ASRock Fatal1ty H97 Killer Motherboard Review

[section_title title=”Introduction”]Introduction

• Brand: ASRock
• Model: Fatal1ty H97 Killer
• Price: £87.80 (at time of review)

With the release of the latest Intel 9 series chipset ASRock have been sure not to miss the boat and have released a number of new motherboards that are compatible with all of the new features offered. Previously we have taken a look at a number of Z97 motherboards from various companies but today I will be looking at something a bit different from the 9 series chipset. Today on the test bench I have the ASRock Fatal1ty H97 Killer motherboard.

The Fatal1ty H97 Killer from ASRock offers a lot of similar features when comparing it against the Z97 variant. ASRock have made sure not to skimp out on the overall quality of this board as it still offers the XXL alloy heatsinks, 15μ Gold Contacts in the DIMM and VGA slots, Killer Lan, Purity Sound 2 and as it supports the LGA 1150 socket is of course compatible with Intel’s 4th and 5th Gen CPUs. The H97 Killer also offers us support for Quad CrossfireX and dual channel RAM at 1600MHz, as well as sporting an 8 phase power design and a good range of SATA, PCI and USB ports and slots. 

There are two main differences that stick out when comparing H97 and Z97 motherboards aside from price. Firstly, unlike Z97, H97 does not allow you to overclock the CPU, though that is all going to change very soon it appears. The second thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is our RAM speeds, again no overclocking and while you pretty much have limitless headroom on the Z boards only depending on stability, the H boards are limited to 1600MHz.

As said, you could not officially overclock a CPU on the H series boards at the time of review but you could in-fact raise the turbo frequency of the CPU, thus acting similar to a standard overclock by way of giving the CPU that bit of extra power if and when needed. While it may not technically be the same, or perform as well, it is still a nice feature to have so we can all get that bit of extra performance out of our CPUs.

Taking a look at some of the similar features and we see both the H and Z series support: Rapid Storage Technology, Smart Response Technology or as originally called SSD Caching, six USB 3.0 ports, six SATA3 6.0GBs ports and lastly they both allow for 2 RAM DIMMS per channel so they can both handle 4 DIMMS total.

Now for the fun part! Time to see if the ASRock Fatal1ty H97 can hold it’s own against the likes of more powerful Z97 boards, but first, an unboxing video followed by a look at the specifications.