ASRock H81M-HDS R2.0 S1150 Intel H81 Motherboard

I've built a lot of systems over the years (since socket 775 I think I've built 4 or 5 systems on each major platform revision since) and I've experienced both good and bad boards in any generation. I can't speak for those who got sent faulty units obviously, but my experience with this board is very positive.I was provided with a "broken" ex-office workstation with a 4th gen i7 4790 and 8GB of fairly basic DDR3 (2x 4GB) which it turned out had been dropped during an office move and the HDD had died, the motherboard was damaged and the case/PSU were bent and broken. Hence, salvage the CPU and memory.After picking up a similarly budget focused case that featured a USB3 output on the front, I needed to find a board that kept the price low, allowed me to up the turbo boost on the CPU (yes, you can slightly overclock non-k systems by raising the base frequency to the turbo boost speed, allowing for a further 10% boost under turbo on Haswell CPUs). So this board fit the bill, right formfactor, USB3 header, and dual channel memory support with ASRock's mobo's known to have fairly decent UEFI's I gambled (correctly) on it allowing me to up the boost clock.Put in the case with a Hyper T4 heatsync (beware, it's a thinner than normal board so I wouldn't go for a cooler heavier than that, but it's more than capable of handling the i7) and everything was pretty much hunky-dory. I ended up flipping the RAM and putting in a 2x 8GB kit as I felt the i7 deserved 16GB and after struggling a little on power, with a 300w PSU barely doing the job... I popped in a spare 450w Corsair unit and a 1050Ti and it's an absolute stormer now. Paired with an SSD and a 2TB HDD I've got a real bang for buck machine (less than £300 spend in total, if you include the free CPU and the money I got back for the 8GB RAM).Points to note about this board:1 - It's thinner than others I've worked with. Tower style coolers with more than one fan or more than 2 heat pipes *may* be too heavy and cause flex. Buyer beware2 - The OOTB BIOS was, VERY out of date, and not compatible with my i7. I had a spare Celeron of the right gen and a quick flash later had us up and running, again buyer beware3 - The board hasn't seen an official BIOS upgrade in over 2 years. There is a Beta from May of 2018 that includes Intel's meltdown/spectre microcode patches, but I'd never recommend using a Beta BIOS. As such I haven't tested this, but it's what I'd expect from a board of this gen, at this price.4 - The SATA ports are opposite ways around from eachother... I don't like this, but it didn't affect installation5 - It has NVMe support! Only via the PCI inputs as there's no M.2, but still great news6 - VERY limited VRM. K-skew CPU's are not going to work well here, even if non-overclockedWhile the point's may seem largely negative, for this price I'd call it unbeatable if buying new. If used is an option, an MSI Gaming 3 would be a better buy, otherwise, it's a really good board. Just update the BIOS before use.

nice motherboard easy to install.

Great performing motherboard considering the price

ordered this to replace a broken Asus motherboard wow big big big mistake after a day my gtx 960 wouldn't get a signal on motherboard only onboard graphics. so i tried a gtx 1050 same deal so i ordered a replacement from Amazon. guess what its exactly the same both graphics cards refuse to get a signal when on board yet both work perfectly well on two other pcs. what are the odds or is it the crumby cheap components used by as rock so now i am left with two broken useless motherboards and will have to send both back cant be bothered with the hassle. but you know wh\at lesson learnt you get what you pay for in this case a load of rubbish

Picked a good un