I'm about to set up an i5-2400 PC and looking at using the ASRock H61M/U3S3, which is about half the price of a H67 board for me, and seems to have all the features. By virtue of the H61 chipset though, the SATA3 controller is an external chip. I'm wondering are there likely to be any drawbacks on this board from a power use/noise point of view compared to the more expensive H67 boards?

eg, CPU voltage control, Fan control, idle power use of the H61 vs H67, power draw of extra sata3 chip etc. Anyone with any stats on power consumption of this board?

The Marvell web site claims that all their 6Gb/s SATA controllers use 1 watt. That means they will not need cooling or draw a lot of power.

The H67 chipset has 5 differences from the H61: Intel RAID, 2 SATA 6Gbps ports, 4 more USB2 ports, 2 more PCIe lanes, support for four dual-sided memory sticks. I can not imagine that the H67 uses much more power then the H61, but it is possible.

I expect that the efficiency of your power supply will have more impact on your system then the use these SATA controller and platform controller chips.

You can also cut costs, heat, and noise by buying one of the new "Sandy Bridge" Pentiums: G620, G840 and G850. They all cost under $85 and use 65 watts (regular chips use 95 watts).

Thanks for the input. I've ordered the H61 board to give it a go. That was a good tip about the G series pentiums too. It's a bit late for me though, as I've already ordered the i5, but looking at it now, the cheaper ones do look a good option.

Interesting looking in that article how the idle power in AMD vs Intel tells a different story to what previous SPCR tests have done

SPCR have an i3-2100 idling system power 12W less than a PhenomIIX2 565
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1202-page3.html

xbitlabs have the i3-2100 idling 4W more than the same Phenom
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/di ... 620_7.html

I guess the motherboard can make a big difference and it's so hard to make fair comparisons.

As you have not had a motherboard, you may not have opened the box of your i5. Many retailer will take back an UNOPENED Intel retail CPU. Alternately, you could sell the i5 on Ebay, where unopened retail CPUs often sell for more then they would at Newegg. Newegg does not take back CPUs unless they are broken.



Yes, the difference in board powers can be significant. Overclocking boards can us a lot more power, due to the huge power supplies that they use. While normal boards never expect to deliver more then 95 watts (or 130 watts for extreme edition CPUs), overclocking boards must expect that they will be asked to deliver 160 watts to the CPU. Extra power circuits use a little power, even when turned off.

The H61 boards are not for overclocking, and do not support extreme edition CPUS. They should use less power.

Chips like the Marvell controllers each use a watt or two. If your fancy Motherboard has 8 USB3 ports, that could make it draw another 4 watts at idle (1 watt per chip, 2 ports per chip). Add Firewire and an extra onboard NIC, and the overclocking full-featured board can draw another 15 watts all the time.

This board only has 2 extra chips, Marvell 6Gbps SATA using one watt, and a single Renesas/NEC USB3 chip using 1 watt.

I searched and found/bumped this old thread because I'm considering the ASRock H61M-U3S3 for a budget build with a Sandy Bridge Pentium or i3. And I just wanted clarification on the H61 chipset limitation on RAM. Does this board support double-sided RAM? The board only has 2 slots so I assume it's ok since my understanding is that it is only when you try to add more than two RAM sticks (on boards that have 4 RAM slots) that you are restricted to single-sided RAM. Is that correct?

ftp://europe.asrock.com/manual/H61MU3S3.pdf

So that might apply to any 16 chip DIMM.

So you're saying any 16 chip DIMM may be incompatible? I really thought when they said specifically "1G" modules they meant it.
The board supports 16GB, so how is one supposed to install 16GB using only single-sided RAM sticks? Is there such a thing as a 8GB stick with all the chips on one side?

I can't tell for sure, if it applies to all 16er chips.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H61MU3S3/?cat=Memory implies 4GB modules max. But that might be because of product age.

If your retailer has a good return policy, you could experiment yourself.

Thanks for that link. Appears that many of the tested modules are double-sided.
Appears there are 3 tested 8GB modules on that memory support list, one of which is a Kingston KVR1333D3N9H/8G for which the spec sheet says:

http://www.kingston.com/dataSheets/KVR1333D3N9H_8G.pdf

Am I reading that wrong?

Never heard of any H61 RAM issues. I recently got two Asus H61 boards with Corsair 2x 4 gbyte modules. I think you'll be fine.

Thanks. Does anyone know... will 1.35v RAM work on this board with a Pentium G630 CPU?