Asrock Extreme4 Gen3 - Hard OCP review

miker1

miker1

miker1

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http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/09/asrock_z68_extreme4_gen3_motherboard_review/6

It totally destroys this board!:eek:

EG "Overclocking the Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 was a horrible experience. In fact it’s the worst overclocking experience I’ve had to date with any P67 or Z68 chipset based board. The BIOS or UEFI was the worst part. It wouldn’t respond to key commands for setting the multiplier manually. It kept inputting 16 every time I’d set the system to 40x. I was able to work around it, but essentially I had to use auto overclocking or the software in Windows to do it. This too was problematic as that always caused a lockup. I’d have to set things up in the software, reboot, go into the BIOS if it would POST and alter the BIOS settings to make it work right. "

It slams everything.

Is it right? All the other reviews adore it!

Has anyone else had the reviewers experience with this board or is it good???
 
Meh, I got banned for asking them a question about the review.

One glaring mistake all the way back in the 480/470gtx review. They randomly decided the 470gtx uses like 50% less power than the 480gtx, because in SLI furmark didn't record a huge increase in power, despite the single card showing it used well over 200W alone the sli power only showed a 100W increase and they couldn't work out it just wasn't working right in furmark.

Anyway, they KNOW this board is bad, he refuses to RMA it, he was impressed support got back to him within an hour. They told him to RMA it, which considering it was from Newegg who are huge and well liked, would be stupidly easy and through them rather than months through mobo maker.

If a board is slightly dodgy but you can't prove its faulty, thats one thing, but they KNEW the pci-e slot was dead then just assumed everything else was working fine. LIterally pathetic, and they compared it constantly to the Asus, which they got a free sample of and put the review up on their site a day or two later.

Asus are well known to pay BIG money from their PR departments, IE site does review and same site gets a bunch of money for putting up Asus ad's on their site.

Its also getting increasingly common for sites to compare everything to Asus boards, and to have sites trash every single mobo they get that isn't Asus. People have been commenting that Bit-tech are doing dodgy mobo reviews. Where all but identical mobo's, same chipset, ssd, everything will randomly get vastly lower performance in certain things like ssd speeds, than their asus and spend the entire time saying buy the asus instead.

[H], from that review, became a no go site for me instantly. Shockingly poor review, absolutely horrific professionalism to REFUSE to rma the board. Kyle, asides from banning me, also said on the forums he's throwing it away and moving on. Who would throw away a $200+ mobo, rather than get a FREE REPLACEMENT? Get a replacement, it works, sell it for $50 on the forum, or $150. Couldn't be more obviously bought and paid for...... by Asus.

Now if they get 3 broken mobo's in a row, thats one thing, but getting one bad board, and refusing to get a free replacement is laughable. Claiming all the faults it had as certain and down to certain things is also laughable. I have the mobo, its ok, nothing epic, nothing bad. Yet my Uefi bios works fine, the faults he had are NOT inherent to the board or the bios, but they claim both were.

If I know any mobo I have has a fault, I don't automatically assume everything else works perfectly and would never base a professional review off that kind of sample.
 
Agree terrible way to do a review, if a product is found to be faulty in any way especially a device like a motherboard you don't review it because even a tiny fault on a motherboard makes the whole system behave in strange ways. *THUMBS DOWN* to hardocp this time for clearly abusing the way to run a review correctly, truthfully and ethically. Asrock showed to them that their support is 1st class and gave them the right advice on how to fix the problem, but they didn't take the advice and decided to trash the review with a faulty motherboard. Useless review..
 
Not anymore dude. ASRock used to be a subsidiary of Asus, but they moved on themselves. They have some excellent Premium quality stuff now and offer some very competitive products. For example - Up until recently the Extreme 4 Gen 3 Z68 was unbeatable in terms of value v's feature set.

Have to agree with Drunkenmaster on this one though. I can't believe such a poor review could be written - I honestly think its because ASRock didn't give him a freebie that he is so ****ed off an ranting about it - instead of getting a fixed new one lol.

How stupid is that - Product is broke, but we'll still review it........:rolleyes:
that reviewer should be sacked to keep credibility of the site. :D
 
zoomee said:
How stupid is that - Product is broke, but we'll still review it........:rolleyes:
that reviewer should be sacked to keep credibility of the site. :D
Click to expand...

Totally agree with the above, loving my first Asrock board having moved from ASUS and Gigabyte boards in the past.
 
What a load of...

This board is great and quite a few members on this forum have it say the same thing. If something is broken or buggy the decent thing is to contact the company and tell them rather than publish such an article. Check out a decent review like mine in sig below ;) :p
 
mishima said:
What a load of...

This board is great and quite a few members on this forum have it say the same thing. If something is broken or buggy the decent thing is to contact the company and tell them rather than publish such an article. Check out a decent review like mine in sig below ;) :p
Click to expand...

Well said that man.

Mark
 
I have one discrepancy against that review though - My caps aint as bling bling as the ones they've pictured - lol!. More a silvery colour with a tint of gold :D
 
I honestly really don't care if they bash the board, but not with a board they KNOW is faulty and proceed to go with.

Its very possible the board is thinner, that doesn't make it worse, it might mean someone used to handling Asus mobo's that are thicker is less careful with another board and break it , but that is down the the using making an assumption. Its possible more Asrock boards are faulty for one reason or another, however they didn't PROVE this or even hint at it, they got one board, knew it was broken, and tested it anyway while being petulant and ridiculous in their refusal to RMA the board and get a working one.

I've had broken Asus, Gigabyte, Epox, DFI mobo's off the top of my head, does that mean all their mobo's are crap, not even slightly I've probably had 30-40 mobo's, same brands again with no issues. If they rma'd and got another broken board, and the same happened a third time they'd have every right to say they can't get a working board...... however in that situation I'd simply claim that the consistency is so poor in production that I wouldn't recommend one, I wouldn't test a faulty board as that proves nothing.

it really is as simple as Uefi bios on my Asrock works perfectly...... this proves that the problem ISN'T inherent to their implementation of the bios, yet they claim it is.

Honestly most sites do bad reviews, it was their attitude in the forums on the review, the petulant nature of people who asked why they tested a broken board, and Kyle's insistence on throwing it away and moving on rather than getting a replacement.

I've heard from several guys I knew ages ago who worked for various review sites, two of them I spoke to ran hardware review sites, they all said Asus were huge in paying out money for advertising, I also heard of a particular review site that refused to review any Asus product unless Asus paid a big chunk for advertising on their site and all but promised a glowing review if such an arrangement was made.

I don't even know if there is a SINGLE review site out there I trust any more :(
 
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mishima said:
What a load of...

This board is great and quite a few members on this forum have it say the same thing. If something is broken or buggy the decent thing is to contact the company and tell them rather than publish such an article. Check out a decent review like mine in sig below ;) :p
Click to expand...

I cant agree its great as it dont overclock my 2600k as well as the Asus did its just an ok board but not great or fantastic.
 
Extreme4 gen3 has a major following on here and I was looking at GD65 G3, EXtreme4g3 and Asus p8z68-v g3 went with gd65 g3 in the end simply because of cost with the VAT back.

Reviews and user experience they are all pretty much on par from user reviews and more professional review sites.

Bit lame that they didn't even bother to RMA the board.
 
Ha ha LOL, I know why the board kept inputting 16 instead of what he wanted.......

HE HAD NUMBER LOCK ON HIS NUMBER KEYPAD!!! Took me 2 seconds to figure it out!

HA HA WTF, what a complete NOOB!!!
 
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