Gadgetory

unhand is as rocks new fatality be 150 gaming K for motherboard an affordable motherboard which as the name suggests is aimed squarely at gamers one would think the word fatality in the product name would be enough of a hint that this is a gaming focused product in case you don't know who Jonathan Wendel is as Rick made it blatantly obvious by adding the word gaming with the global PC game revenue surpassing consoles hitting over 90 billion dollars this year and the gaming hardware market worth over 67 billion dollars in 2014 there's no wonder everything from the humble computer mouse to 30 inch plus monitors having gaming slapped all over them Gaming is big business and we can't really criticize as rock for capitalizing on the fact they certainly aren't alone having said that though what makes the vitality be 150 gaming K for motherboard worthy of the name for starters despite the surprisingly low $100 asking price it looks very much like a motherboard you would easily pay $200 plus for quality features such as the killer a 2400 network controller and as rocks purities down three are included not just that but crossfire X is also on the menu this all sounds great and frankly a little difficult to comprehend given not just the board's price but also the chipset used the key to the fatality be 150 gaming K falls affordability is inclusion of the Intel be 150 chipset and the irony being that this is a business chipset on a gaming motherboard almost always gamers will rule out any be 150 motherboard for a few reasons overclocking of any kind isn't supported there are very few PCIe chipset lanes multi-gpu technologies aren't supported there are fewer USB 3 ports and high-speed storage interfaces such as SATA Express and m2 unsupported either but wait a minute the fatality be 150 gaming K 4 has almost all of these things it really isn't any legitimate reason why the be 150 chipset can't support most of these features rather intel imposes these limitations to make them more expensive h1 70 and Zed 170 chipsets more appealing to the consumer as a result there are a number of be 150 motherboards from makers such as MSI and gigabyte the support crossfire along with SATA Express and m2 still bang for your buck we don't think the fatality be 150 gaming cash ball can be beaten it was previously unthinkable to find features such as a tenth our phase design Michigan 12 K platinum capacitors are a quality 600 ohm headset amplifier on such an affordable motherboard although the crossfire support is limited to pci u x 8 for the first card x 4 for the second card this is still more than enough bandwidth to get the most out of a pair of flagship graphics cards such as the fury x asrock has also included a 4-pin molex connector onboard which can connect directly to the power supply providing more juice to the graphics cards which they say helps improve stability along with the 2 PCIe x 16 slots there are also three PCIe x 1 slots all of which are flexible PCIe slots meaning they can accommodate x 2 and x 4 length cards with limited bandwidth unfortunately while affordable be 150 motherboards such as the gigabyte be 150 M d3h and MSI be 150 PC may both support SATA Express and more importantly m2 as Rox flagship be 150 motherboard supports neither instead we're limited to the standard 6 SATA 6 gigabits per second ports but you have to admit is disappointing granted high-speed m2 storage isn't cheap but who knows how affordable the samsung SSD 950 pro or an equivalent product would be in 6 to 12 months so having the option to upgrade to such a product would have been nice an area where the fatality be 150 gaming K 4 doesn't fall short is in its memory support my knowledge as it stands this is the only be 150 motherboard that supports memory overclocking thanks to as rocks noon on Zed sky like overclocking BIOS update there are a few catches however primarily the fact that there are just four memory modules that currently support the be 150 the chances of you having any of these modules if you're carrying over parts from a previous build very slim assuming you have the appropriate memory modules you'll have the rare ability to run the memory at 2800 megahertz whereas all other be 150 motherboards from other makers are limited to 2133 megahertz is 30% increase in clock speed won't have a significant impact on performance but might help you net an extra frame or two in game moving on the killer a 2400 gigabit network controller isn't something I would have raved about and frankly I'm just as happy with an Intel controller that said cheaper h1 10 motherboards almost always come with the low-end real tech solution so in this case I'm very happy to find the e 2400 on board gamers will no doubt appreciate the automatic gaming traffic prioritization feature of the e 2400 I can confirm it works rather well as mentioned earlier purity sound 3 is included on this motherboard and that's a bit of a big deal typically motherboards price at $100 or less features subpar audio solutions this isn't great news for gamers however the purity sound 3 is driven by the realtek ALC 1150 audio codec supporting 7.1 channel high definition audio along with other technologies such as pure plug-in direct drive and DTS connect other exciting features include a ti and a 5 5 3 2 headset amplifier 115 decibel snr DAC with differential amplifier and you can find gold series audio cabs this audio solution is the real deal and it's the same setup you'll find on the 230 dollars dead 170 extreme 7 + when it comes to benchmarking we aren't gonna waste your time by comparing the fatality be 150 gaming KFOR with other be 150 or other intel 100 series motherboards for that matter as is the case with all 100 series motherboard the memory application and gaming performance is very much the same and with no CPU overclocking support this isn't a performance feature that we could test either had the board support an m2 slot we would have tested that but as it stands the side of performance is as expected while not super important it has to be said that fatality be 150 gaming K 4 is a seriously good-looking motherboard the oversized red aluminium heat sinks look great and more importantly do an excellent job of keeping the motherboards core components cool the IO armor shield might only be a bit of fancy looking plastic but we like it and the matte black PCB finishes it off all very well value for money you'll be hard-pressed to find anything is good let alone better for me Azeroth has created what is almost a perfect budget enthusiast motherboard in the fatality be 150 game okay for the only thing I would change here is the storage configuration this motherboard is just begging for an m2 slot high-speed nbme drives are going to become plentiful next year never sighs put there be 150 gaming m3 in a position to capitalize on this we just wish asrock I'd have done the same still the lack of m2 support certainly isn't a deal-breaker on a 100 dollar motherboard now I understand the most fatality be 150 game inkay for owners will be more than content with the two and a half inch SATA SSD such as the crucial bx 200 or samsung 850 Evo one possible issue is as rocks in your sky OC feature which enables the overclocking of non-chaotic processes on any of their zeb 170 motherboards this makes the as rocks dead 170 ax 13.1 considerably more attractive as you can significantly overclock affordable processes such as the core i3 6100 or Core i5 6400 the z170a x1 3.1 also features USB 3.1 and better multi GPU support though it does still lack m2 support overall the Azeroth fatality be 150 gaming K 4 is an incredibly good value motherboard which really made me question how many gamers really need to spend more than $100 on their motherboard thanks for watching another Hardware unboxed product review I'm your host Matt and if you've got any questions I'd love to see them in the comments or on our forum our Hardware on box comm 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