ASRock H310M-HDV/M.2

More for less

ASRock H310M-HDV/M.2 is one of the cheapest MicroATX motherboards based on Intel H310 chipset with LGA1151-v2 processor socket. It simultaneously has a reinforced 4 + 4-pin processor power supply (important for i7-8700 and higher, so that the insulation of the PSU wires does not melt) and a slot for high-speed M.2 NVMe SSDs, while "classmates" are equipped with either only the first or second.

Gentleman's set

The ASRock H310M-HDV/M.2 has three most common 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, the Realtek ALC887 audio codec (together with ELNA capacitors, it produces sound that is not premium, but quite good), as well as four SATA3 ports .

For pre-top SSDs

Four more PCI-E 2.0 lanes are reserved for the M.2 slot, which supports both NVMe-SSD with real speeds up to 2000 MB / s (not enough for top-end drives, but enough for pre-top drives), and M.2-SATA up to 600 MB / s with. As a result, the ASRock H310M-HDV/M.2 is the optimal basis for building a work or gaming PC, which will be equipped with processors from the ultra-low-cost Celeron to the top-end i7-8700 without a hitch. We do not recommend overpaying for the 8700K, because the H310 chipset still does not support overclocking.