[sepiashimmer]

Did you email this to their customer care? Or post it as an open letter? I doubt they'll react even if they saw this.

 

[cainy1991]

See no faults in anything you said... Other than..

"PCie slot reinforcement"


Is this even needed?

It seems more like a marketing gimmick than anything else.


I have had multiple boards over many years, all of which have been carried around with multiple GPUs installed.

Never have I even damaged a PCIe slot, I have broken a clip one time trying to undo it with a pen while I still had my top card installed(AKA being lazy and stupid).

But I have never broken a slot, even when one of my systems was knocked off the edge of the desk and the GPU snapped the slot took no damage.

And still actually works to this day


The only time I could see them being useful is if you forget to screw the card in.


I don't know maybe I'm lucky, But it just seems like marketing to me.

 

[mkmcgregor]

Thanks for sharing all of this. I had one on order when I came across your post. With others providing 4-5 3/4 pin support fan/water jumpers, ASRock did drop the ball. 3.1 is not a big deal to me, but I can see that as a problem somewhere down the road. The VRMs I'm not sure make a huge difference. I've seen the low end ASRock board pushing 3.9 on a 1700 running benchmarks on one YouTube channel. It could be a limiting factor, but how far would you expect a $90 board to go. Not to mention the heat and over clocking limits beyond that; and you'll need much more power to go beyond 3.9. Though, throwing in another $10-$20 for the Gigabyte gaming or gaming 3 gets an answer to all of your issues, CF would suffer since the 16x length 4x slot is PCIe 2.0 only and shares bandwidth with the chipset. I will need to think about a return of t he ASRock; especially with Gigabyte boards available again for under $110. Thanks again!

 

[mkmcgregor]

I just got mine and decided to open it up. The B350 Pro4 actually has 4 fan jumpers. Have not checked usability with respect to SpeedFan or controlling through software. BIOS allows the 3 chassis fans to be controlled via MB/CPU temps. All four can be set of five speed ranges; custom being one of them, so programming fan speed changes in the BIOS should be available. Was able to clock a 1700 to 3.95 @1.35v on air and boot to windows 10 and complete Cinebench benchmark. Beyond that was unstable running benches, but I'm sure more voltage would have pushed to 4.0 and possibly 4.05/4.1. VRM heat sinks got toasty though when running 3.95 even at that voltage. Not sure if pushing it that far for a prolonged time would be good for the board, but it's good to know that it can. VRMs are tough critters.

 

[CrazyElf]

I guess they are pushing people towards the X370 Taichi.

 

[mkmcgregor]

Apparently, the some of the specs used refer to the AB350M which is the mini-itx version of the board. It does have only 3 fan plugs and they appear to be as described. The AB350 has 1x4pin CPU, 1x4pin (PWM only), and 2x4pin (auto-detect 3/4 pin support).