ASRock J4025M Intel® Dual-Core Processor J4025 (Up to 2.9 GHz) Motherboard

Pros: 1 - Dead silent 2 - Runs cool 3 - Easy assembly 4 - Fast 5 - Inexpensive Cons: 1 - Driver issues 2 - 1080p playback 3 - Board layout Comments: First, it should be noted that this board does not work particularly well with 32 bit Windows because Intel hasn't bothered to fix their 32bit drivers. Neither Asrock nor Microsoft are at fault here. The good news is that 64 bit Windows works perfectly. FYI, some Intel NUC computers have the same issue with 32 bit versions of Windows. Dropped frames on 1080p playback with fast moving scenes are noticeable but it's acceptable. Do not however plan to use this as a HTPC or you might be disappointed. Experienced system builders will not like the fact that the SATA ports are along the side with the front panel and USB connectors but again, this isn't enough to merit a deduction of rating. Overall, this is a low end (by current expectations) motherboard but it is excellent for daily computing tasks or NAS. Two years ago a motherboard with this speed and capability at this price was inconceivable. The added bonus of being a fanless design makes it even more attractive as a time saver from a builders perspective as well as the obvious benefit of energy saving. Since I was under a time constraint, I did not do any in-depth testing but it did successfully boot and run OpenSuse 13.1, Linux Mint 17 and Ubuntu 14.10. Not surprisingly, the Linux distributions did not exhibit driver issues as did Windows 32 bit. Last, Asrock deserves a compliment for the excellent BIOS on such a budget board and particularly because you can update without an operating system loaded. Fantastic! Keep price/performance in perspective and don't expect AMD FX or Intel Core performance. For the price of a single stick of 4gb of DDR3 this is no doubt one of the best values in computing.

I used this motherboard / CPU combo in a HTPC build for my bedroom. My primary requirement was silence. My secondary requirement was a processor that could handle lite tasks and video streaming, without the need for a dedicated video card. This combo met both my requirements. It's dead silent. Performance is capable of handling internet browsing, Office use, lite gaming, and streaming using Plex. The streaming quality for video can vary and seems to depend on other tasks that are being performed in parallel. This may also be caused by my choice of using Windows 7 for my operating system. I have not had any issues streaming 1080p video but a dedicated video card would make a visible difference. The motherboard was paired with a Cooler Master Elite 110 No Power Supply Cases RC-110-KKN2 (I recommend buying from Newegg, it's cheaper). The case had to be modified to fit the motherboard correctly; I drilled out the rivets that secured an internal hard drive retaining wall, cut the wall so it removed the lower half and created a cross bar for the top, then used bolts to reattach the wall to the case. After modification the motherboard dropped in place. Perfect size case for a HTPC build. The included 180mm case fan is silent when turned to it's lowest setting. The power supply used is a SeaSonic SS-400FL2 Active PFC F3 400W 80 PLUS Platinum Fanless ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply . The fanless power supply works well and is more than adiquite to power the computer and a dedicated video card. I have put together a list of the parts used in the build with PC Part Picker. Total build was around $300. http://pcpartpicker.com/p/tK76gs ~~~~~~~~ Update 12/13/2015 I have added a Nvidia GT630 video card to the computer. It has really helped with video rendering. All issues with video stutter are gone. I am playing video games on the system. Payday 2, Child of Light, XCOM using Steam Big Picture mode. I have had no issues. This build will not play newer video games, it was never intended to do so, though it is nice to see that it will play some games. I very please with this setup. I have had no issues and it has exceeded my expectation.

I bought 4 of these. Of the 4: 1st: the first one never worked. (Sadly it took longer than the return period for me to discover this.) 2nd: Unstable. HIGHLY unstable. If i'm lucky, I i'll get 10 hours out of this one before it freezes. 3rd: After a lot of bios configurations / kernel hacks, this one actually worked well... for about 6 months. Starting this week, it is now the same status as the 2nd one. It freezes somewhere between a few minutes and a few hours. 4th: Currently stable, but took a lot a configuration guessing (just like the 3rd one). But I have very little faith that it will be stable for very long. At first, I was very excited about these. They are not very powerful, but I was fine with the power they had. (when they work, they worked just fine for me.) In the end, I spent many, many hours debugging, swapping parts, and tracking down what parts of my builds went wrong. (in all cases, it was this motherboard.) How this product has so many good reviews is well beyond my understanding. If I had known that I would only have 1 good working computer in the end, I would have bought a single, much nicer motherboard. I bought these to save a little money... They turned out to be a huge loss in terms of both money and time! At this point, I have decided to cut my losses, and move on to something more stable.

I've only had this thing one day and I have to say it's exactly what I was wanting. My old HTPC that used an i5-750 has died, and it's not easy to get a cheap LGA 1156 motherboard nowadays. So, what the hell was I gonna do with my old parts? Enter the Q1900m. While it's not as quick as my old i5 (of course) , it's as fast as a top-tier intel Core 2 Duo (2009 processor). I paired this with 4GB (2x2) of Adata 1600 ram and the ATI 5750 graphics card that was in my first HTPC. [** two slot graphics cards MAY interfere with SATA ports.** Right now, the top of the plastic heatsink shield of the 5750 goes perfectly between both SATA ports. If it were any higher or lower it probably could have removed access to one of them. ] Set up for this thing was really, really easy. Just threw a copy of windows 8 pro at it, and it's had no problems detecting on-board hardware, has had no heat issues, and performance is definitely as expected. Like I said, I didn't want to piss money away on an old ebay 1156 board, so this $70 purchase made sense for me. You can go with the BIOSTAR A68N-5000, which is the AMD equivalent I suppose. That board has a better integrated GPU, but I got this thing for the full-sized PCIe slot any way. Passmark compares the two here https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2005&cmp[]=2131 If you hesitant, you might want to wait til black friday or something to see if the price comes down and makes this more appealing. But when I consider this is faster than the $1200 27" iMac my wife got in 2009-- $70's seems like a decent price point to me.

It's really amazing that they can produce a motherboard with VGA, DVI, HDMI, PS2 keyboard and mouse, 3 USB 2.0 (plus a header on the board for front panel ports), 1 USB 3.0, 1 PCIe x16 and 2 PCIe x1 slots, 2 full length DDR3 memory slots and a CPU at this price. Heck, it's almost as cheap as a Raspberry Pi, and for $10 more you can get a quad core processor (Q1900M) instead of this dual core. It was a little picky about the memory, though. The OCZ PC3 12800 memory I had wouldn't work, so I had to order a new stick (I LOVE PRIME!!!!!). Also, I was disappointed that I wouldn't boot through the USB 3.0 port. When I plugged my LINUX stick into any of the USB 2.0 ports it worked fine, but I was looking forward to the added performance of booting through USB 3.0 >:^( Still, it works great as the heart of my new NAS.

This is the core of a home built barcade running hyperspin for MAME and other emulators as well as some casual Steam games. It's not a powerhouse but it is quad-core and handles everything I've been throwing at it without issue. I am using the integrated video and sound with a 500 watt psu, single stick 8 GB Kingston HyperX FURY memory. I updated the BIOS before installing Windows 8.1 onto a Kingston 128 GB SSD drive. This mobo boots exceptionally fast, cold boot into Windows with the front-end loaded and waiting in under 10 seconds. Installation of Windows was seamless, I installed no additional drivers, everything was discovered and loaded during the installation. It plays nice with the ATmega328 controller which lets the joystick and button array navigate the Windows basics even outside of the front-end. I think this motherboard would be well suited for most casual users, small limited business owners, and even light gamers. I was able to get this board much cheaper than I see it advertised at the moment, I purchased mine for less than $50. The board and processor handle most but not everything, if you do not need the power then this is a sound choice for a cheaper build.

Well this was a most pleasant shock. Given the price, I expected very little. Really I hoped it would run Win 7 64 bit well enough to do some basic surfing and Office document work. After setting it up with 8 gigs of 1300 mhz RAM and an older HD 5950 video card I had laying around, this little guy is far faster than my most optiimistic hopes could have been. It's is quite competent for everything I have asked, including mutli-tasking, graphics editing at hi-res, running DVD's and digital copies of movies without a ripple. I am not a gamer, so I can't comment on that genre, but everything that I do yielded wonderful results. I will most certainly buy this again and recommend it to my friends. The PRODUCT DESCRIPTION says max RAM is 32 GB, but the top of the page reports 16 GB total. My motherboard manual also spedifies 16 GB total of 1333/1066 RAM. After months of use, I still love this board. This far exceeds my expectations and offers a VALUE I have not seen in a VERY long time.

The item was received with water damage from the outside and also the inside on the mainboard. When installed the item was deemed non functional.