 bandwidth), allowing you to potentially use a discrete GPU and a RAID card simultaneously. SATA port placement is also good, allowing for access regardless of slot loading.

The CMOS battery placement could be better, as you won't be able to remove it if you insert a graphics card into the primary PEG slot. The CMOS clear jumper is placed intelligently enough at the lower edge of the board. We only found ourselves reaching for this on the earlier BIOS releases, which used a five reboot counter before safe mode recovery kicked in. If things progress as they have been, you shouldn't need to use it at all.

The only heatsink present on the board is for the Intel PCH; the PWM FETs for CPU Vcore and other rails are all "naked". If you decide to push the board hard, be sure to provide some form of cooling over the power FETs as it's better not to leave things solely in the hands of overheat/current/voltage protection.

Overclocking

The ASRock H55M-PRO BIOS offers a basic set of functions for moderate overclocking. Voltage control is not granular enough for fine-tuning at higher overclocks, but it's adequate enough to cater for users in search of a quick and easy 4GHz from their CPU.

Capable 4GB memory kits should see speeds in excess of 1800MHz on this board with Clarkdale CPUs requiring little user intervention. We managed to get up to 188BCLK fully stable; anything higher is hampered by the lack of QPI ratio control in the ASRock BIOS - it's locked at 24X.

Move over to 8GB of memory and you're looking at a maximum around the 1500MHz mark, because the ASRock BIOS does not provide control over the full range of memory sub-timings you'll need to adjust to get higher speeds stable on most memory kits. We don't see it as a huge deal breaker in this instance as the Clarkdale architecture does not seem to respond kindly to capacitive loading of the memory bus anyway - not to mention this is a price conscious motherboard, so expensive RAM kits are a mismatch.

Out of the four boards we're testing here today, the only one that can hold our Corsair 8GB kit fully stable at 1600MHz is the ASUS H57-EVO, a board that will cost you twice the amount of the ASRock H55M. If you are looking at running 8GB of memory on these platforms, the sensible choice would be to opt for kits that come in around CAS 8 or 9 at 1333MHz. Performance memory is wasted on Clarkdale in 8GB configurations, especially if you intend to run with the IGP active.

Automated overclocking functions are also provided in the BIOS, with a selection of speeds available up to 4.4GHz if your cooling permits. Most of the rail voltages are ramped moderately, the only notable exception being the IGP rails, which receive/require quite a bump in voltage if you opt for the higher frequency presets.

BIOS

ASRock's BIOS offers a basic set of overclocking features allied with a range of voltage control options, albeit with rather coarse selection scales. You get a limited selection of DRAM timings, so there's not a lot of room for tweaking to the nth degree. The biggest omission on ASRock's part is the absence of QPI multiplier selection; the BIOS is locked to select the highest multiplier, regardless of applied frequencies, which limits the maximum achievable BCLK. Given this board's intended audience we don't consider this a huge issue, but we do feel it would have rounded off the BIOS nicely.

The latest public release BIOS (1.70) offers good OC recovery, which has now been reduced from the required five reboots down to one by default, bringing things in line with other vendors. You also get three BIOS save profile locations, and each can be named for later reference. Built-in BIOS flashing is also offered and the utility works very well. One word of warning: you don't get prompted for approval when you select a BIOS file; as soon as you press enter once, the flash will commence, so there's no going back once you start the process.