Conclusion

It makes implicit sense to pair it with a readily-overclockable chip of this ilk, bringing a combined cost of around £100 for a setup that's more than decent for everyday use.

ASRock is hoping to ride the wave of traction created by the launch of the Intel G3258 Anniversary Edition processor. Bringing a low-cost motherboard to accompany one of the most exciting CPUs of recent years is a good, sensible move. ASRock's Z97 Anniversary provides one-click overclocking through a specially optimised BIOS.

Though simple in layout and missing many of the bells and whistles present on dearer boards, it is no worse off for that. It makes implicit sense to pair it with a readily-overclockable chip of this ilk, bringing a combined cost of around £100 for a setup that's more than decent for everyday use. Pairing the duo with a decent discrete card paves the way for a more than reasonable gaming PC, too.

Our only real recommendation for ASRock is to bolster the board's display outputs to include DVI and DisplayPort. Other than that, it's a recommended board useful to a wide range of readers.

The Good

Primed for G3258 AE CPU
Good value
Overclocks as well as more expensive boards
Solid BIOS

The Bad

Display outputs could be better

HEXUS.awards

ASRock Z97 Anniversary

HEXUS.where2buy

TBC.

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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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Looks like a tidy board and I do find ASRocks BIOSes to be awesome.

Given that it's primarily going to be used in budget - and therefore single-GPU - builds, would this not have made more sense in the mATX form factor? could have got the price even lower too, or included DP for the same price…

CK_1985
Given that it's primarily going to be used in budget - and therefore single-GPU - builds, would this not have made more sense in the mATX form factor? could have got the price even lower too, or included DP for the same price…

I'm sure at the start it says its available in mATX form.

Good board that would suit me.
Agree on the display outputs and a few more usb ports would be nice.
Of course if you stick a GPU in the lack of display outputs become irrelevant and i would only require one GPU.
The PCIex1 slots are positioned well as are the PCI slots so its easy enough to add usb expansion cards.
If it retails around £60 then i will be interested.
Just need the price of RAM to fall.

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