Thoughts about the ASRock B560M-HDV Rocket Lake motherboard

[cbdeakin]

I'm thinking about buying the ASRock B560M-HDV mobo soon, are there any flaws with this motherboard that I should know about?

So far, I haven't found any, except for having 2 rather than 4 RAM DIMMs, which doesn't bother me. I intend to use it with 8x2 GB DDR4 4000mhz RAM, as this motherboard supports RAM 'overclocking'. It has an NVME slot too for SSDs I think.

Url here:
https://www.asrock.com/MB/Intel/B560M-HDV/index.asp

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The lack of heatsinking on the VRM is a concern. What CPU are you intending to use with it??

[cbdeakin]

10700KF, which is in the supported list of CPUs:
https://www.asrock.com/MB/Intel/B560M-HDV/index.asp#CPU

Probably can't overclock the CPU on this mobo, but that's fine. I wonder if I will be able to set the turbo multiplier to max on all 8 cores, like Asus MCE?

Thanks Hexus / Scan, just completed the order for this motherboard.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

10700KF, which is in the supported list of CPUs:
https://www.asrock.com/MB/Intel/B560M-HDV/index.asp#CPU

Probably can't overclock the CPU on this mobo, but that's fine. I wonder if I will be able to set the turbo multiplier to max on all 8 cores, like Asus MCE?

With that CPU I don't think that motherboard is a great choice. The 65W TDP CPUs are probably OKish,as they won't boost that much,but anything higher I wouldn't.

The Core i7 10700K has a nominal 125W TDP,and generally will go even much higher for brief periods. That motherboard with a very basic VRM with no heatsinks. This means the VRM parts can get exceedingly hot,especially if you don't use a horizontal air cooler,because these blow some air over the VRMs. Vertical air coolers and AIO water coolers are poor for VRM airflow. MCE makes it even worse as you are jacking up power consumption. What has happened in the past is the motherboards will throttle to stop the VRMs from having issues.

Motherboards have had the VRMs just fail due to heat buildup. Lots of companies just put the CPU in and say it works - it does not mean it will work properly longterm.

[cbdeakin]

I can probably monitor the VRM temps though, can't I?

Or, just limit TDP if need be.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I can probably monitor the VRM temps though, can't I?

Or, just limit TDP if need be.

For around £30 more,you have gotten a motherboard with a heatsink VRM:
https://www.cclonline.com/product/34...board/MBD3010/

If you can't change the motherboard at least try and find a way to make sure there is airflow over the VRMs.

[Ttaskmaster]

The lack of heatsinking on the VRM is a concern.

Is this problem common on ASRock kit?
I've had two of their mobos in the past, both of which had really puny VRM heatsinks despite being very different sockets.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Is this problem common on ASRock kit?
I've had two of their mobos in the past, both of which had really puny VRM heatsinks despite being very different sockets.

Their higher end stuff seems to be OK,but ASRock tends to target a more value part of the market,so a number of their motherboards do have no heatsinks or smallish ones,but so do Asus and Gigabyte. This again might not be a problem if you are running a lower TDP CPU with a horizontally orientated air cooler. My last Intel mini-ITX motherboard was an ASRock,which was an emergency replacement for the Gigabyte one I had which went kaput. It didn't have much in the way of VRM cooling,but I was only running a relatively low powered CPU.

[cbdeakin]

I've build my system now, the B560M HDV seems like a good value motherboard. Motherboard temps are ~42 degrees during a CPUz stress test, with overclocked RAM. I've noticed it's not possible to overclocked the Ring / Cache latency on this board, it remains at 4.3Ghz, but no big deal really.

[ik9000]

Whenever I've looked into ASRock boards I've always steered clear. Usually some kind of weird configurations disabling lots if you try to use too many ports at once, or hamstrung RAM configurations or weird things like ps/2 port being connected weirdly so it doesn't behave properly with legacy software, etc etc. Check very carefully you know what you're getting and how it compares to other alternatives.

[Millennium]

Get HWINFO, and take a good look at the sensors it shows. It may have a VRM readout for you (I don't think your VRMs are actually 42 degrees, call it a hunch). It's great software, anyway.