ASRock M8 Barebones Review: My Steam Box
by Ian Cutress on January 2, 2014 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Barebones
- Intel
- ASRock
- Motherboards
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Z87
Due to the high end level of the systems that Dustin has benchmarked, our M8 configuration does not appear to fair too well on some of the synthetics – however frame rates in modern games are more than applicable and should systematically beat any console title if settings were equilibrated between the systems. For the price difference, one would hope so! Given that these are all tested against laptops, we see that while our low powered CPU may not be as fast as we had liked, the gaming frame rates are still at the high end.
PCMark 7
3DMark Fire Strike
Cinebench R11.5
x264 5.0 HD Benchmark
Bioshock Infinite
Grid 2
Sleeping Dogs
Tomb Raider
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maecenas - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
Interesting design, that is a lot of $$$ if its just used a console replacement, but if you really take advantage of the power, the fact that its a full-fledged PC, and the mobility, it does make more sense.Also, first paragraph of the conclusion: "Of course there are attempts underway to make the PC-you-play-next-to a thinK of the past,"
warezme - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
This is what the new Mac Pro should have been designed like, sans the big round dial in the front. It would have been a reasonable evolution of the style, not the trash can design.CalaverasGrande - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
the only thing this gains over the new Mac Pro is a single PCIe slot.The rest of it is kind of the typical hard to service PC design.
Calling the New Mac a "trashcan" is juvenile. If you said it was so not rack mount friendly it could be called "Rack Hostile" I would agree though.
And I still curse Jon Ive whenever a new Mac Model debuts with no headphone, USB or power switch on the front. Seriously.
Antronman - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
The Mac Pro is trash. The 4000USD one doesn't have any extreme features like custom cooling as you would see on a 4000USD enthusiast build. The Firepro D500 GPUs aren't even AMD's best Workstation GPUs. It is a piece of garbage, just like Macbooks. Those things don't even have a CPU cooler.Kilnk - Saturday, February 8, 2014 - link
Wow, way to prove that you like to talk out of your arse. You're comparing oranges and bananas. Appropriate price comparisons have been done by several people and they can be found on the net. L2, google, read and and refine your opinion before spouting it out.zero2dash - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
Looks like the OCP logo from Robocop (especially with the window).dgingeri - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
A Toshiba hard drive? eeeewwwwwww........be prepared to replace that within a few months.
purerice - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link
Hush, troll, hush!A5 - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
I'd actually rather see an H87 variant before an X79 one. Give me something this well-designed but a touch cheaper (a street price of $400-450 would be ideal...) that I can throw an i3 4130 into with a decent GPU and that's a real winner.Or an even cheaper version that ditches the GPU compromises and is basically designed for the top-end AMD APU could work as a really basic intro HTPC/light gaming box.
A5 - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
Now that I think about it, at that point you may as well buy a PS4 for $400 and a Roku or AppleTV to handle the rest...