Introduction:
ASRock’s Fatal1ty branded motherboards have been around for a few generations now but prior to the Intel Z87 chipset; they were mostly bound to the upper segment of the market. However with the Z87 chipset, ASRock has taken a different approach. This time around, they’ve made only two Fatal1ty boards as compared to three in the last generation and also there is no mATX board. Conversely, they’ve made one high-end board and one budget board to cater a wide segment of the market. The two boards are Fatal1ty Z87 Professional and Fatal1ty H87 Performance. Unlike ‘cheaper’ Fatal1ty boards from last generation, the cheap board of this generation is based on the cheaper chipset. This must have helped ASRock in cutting the costs.
This review is about the cheaper one; the Fatal1ty H87 Professional. Costing around $100, this motherboard obviously sits at the lower side of the price segment. Though, despite being affordable, it has all the features that are found in Fatal1ty boards and that make it a ‘Gaming’ motherboard. It has all the rights things that a gamer needs like Intel’s gigabit Ethernet, Fatal1ty mouse port with adjustable polling rate along with ASRock’s Key Master including the Sniper Key feature and the Macro Key feature. In terms of sound, it comes equipped with Realtek’s latest high-end ALC1150 codec along with some dedicated hardware and EMI shielding which we’ll have a detailed look at later in the review.
First, let’s have a brief look at the specifications of the Fatal1ty H87 Performance before we go any further.
| ASRock Fatal1ty H87 Performance Specifications | |
|---|---|
| CPU Support | 4th Gen Intel Core i7/i5/i3/Pentium/Celeron processor family for the LGA 1150 Socket |
| Power Design | CPU Power: 8 Phases Memory Power: 2 Phases |
| Chipset | Intel H87 |
| Memory | 4x DDR3 DIMM, Dual Channel, Max: 32GB, 1066 MHz to 1600 MHz |
| BIOS | Dual AMI UEFI BIOS with 2x 64 Mb Flash ROM |
| Expansion Slots | 1 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot 2 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot 3 x legacy PCI slot |
| Storage | 6 x SATA 6.0 Gb/s (Intel Z87 PCH) |
| Connectivity | 1x Intel Gigabit LAN |
| I/O | 6 x USB 3.0 ports (2 at front panel, 4 at rear panel) 8 x USB 2.0 ports (4 at front panel, 3 at rear panel, 1 Fatal1ty Mouse) 1 x RJ45 LAN connectors 7.1 channel HD Audio 1 x Optical Digital Audio port 1 x HDMI-in port1 x HDMI-out port 1 x Displayport 1 x VGA port 1 x PS/2 port |
| Audio | Realtek ALC1150 Audio Codec |
| Fan Header | 2 x 4-pin PWM 4 x 3-pin |
| Form Factor | ATX Form Factor (305 mm x 244 mm) |
| Unique Features | ASRock F-Stream ASRock Instant Flash ASRock APP Charger ASRock XFast USB ASRock XFast LAN ASRock XFast RAM ASRock Crashless BIOS ASRock OMG (Online Management Guard) ASRock Internet Flash ASRock System Browser ASRock UEFI Tech Service ASRock Dehumidifier ASRock Easy RAID Installer ASRock Easy Driver Installer ASRock Interactive UEFI ASRock Fast Boot ASRock Restart to UEFI ASRock USB Key ASRock Key Master ASRock Home Cloud ASRock FAN-Tastic Tuning Hybrid Booster |
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