ASRock H310CM-HDV/M.2

First level

ASRock H310CM-HDV/M.2 is one of the cheapest MicroATX motherboards based on Intel H310 chipset with LGA1151-v2 processor socket. Within the low-cost, it is distinguished by the presence of a slot for high-speed M.2 NVMe SSDs and a fairly high-quality, albeit 4-phase, power system that allows you to install a fairly powerful processor in it in the range between older Core i5 and younger Core i7 seventh and eighth generation.

Basic set

ASRock H310CM-HDV/M.2 has three video outputs: digital HDMI, DVI and analogue VGA. There are two RAM slots with a frequency of up to 2666 MHz, but Coffee Lake processors younger than the i5-8400 only support 2400 MHz. Of the six PCI-E 2.0 lanes, for which the H310 chipset is responsible, two are reserved for the built-in Intel Gigabit Ethernet controller and the Realtek ALC887 audio codec (along with ELNA capacitors, it produces, if not premium, but quite good sound), and four more for SATA ports .

Support for drives up to 2000 Mbps

Four more PCI-E 2.0 lines are reserved for the M.2 slot, which supports both NVMe SSDs with real speeds up to 2000 MB / s (not enough for top-end drives, but enough for pre-top ones) and SATA SSD with a ceiling of 600 MB / s. As a result, despite the price, the ASRock H310CM-HDV/M.2 can serve not only in an office computer, but also in a mid-range work/gaming PC with a fast disk system, 32 GB of RAM and a powerful processor. However we definitely wouldn’t put something of the caliber Core i7-9700K here, since the H310 chipset does not support overclocking.