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ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 Socket FM2 Mainboard Review (Part 5)

6/24/2013 11:51:09 AM

Rebooting the system one more time just to see the right timing seems to be inconvenient. Hopefully, it is just a temporary flaw need to be corrected rather than a mean solution.

Let’s talk about the fan regulation ability of the mainboard. The mainboards from ASRock and Gigabyte still keep the capability to adjust the rotation speed of CPU’s fan with 3-pin connections. Other manufacturers eliminated this capability of their products long time ago, so we always keep mentioning this fact in our reviews. We also used to criticize ASRock to let their mainboards slowly react with the variation of the CPU’s temperature. It is a software downside as the rotation speed of the fan can still be adjusted, like what we saw in our test of the ASRock Z77 OC Formula mainboard. The latter one comes with the bundle of Formula Drive utilities used for adjusting the fans’ speed. After being adjusted, the fan speed is almost perfectly synchronized with the temperature. The speed is low when the system is idle, so the device is quiet, but the fans quickly react with the rise of CPU loads. However, ASROck provide another tool for its mainstream mainboard (which is called the ASRock Extreme Tuning Utility), which is lacks of adjustments, so you have to suffer from the a relatively long delay whenever there is any change in CPU loads and temperature as well as when the mainboard react towards those changes.

the ASRock Z77 OC Formula mainboard

the ASRock Z77 OC Formula mainboard

We do not really want to focus on these worries because they might turn out to be an advantage in some cases. The quick reaction of the mainboard to any change in CPU loads might cause a sudden change in noise level, which might be annoying. The ASRock mainboard, on the contrary, prefer a slow and steady change, so this adjustment is rather suitable, unless the loads are too high. We even used the automatic regulation during testing the overclocking process, after increasing the minimum fan’s speed limit in BIOS. However, it is impossible for ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 to automatically adjust the rotation speed of its fans. Opposite to ASUS’s mainboard, it allows reducing one 3-pin fan’s rotation seed but the speed will be consistent regardless of the temperature and CPU loads.

Operating at the nominal setting is quite acceptable as we used a high-performance cooler called Notua NH-D14. We, however, had to increase the rotation speed manually to the maximum level as it is impossible for the mainboard to do it itself. We are not really worried about the CPU as we do not know the exact temperature. AMD never implements or adjusts the fan sensor in their Socket FM2 processors. We were informed about the high temperature of the heatsink mounted over the voltage regulator components, though. At the high and heavy operational loads, it exceeded 60°C. Although it was far from the critical level, that temperature was recorded at the maximum rotation speed of the CPU’s fans (which also cooled the VRM heatsink) and such temperature was not caught in any other mainboards.

Despite few nuances mentioned above, there is no shortage occurring when the ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 worked at the nominal settings as well as overclocking settings. Just like two mainboards which we reviewed on previously, it helped us to push the GPU clock rate to 1085MHz, CPU clock rate to 4.5GHz and memory clock rate to 1867 MHz. The memory timings were also adjusted.

There was almost no shortage occurring when the ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 worked at the nominal and overclocking settings

There was almost no shortage occurring when the ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 worked at the nominal and overclocking settings

Everything is just similar to other mainboards, except for the idle mode. The Cool ’n’ Quiet technology is switched off when CPU of the ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 is overclocked. As the result, the frequency multiplier is decreased, just the same in the nominal mode, but the voltage is not reduced as it is still high.

Everything is just similar to other mainboards, except for the idle mode

Everything is just similar to other mainboards, except for the idle mode

To put everything of this part in to a nutshell, we would like to clarify that we do not recommend overclocking Socket FM2 CPUs. As we explained in the review about the Gigabyte GA –F2A85XX-UP4, the power consumption of the system does not increase much when we increase the clock rate of the integrated GPU, but this increase is permanent and fixed in the idle mode. A performance reduction in computing manipulation might be the result of this overclocking, and still there is no obvious benefit in favor of the computing tasks, and for the 3D and gaming applications, it is rather useless. Therefore, we suggest that do not overclock the CPU, as well as x86 and graphics core, but we really appreciate increasing the clock rate. This does not affect the power that the computer draws, but will have a positive effect on every application performance, especially games.

We just overclocked all system components in our tests as we would like to check all capability of the tested mainboard. Our review would not be completed if it is lack of the information on overclocking. Moreover, overclocking process helps checking the mainboard effectively. If working with non-standard settings causes no problem in the operation for the mainboard, we can conclude that it is surely stable and works well in the nominal mode for a long time. Overclocking all components is not a purpose but a means to test the mainboard in all aspects. Therefore, once again, we would like to recommend you to overclock the system memory only on the Socket Fm2 platform and set other clock rates at the nominal values.

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