Review on ASRock B360M-HDV Motherboard: High Performance LGA1151/Intel B360 with Quad CrossFireX, SATA3&USB3.1, M.2, A&GbE - MicroATX by Peris Holland

TL;DR Good mainboard, good BIOS, supports only up to 2666 32GB RAM, only has four 4-pin fan headers There was no need for a board to be designed for this. I chose the i7-8700 as the processor for my new PC and found this motherboard (later called mb). I'm somewhat familiar with ASRock, so I felt like it's a brand I can trust and rely on. It's USB 3.1 Gen2, which I'm not familiar with, but so far it works with every USB device I have, including a mouse, keyboard, phone, and thumb drive. It has M.2, which I'm not familiar with either, but it's great to have the tech if I ever want to try it. Maybe it's because I'm still not familiar with the fact that it supports Intel Optane memory. This technology is great for accelerating older mechanical hard drives (not SSDs). It supports up to 9th gen Intel processors, although I bought the 8th gen. I don't think the box (or description) says it supports 9th gen, but the website does and I'm sure it can be trusted. It only has two RAM slots, but I think that's enough. The maximum supported RAM speed is DDR4 2666, which I think is fine. I think there's faster RAM out there, but the 2666 is an upgrade of the DR3 RAM I'm using and doesn't really seem to be noticeable (although that's a plus). The maximum supported RAM size is 32 GB. Currently I find 16 GB sufficient and I would not settle for less. I think 32GB might actually be more than necessary, so that limitation doesn't bother me at all. If I decide to upgrade my RAM in the future, I still have room for it, and right now I can't imagine needing more than 16GB. The obvious downside is that if you need more than 32GB of RAM, you'll have to buy another MB. It comes with built-in video (which requires a CPU with a GPU), which is actually pretty handy. I have a GPU, but it's nice to have this extra feature in case something happens to my GPU. mb's video capabilities (or specs) seem impressive, although I don't think it's exactly what I would use for video games, which is why I have a GPU. Still, it's a relief to have this video backup. It also means I can easily connect my computer to my TV. The sound is okay, even if the program for it is a bit confusing. I had RealTek sound on my Alienware PC that I used before building this one. I didn't need much from him and he gave me exactly what I wanted and needed. The only thing I'm used to is improvements in Windows settings. To do this, Windows installs a driver that does just that, but when you update your drivers using ASRock software, this part disappears into Windows settings. I like to use volume normalization because it seems necessary. Luckily, I did a quick Google search and found that this motherboard actually has RealTek software installed to set it up (I hadn't realized this before). Of course I managed to do that, so I'm satisfied. What is there really to say about Embedded Ethernet? It's pretty much necessary and I've had no problems with it. It has a PCI-E (x16) slot for the GPU and that's really all I need. I'm not interested in using more than one GPU so it suits my needs. SATA ports are ok. It's a little confusing, although it appears that four faces face the side of the board and at least two more face the top of the board. I'm not sure why that is, unless you're using different types of SATA cables. I have two old hard drives, an SSD and a CD/DVD drive running on these ports and have some left over. So, there are many SATA ports for my use. I don't care about intrusion detection, but this motherboard has it. I don't think this MB came with a built in speaker so I don't know if it beeps when there is a problem. Most mb beeps to let you know what is wrong so I hope nothing happens because I may not know. Although I think I have an old computer with an internal speaker that I can add to this MB, there is a place for it, but I'm sure the internal speaker wasn't included. I have plenty of USB ports. I don't use it very much though. I use two on the back for keyboard and mouse. In my case there are two on the front and I usually use one to charge my phone and sometimes I use one for a bootable USB drive e.g. B. when I need to install Windows or troubleshoot. BIOS is really good. I like that as soon as you turn on the computer it tells you which keys to press to enter the BIOS or access the boot menu (there are only two options). You can press two different keys on your keyboard to enter BIOS (the menu will tell you this). I don't understand why two different buttons have the same function. I really can't imagine why that is. By default the BIOS is set to Basic View, but you can switch to Advanced View (using F6 I think). You can also change this default value. You can also use the mouse and keyboard, which is very convenient. There are a lot of settings and things you can tweak, which is great. The only weird thing I found is that I'm using 2666 RAM, but it seems to have recognized it as 2333, so I had to change that setting. You can adjust the speed of your fans, which is great. I also like the hardware monitor, which shows you your CPU temp, MB, and your fan speeds. This was definitely helpful recently as my AIO CPU water cooler failed and stopped working. I believe the software is telling you that it's not recommended to flash (update) your BIOS unless you notice something wrong, "if it ain't broke don't fix it", pretty much exactly. But I don't follow this rule, I want to keep everything up to date and it was very easy to do. I think there are several ways to do this that are definitely useful. There are other features of this MB so I recommend reading the description here and on ASRock website if you are interested to make sure it is the right MB for you. My biggest (yet minor) complaint is that this has four fan headers. I wish there were more, but in my case it's more than four. Pretty much all my fans are 3 pin PWM fans connected to 4 pin headers. The connectors are really good though as they have a specific orientation for 3 pin fans meaning you can only connect a 3 pin fan one way so there is no confusion as to which pins should be connected. If you want to add more fans, you can add a fan controller or find some adapters or splitters. I have some old cables from another MB that I was able to reuse on this PC to connect all my fans. I have many fans, two of which came pre-installed with the case and are on the front. One of these is connected to the MB fan header and the other is connected to the splitter as I mentioned earlier. Another fan is attached to the top, which is connected to one of the fan connectors. The heatsink of the AIO CPU water cooler sits between two fans, one of which plugs into the back of the PC. These two fans are (by design) attached to a splitter on the cooler, and the cooler itself is attached to the connector. The cooler also plugs into the USB port, which is fine as it has enough MB for that. I believe there are three of them, one main for the front of the PC and two others.