ASRock reveals three Clarkdale-ready motherboards

[Matthew DeCarlo]

ASRock has joined other motherboard makers in flaunting their upcoming Clarkdale-ready products. The company has released images of three motherboards designed for Intel's soon-to-be-released 32nm processors. ASRock's new units will be branded H55M, H55M Pro, and H55DE3 -- with the first two being microATX motherboards.

Judging by the model nomenclature, all three boards appear to feature Intel's H55 chipset. The H55M Pro houses VGA, DVI, and HDMI display outputs, while the H55M and H55DE3 are said to carry at least VGA connections. Naturally, those ports should be directly wired to the CPU socket to make use of Clarkdale's built-in graphics core.

All of the designs also include two PCI Express x16 slots, and the microATX models feature two sets of heatsink mounting holes -- not unlike the company's P55 motherboards, which have holes for both LGA 775 and LGA 1156 heatsinks. ASRock's H55M seems the most barren of the trio, with only four SATA ports and two DIMM slots.

Apart from features seen in the images, few details are known, but it's probably a fair assumption that ASRock's H55 motherboards will ship alongside Clarkdale in early 2010 at around $100 price point.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/37148-asrock-reveals-three-clarkdale-ready-motherboards.html

 

[Regenweald]

Integrated intel graphics........definitely for the 'wait and see' approach. I look forward to seeing what the full platform will possibly cost.

 

[ColdPreacher]

Sub one hundred sounds good to me!

 

[manintech]

we'll wait and see

 

[IvanAwfulitch]

I'd only consider this if I were running a MicroATX system, which I'm not. If you're really going to try for a Micro setup, feel free to try this out. I'll stick with my higher performance/quality full atx size boards, thank you very much.

 

[BlackIrish]

Wow, great price, and those i5 dual core cpu's deliver some massive Ghz bumps.

Anyway, does anyone know how will these H55 boards interact with discrete graphic cards? Like, would they use the cpu graphics while in windows and for movies, and switch to the other card when playing games?

 

[klepto12]

this seems nice as asrock had the cheapest 1333 mb for i7 cpus and it was a great board at a $100 price point who could go wrong with these mbs

 

[Heretic]

This looks like a pretty rock solid board if you'll excuse the pun. My only beef is that it's not a full size board.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

@IvanAwfulitch, Heretic: I think you guys may be confused. Three motherboards were revealed -- one of which (at least by the naming convention) seems to be a regular old ATX board. Either way, there will be plenty of ATX products available when the time comes .

 

[saintbodhisatva]

It seems a bit unfair to those buying more premium P55 boards but can't run Clarkdales.
And also, Is Sata 6Gb and USB 3 included in this?

 

[TechDisciple]

Definitely the starting $100 price point sounds good but would be great if little lower.

 

[tengeta]

It looks nice but I've become less and less of a fan of smaller things when it comes to computing the last few years. Results in a lot less failed hardware too.

 

[lfg18]

It looks promising, we have to wait and see what it is capable of, anyway I'm reluctant to these cheap plataforms, but hey if it works fine I will definitely buy one

 

[PNagy]

I think ASRock should get more attention. They're the 4th who has H55 boards.

 

[fref]

Can someone explain who ASRock is exactly? I seem to recall reading that it was part of Asus, or had been bought by Asus, or something like that? Are they considered a good brand like Asus is, or are they more budget oriented?

 

[AbsolutGaloot]

This integrated graphics thing has such amazing potential, but unfortunately I don't see the performance actually surpassing add-in cards anytime soon.

 

[TorturedChaos]

I don't think I have ever heard of ASRock. Always used Gigabyte and Asus Mobo.....
If they do a lot of Micro-ATX boards might be why. Always bought full sized boards .

 

[SNGX1275]

Can someone explain who ASRock is exactly? I seem to recall reading that it was part of Asus, or had been bought by Asus, or something like that? Are they considered a good brand like Asus is, or are they more budget oriented?

ASRock used to be part of Asus back in the day, but now they are separate. They aren't on the same quality level as Asus, they are geared to compete in the budget segment of the motherboard market. Having said that though, if you don't need to overclock with very precise control over things then an ASRock board can still be a worthwhile purchase.

I've owned MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, ECS, and ASRock boards and to be honest I've had the most problems with Asus.

 

[claycc]

I am interested to see how these do. For someone that doesn't game and is looking for a solid setup on a budget this might fit the bill really well.

 

[ken777]

I wish they would include a Displayport output too.

 

[ryan29121]

Sounds pretty good for under $100. As mentioned before, displayport output would be nice. But what do you expect from a mobo that costs $100?

 

[jgvmx]

In my country the general idea is that Asrock is one of the cheapo lame brands, but in reality they release very interesting boards at nifty prices. If i remember well they were among the first ones to offer an affordable X58 board.
.
It would be quite hilarious if Intel announced they would release yet another socket for the clarkdales.

 

[SNGX1275]

They also had a board that would take a C2D and an AGP video card (you could also use PCIe). So that was a great board for me to use when I wanted a better processor than my super old Athlon64 (one of the very first ones made, 754) but had a good AGP vid card (7800GS). So for about a year I ran that as my main machine and it worked great. Then it got little use, and now Tarkus on the boards is using it because his C2D box died and he needed a quick replacement that wouldn't choke on youtube (his secondary machine was a low power via box). I believe he's running a PCIe card in it now. So the versatility of that board is great, and its still working after several years.

 

[ununpentium]

Cheap with eSATA and DDR3... a good compromise for a modern and affordable motherboard!

 

[buttus]

It looks like Intel is making this platform their price competitive answer to AMD. They are trying to close the price gap to AMD in order to woo more people to the Intel side (for just a few dollars more you can have an i5 instead of the AMD chip). Traditionally the price differential between Intel and AMD has been huge (and I for one believe AMD is the better overall value and Intel obviously gets the performance crown).