Final Thoughts
Pricing
Finding prices for these motherboards was somewhat of a pain; due to the little demand for these products, very few enthusiast stores such as OverclockersUK, SCAN or Newegg will stock them.
N3150B-ITX is currently at Newegg.com for $69.99; however it isn’t listed for Europe.
N3150-ITX isn’t currently listed with our recommended retailers, but it can be found online for around £70.
N3150M isn’t currently listed with our recommended retailers, but it can be found online for around £60.
Summary
After those tests, it’s clear that these aren’t aimed at the gamer or enthusiast market due to the low performance and fairly limited outputs. These options are far more suited to the likes of a HTPC or basic web browsing/home office computer.
They aren’t exactly the best-looking options on the market, but for the price and the fact that there is a relatively huge heatsink in the middle; you can’t really complain. The layout on the ITX boards is slightly irregular with one DIMM slot above and one beside the heatsink, but the reduction in motherboard size and oversize heatsink does lend itself to this layout.
Performance obviously wasn’t the best bang for buck option, it doesn’t have the power for rendering, but it is perfect for 1080p video playback and day-to-day tasks. It also works very well with a good SSD drive to really bring down execution times.
The one key feature which I thought was good with these options is the Power Gear technology. I used the N3150M with the R9 290X to test these features on. When enabled to Eco mode, there is very power consumption decrease, but the performance drops around 15%. When Sport mode is enabled, performance is impacted very little, but power consumption is increased by 6W. I believe that due to the extremely low power consumption and performance in the first place; these features weren’t implemented properly. If this was used on low range options such as an i3, I believe we would see bigger changes.
Now I have one major issue with these, power or lack of it; but then I think to myself “I’m only thinking this because I’m used to extreme computers with CPU’s that could power a rocket”. One actual issue that I’ve noticed through testing on the N3150M motherboard, the HDMI port is close to the USB 3.0 ports. This then prevents the use of wide USB devices as the HDMI cable is almost on top of the ports.
Pros
- Very Cheap
- Passive
- Extremely low power
- MicroATX and ITX formats to suit most HTPC cases
Cons
- Low range of SATA ports
- HDMI port on N3150M limits the use of wide USB devices
- Hard to find.
“The N3150 range from ASRock is perfect for that HTPC you’ve been planning on building or for a low power workstation for office applications”
Thank you to ASRock for providing this review sample.
I’m thinking that psu is so overboard for the these Braswell’s that the power consumption is questionable. I doubt even a normally efficient psu is working well at such a fraction of its capability.
It also would have been interesting to see them up against something more relevant – like j1900/j2900 boards or the like.
Still, a lot of information here. Thanks.