ASRock E3V5 WS (Intel C232) Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts & Pricing

Pricing

At the time of writing, the ASROCK E3V5 WS super alloy motherboard can be yours for $109.99 at NewEgg, £95.08 at Scan Computers, or €111.01 through Geizhals. Some places you also get a bundled Assassin’s Creed game included for a limited time.

Overview

ASRock’s E3V5 WS motherboard is a quality piece of hardware from one end to the other. It is a simple board in many ways, but that isn’t a bad thing. Instead of adding all sorts of fancy features that aren’t necessary, we get a quality motherboard built with great components at a very competitive price. The black PCB with white markings will also make it look great in setups with side panel window and open bench systems.

The board uses ASRock’s Super Alloy formula with improved power chokes and high-density glass fabric PCB which both increase the stability and reliability of the board. The graphics card PCI slot and the DIMM slots are built with gold contacts and it features ELNA audio caps too. All this put together is what makes this board as stable and fast as it is. It comes with a great BIOS too with direct support and update functionality.

One of the benefits over consumer based Skylake boards is the full support for Windows Server and Xeon CPUs. ECC memory support is another vital feature for workstations and we also find a quality LAN chip onboard. There aren’t any fancy RAID controllers, graphics solutions, or high-end audio on the board that rarely would be used on such a board anyway. There are plenty of expansion ports to add those features, which a serious worker would do anyway. A graphics card or two, a sound card, and storage controller or PCIe storage drive at the same time isn’t a problem.

The motherboard performed very well in all our tests, from sound over memory to CPU, and storage. The network performance was excellent too, and all that for a fair price. I would highly recommend this board at any time for a workstation setup.

Pros:

• Cheap asking price
• Great performance in all areas
• Super Alloy: Solid caps, Solid Audio caps, 50A Power Chokes
• Xeon CPU and ECC RAM Support
• AMD Quad CrossFireX Support

Cons:

• No next-gen USB 3.1 or M.2 slot

“The ASRock E3V5 WS workstation motherboard is a quality-built piece, that performs extremely well, and one that is very budget friendly.”

ASRock E3V5 WS (Intel C232) Super Alloy Motherboard Review

Thank You ASRock for providing us with this review sample