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- A-Style : Home Cloud
- Supports New 4th and 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® / Core™ i7 / i5 / i3 / Pentium® / Celeron® Processors [Socket 1150]
- Supports Intel® Small Business Advantage 2.0
- All Solid Capacitor design, Digi Power
- Supports Dual Channel DDR3/DDR3L 1600
- 1 PCIe 3.0 x16, 1 PCIe 2.0 x16
- Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™ and CrossFireX™
- Graphics Output Options : DVI-D, D-Sub, HDMI
- Intel® Gigabit LAN
- 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection [Realtek ALC892 Audio Codec]
- 4 SATA3, 2 SATA2, 4 USB 3.1 Gen1, 8 USB 2.0
- Supports A-Tuning, XFast 555, Easy Driver Installer, FAN-Tastic Tuning, USB Key
This model may not be sold worldwide. Please contact your local dealer for the availability of this model in your region.
PO Box, APO/FPO, Afghanistan, Africa, Alaska/Hawaii, Albania, American Samoa, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Central America and Caribbean, China, Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Georgia, Gibraltar, Greenland, Guam, Guernsey, Iceland, India, Jersey, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Micronesia, Middle East, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Nauru, Nepal, New Caledonia, Niue, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Russian Federation, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, San Marino, Serbia, Solomon Islands, South America, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Tajikistan, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, US Protectorates, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City State, Wallis and Futuna, Western Samoa
This article about the ASRock B85M-ITX mainboard will summarize some information and test results I collected, including AC and DC power consumption figures. Please note this is not a classical review but more a test report focused on system efficiency.
Article Overview
Images
A high-resolution photo of the B85M-ITX can be found on hardware.info.
Here are some detail shots of the ASRock B85M-ITX. The first image is a side-by-side picture with the H97M Pro4 on which I have done a seperate review.
The thermal image was made in idle state. Please note that the round “hotspot” is the BIOS battery which is not a heat source but just reflecting thermal radiation from the top.
There really are not many heat sources on the board, which is the reason why it is quite efficient as we will see later on. Some heat sources that can be identified:
- RAM voltage regulator [bottom right]
- Multi-phase CPU voltage regulator [top right]
- Chipset heatsink [top left]
- Two chipset voltage regulator MOSFETs [above BIOS battery]
- Super-I/O and its surroundings [bottom left, hidden by SATA cable]
Component Inspection
This table summarizes the components used on the B85M-ITX as far as I was able to identify them. Please leave a comment if you can add something.
Manufacturer Name Description Remarks Qualcomm Atheros QCA8171 LAN Controller on PCB bottom side Realtek ALC892 Audio CODEC Nuvoton NCT5573D Super I/O ?? ?? Power MOSFETs K03J5 3M4 61W3 Richtek RT9629B CPU VREG PWM Controller on PCB bottom side Anpec APW8720B RAM VREG APEC AP1280AMP DDR Bus Terminator Nuvoton NCT3941S Linear Fan Controller CHA_FAN1
Test Setup
Component Description Price Mainboard ASRock B85M-ITX $80 / 70€ CPU Intel Celeron G1840 $50 / 40€ Cooler Intel boxed RAM Crucial DDR3-1600 4GB CL11 $45 / 40€ SSD SanDisk SDSSDP-064G-G25 $60 / 40€ Input Device Logitech Unifying Receiver $8 / 10€ PSU LC-Power LC75ITX $45 / 35€
AC Power Consumption
Measurements include the AC-DC power supply, DC-DC converter [both LC-Power LC75ITX], mainboard and SSD. Absolute values include Logitech Unifying receiver, active HDMI [FullHD resolution] and Intel boxed CPU fan, but were measured with LAN cable removed and audio disabled in the UEFI.
AC Power Absolute Power off [Deep Sleep] 0.2 Power off [WOL enabled] 0.8 Standby 1.2 Prime95 33.0 Idle 7.1 Relative to Idle – Unifying -0.4 – Monitor -1.1 – CPU fan -0.4 + LAN cable +0.7 + Audio +0.4 Power meter: Profitec KD 302 All values in Watt [W]
DC Power Consumption
All DC measurements include the mainboard only [SSD is excluded]. Absolute values include Logitech Unifying receiver, active HDMI [FullHD resolution] and Intel boxed CPU fan, but were measured with LAN cable removed and audio disabled in the UEFI.
Total 12VP4 3.3V 5V 12V -12V 5VSB Absolute Power off 0.3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.26 Prime95 27.9 22.73 0.40 3.74 0.64 0.00 0.36 Idle 5.1 2.18 0.39 1.57 0.64 0.00 0.34 Relative to Idle – Unifying -0.4 -0.13 — -0.27 — — — – Monitor -0.9 -0.85 — -0.08 — — — – CPU fan -0.4 — — — -0.35 — — – HDMI cable 0.0 — — — — — — + LAN cable +0.5 +0.05 — — — — +0.47 + Audio +0.3 — — — — — +0.30 All values in Watt [W]
CPU Power States
For a low idle power consumption auf the whole setup, it is essential for the CPU to reach both C6 power state for both the core and the package. To make this possible, the right combination of hardware, BIOS settings and device drivers has to be used. Refer to the test setup PDF for details.
In my setup, the B85M-ITX reached C6 CPU core and package power states without any hassles as confirmed by ThrottleStop. The higher C7 state is not supported by the Intel Celeron CPU that was used for the tests.
The computer does run stable without any issues so far. However some remarks on specific quirks of the board:
- When the CPU enters package C6, the mainboard will produce a quite audible chirp noise. This seems to mainly come from the ceramic capacitors of the voltage regulator around the CPU socket. The noise is independent from the used power supply.
- With plugged-in LAN cable interrupts cause the CPU to leave package state C6 more often.
- When the Atheros LAN chip is enabled in BIOS, the LAN cable has to be plugged in during boot or wake-up from standby; otherwise no CPU package state higher than C3 can be reached until the next reboot with a plugged-in LAN cable. Power consumption “without LAN” was measured with enabled LAN in BIOS and the LAN cable unplugged after boot.
- UEFI option “CPU Integrated VR Efficiency Mode” is not available anymore for BIOS version 2.20 and newer. Power consumption with BIOS 2.20 was measured to be insignificantly less or equal to previous BIOS 2.10 with enabled VR Efficiency Mode.
LAN Performance
The onboard LAN controller is a Qualcomm Atheros QCA8171 which seems to be a passive solution, hence utilizing the CPU for network transfers.
The following data is recorded for a large file transfer over SMB. CPU utilization is measured with Process Explorer.