| Product: |
Asrock P4I45GL |
| Date: |
11/02/04 (175 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Value, Stability, Quality
Disadvantages: Expansion, None, None!
Really good board for the money, I only spent £40 on it as part of a system rebuild.
I needed a mobo which was good value, could support a P4 processor and PC2700 Ram and thought this fitted the bill perfectly. I was actually very surprised by how well featured the board is. I fitted a P4 2.0Ghz Processor, 512Mb PC2700 Ram, 60Gb Hard Drive, DVD Rom Drive and floppy. I housed it all in a case I had knocking round.
Total build time was not more than 30 minutes, and everything worked first time. The Mobo allowed me to overclock the CPU to 2.3Ghz and still remained stable. Installed Win XP Pro in about 40 minutes and system was complete!
The only real drawback to this board is the lack of expansion. There is no AGP slot, so you have to make do with the onboard graphics. They are pretty good though, and help it to perform most tasks easily. You won't be able to play the latest games on a system built arounf the motherboard unless you get a PCI graphics card, and thankfully there have been some decent GeForce FX ones come out recently. I actually got quite attached to the machine and didn't want to give it back, it was mch more stable than my Athlon XP2700+ which is supposed to be a powerhouse! There are 3 PCI slots vacant, 4 USB 2.0 ports and the option to bring 2 more to the front. It supports CPUs of 400/533Mhz FSBs. It shouldn't actually support PC2700, but if you run the CPUs FSB at 533 instead of 400Mhz it works.
Documentation was clear and useful, drivers worked niceley. All cables included and everything felt solid. Hats off to Asus, their so called budget brand is a real winner.
Anyone who want's to build a system should consider using AsRock mobos. They are cheap, reliable and good quality. They may cost a bit more than some other budget brands, but you are paying for the extra quality. PC Chips may have the cheapest boards out there, but I like to build systems on stronger foundations than sand!
Summary:
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Last comment:
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Dave_UK - 11/02/04 A good review, but lacking some information.
You mention how fully featured this board is, but you do not elaborate exactly on what features - aside from onboard graphics (which you give no details on). What about onboard sound? Networking?
You also say:
'they may cost a bit more than some other budget brands' (!?!)
I don't think you can get much more budget than ASRock - there motherboard range starts about £30!
I would suggest that for something as critical as a motherboard, you are better off spending £50 more and getting a decent, faster and more feature-rich board that won't hold back your system.
Furtherm ore, I would categorically advise ANYONE against buying a board that does not even feature an AGP slot! Especially to combine with a 2ghz Pentium4!
This will severely limit your upgrade potential in the future, and is a big no-no for gamers. A PCI graphics card is not a solution, as it doesn't offer the bandwidth for the latest cards and games. The new GeforceFX card you mentioned that uses a PCI slot is based on the Geforce FX5200 - the bottom of the line (slowest!) version. ALL the latest graphics cards which offer reasonable speeds REQUIRE an AGP slot.
Additionally, onboard graphics will use up some of your system RAM, which may have a performance impact on applications that need lots of memory.
Finally, you didn't mention that this board is 'MicroATX' form factor. This means that it is designed for MiniPC's, and a larger board will be more suitable and less fiddly for use in a standard-sized case.
This isn't meant to sound preachy - but when rating products it is important that you provide people with all the relevant information. The only thing going for this motherboard is its price - it is slower than competitors by a long shot (it is powered by an old Intel chipset), and doesn't even have an AGP slot. You should never have awarded it 5 stars, and I urge you to change this.
Dave :)
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