Quality of ASRock motherboards ? / Is ASRock the same as Elitegroup (ECS) ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jason Stacy
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J

Jason Stacy

Do ASRock offer motherboards with good quality in general ?

Is "ASRock" the new brand of Elitegroup?

I ask because I am interested in buying the ASRock K7VT4A(+) Pro motherboard
and the naming remembers me to the name of the older famous Elitegroup
motherboard K7S5A. Both start with "K7". Is this a coincidence ?

J.
 
Do ASRock offer motherboards with good quality in general ?
Click to expand...
The actual quality of the MB is pretty much the same on any MB across the
board.
Is "ASRock" the new brand of Elitegroup?
Click to expand...
No, It's a sub of Asus.
I ask because I am interested in buying the ASRock K7VT4A(+) Pro
motherboard and the naming remembers me to the name of the older famous
Elitegroup motherboard K7S5A. Both start with "K7". Is this a
coincidence ?
Click to expand...
No, not a coincidence that they both run K7 cpu's (Athlons, Durons,
Semprons)
 
Is "ASRock" the new brand of Elitegroup?

ASRock is a "second brand" of Asus (Asustek).

I ask because I am interested in buying the ASRock K7VT4A(+) Pro motherboard
and the naming remembers me to the name of the older famous Elitegroup
motherboard K7S5A. Both start with "K7". Is this a coincidence ?
Click to expand...

The "K7" alerts you to the mobo being a socket-A mobo for AMD's K7 series of
CPUs. Very convenient shorthand. My ASRock mobo is a K8NF4-SATA2, which
sez it's for AMD's K8 CPUs, using Nvidia chipsets(6100), with a coupla
serial drive connectors that are SATA2. ;-)
 
They are generally a decent quality motherboard, but they do cut a few
corners. I have had a few with bad capacitors for example. The board
lasted 3 years with no problem so you have to weigh that in. The
motherboards are so cheap though, that even if you have to replace them
in a couple of years, you are still ahead, because you replace it with a
better cheap motherboard, and it is still half as cheap as as the
"quality" motherboard.

As for the K7, might be a coincidence, but likely the Asrock board is
built by elitegroup. Elitegroup is a huge manufacturing corporation,
they build boards for everyone at every price point. They even build
expensive boards for the likes of Asus and such. Just keep in mind cheap
motherboards have a few corners that are cut, most people do not have a
problem with what is cut. They are mostly reliable, so that what matters.


Jason Stacy ([email protected]) wrote:
: Do ASRock offer motherboards with good quality in general ?

: Is "ASRock" the new brand of Elitegroup?

: I ask because I am interested in buying the ASRock K7VT4A(+) Pro motherboard
: and the naming remembers me to the name of the older famous Elitegroup
: motherboard K7S5A. Both start with "K7". Is this a coincidence ?

: J.
 
Jason said:
Do ASRock offer motherboards with good quality in general ?

Is "ASRock" the new brand of Elitegroup?
Click to expand...


ASRock is the value brand and subsidiary of ASUS. However, ASRock has
used ECS designs in the past for its value motherboards. In fact, so
has ASUS from time to time (and just about everyone else in the
market). e.g. several of ABIT's value segment boards are ECS rebrands.

Nothing wrong with ECS motherboards, at least in their overall design.
Generally speaking, the areas where ECS is weak are areas that the
branding company has an opportunity to improve upon, such as BIOS
support/refinement and component selection (e.g. better capacitors).
ASRock has a good BIOS team that most likely starts with an ECS
reference BIOS then assumes all future development, rather than just
passing along the ECS BIOS with ASRock branding.

ASRock's own board designs offer some unique features and are very good
performers for the money, often holding their own against enthusiast
class boards costing twice as much. In my experience, ASRock boards
have no more and no less troubles than ASUS, MSI, DFI, Gigabyte, or any
other motherboard company. I've never had to submit a request for tech
support, but I hear ASRock's support is more responsive than most
others.

Regards,

Tim
 
Do ASRock offer motherboards with good quality in general ?
Click to expand...

I would characterise them as "average at best". I own one and it
works and it was dirt-cheap. The quality is definitely a bit lacking,
but it sufficed for my very limited needs. My biggest complaint is
that the built-in audio was absolutely abysmal, though fortunately I
was able to get a PCI sound card for pretty cheap. Built-in video was
probably no better, but I had an AGP vide card right from the get-go.
Is "ASRock" the new brand of Elitegroup?
Click to expand...

Nope, it's a brand of Asus, though production was outsourced to ECS
(ECS = Elitegroup Computer Systems, often simply called "Elitegroup").
I ask because I am interested in buying the ASRock K7VT4A(+) Pro motherboard
and the naming remembers me to the name of the older famous Elitegroup
motherboard K7S5A. Both start with "K7". Is this a coincidence ?
Click to expand...

K7 is the nickname of AMD's Athlon family of processors (Athlon,
AthlonXP, AthlonMP and the original Sempron chips). It was a
naturally follow-up to their two previous chip families, the K5 and
the K6. As such, it's no coincidence that MANY boards for K7-family
processors start with 'K7'. Similarly you'll find that many new
Athlon64 start with 'K8'.


Honestly I can't see any reason to buy a Socket A board in this day
and age unless you have a specific need for one (ie you're old Socket
A board died and you don't have the money to replace anything other
than the board). New Socket AM2 boards are pretty cheap and
processors for them are cheaper and faster than anything for Socket A.
 
Jason said:
Do ASRock offer motherboards with good quality in general ?

Is "ASRock" the new brand of Elitegroup?

I ask because I am interested in buying the ASRock K7VT4A(+) Pro motherboard
and the naming remembers me to the name of the older famous Elitegroup
motherboard K7S5A. Both start with "K7". Is this a coincidence ?
Click to expand...

K7 was AMD's designation for their Socket 462 CPUs.

Asrock is the budget brand of Asus and isn't related to EliteGroup,
which has brands like ECS and PC Chips. For one thing, both Asus and
Asrock advertise "COP", the name for their CPU overheat protection,
which is supposed to protect against damage even if the heatsink is
removed during operation. I'm no expert, but I think that Asrock is
better than anything from ECS because the heatsink on the south bridge
chip is bigger, the capacitors for the CPU voltage converter are
Japanese (Nichicon or Chemicon) rather than Taiwanese (OST or Elite),
and some of the ports are protected by fuses while on ECS mobos the
fuses are missing and substituted with either copper traces or jumper
wires that short across them.
 
ASRock is an Asus offshoot company, I believe.

--
Best regards,
Kyle
| Do ASRock offer motherboards with good quality in general ?
|
| Is "ASRock" the new brand of Elitegroup?
|
| I ask because I am interested in buying the ASRock K7VT4A(+) Pro
motherboard
| and the naming remembers me to the name of the older famous
Elitegroup
| motherboard K7S5A. Both start with "K7". Is this a coincidence ?
|
| J.
|
 
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