Thinking about the Asrock H61 Pro BTC Intel H61, but not for mining.

[Twists n Turns]

Hi there. Im thinking of this mobo for a upgrade to my system..
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-123-AK

OCZ Zs 650w
r9 290 Tri x
8gb {2x4gb} Gkill ripjaw 1600mhz
seagate barracuda sata2 250gb
Current Mobo is Gigabyte p61

Been doing a bit of hunting and trying to decide on which motherboard to go for. I never thougt it would bother me really but after seeing some of the rigs on here ive caught a bit of the 'colour schemed system' bug lol.
Well im trying as hard as i can to get something going. Been practicing some cable management too.

But as you may or may not know the majority of the 1155 boards are ugly as sin. {Well the low end ones to be fair} And i hate baby blue ! What is it with blue lol

Anyway my original budget was £70 but grudgingly decided to up that to £90 and go for the z77 Extreme 4. { Which will look sweet as eff next to my tri x. Not as nice as the Z77 OC Forumla would. Which is a tad over budget lol.}

But then i came across the H61 BTC. Which y'know, looks alright. Pretty plain. But black. Blacks good.
And the price!..

Im pretty much a noob. But looking at the specs it seems to suit my needs from what i can tell. Wont be overclocking - cant anyway with my 2500 and has the ram allocation i need.

Obviously its aimed at miners, but is it still a good 'everyday' board.
Am i missing something?

Thanks for reading.

 

[pastymuncher]

It looks cheap and nasty, has no vrm cooling at all and if you have a K series cpu it's likely that you won't be able to overclock. Even if you can it probably has a very limited range of options in the bios. What cpu do you have?

 

[Twists n Turns]

It looks cheap and nasty, has no vrm cooling at all and if you have a K series cpu it's likely that you won't be able to overclock. Even if you can it probably has a very limited range of options in the bios. What cpu do you have?

Oh yeah, forgot that lol.
Its the i5 2500 i have. So no overclocking for me.

It does look a bit on the cheap/plain side. But with it being Asrock i htought it might be half decent.


No vrm cooling, hmm ouch.
Daft question alert.. Is that a real concern, no cooling ?

Ty.

 

[pastymuncher]

It can be yes. If the vrms get too hot they will throttle. Asrock boards are more budget orientated so tend not to have things that other brands would normally have. If you have a 2500 non k then a Z77 board would be wasted as well. It's a shame that Gigabyte didn't change their colour scheme until the next generation as they make really good budget boards. Their new H81 and B85 boards are really good (and come in black) but that's socket 1150 and no good to you.

 

[Jokester]

If you're not going to overlclocking, and don't need extra PCI-E slots, they're alright for a basic system. But be aware, there's next to nothing in the box with the exception of the motherboard, backplate and a single SATA cable!

You can plug a GPU and a sound card in and it'll work happily enough.