ASRock H410M-HVS
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Affordable and compact 2020 microATX motherboard with LGA 1200 processor socket based on the low-cost Intel H410 chipset that supports 10th generation Intel Core processors without additional BIOS microcode update. It is positioned as a product of the basic price category, designed to assemble an inexpensive office or home PC. Due to the presence of a full-fledged PCI-E 3.0 16x port, it can work with high-performance discrete gaming or professional video cards, which allows it to be used as the basis of a low-cost gaming system.
ASRock H410M-HVS motherboard is compatible with Core i9/i7/i5/i3/Pentium/Celeron Comet Lake (14nm) family processors. Equipped with a 5-phase CPU power subsystem and two slots for installing DDR4 DIMM modules (clock frequency up to 2933 MHz). The amount of RAM can reach 64 GB, which is more than enough for any office or gaming PC. When using processors with integrated graphics, Intel UHD Graphics eliminates the need for a separate discrete graphics card. For video output, there is an analogue VGA D-Sub port (up to 1920x1200 at 60Hz) and digital HDMI 1.4b (up to 3840x2160 prt 30Hz). The built-in Realtek RTL8111H class network controller is responsible for fast processing of network traffic. To connect peripherals, there are 10 USB ports (including 4xUSB 3.2 Gen1 up to 5 Gbps).
One of the most affordable motherboards for Comet Lake
The ASRock H410M-HVS is one of the cheapest Comet Lake motherboards you can find on the market. The board is equipped with a basic set of interfaces including a PCI-E 16x slot, 6 USB ports, 4 SATA connectors for connecting standard hard drives and solid state drives, and a low-cost Realtek RTL8111H LAN controller. The configuration of the rear panel will appeal to the owners of "rare" components: it has PS/2 connectors for a mouse and keyboard, and for connecting a monitor there is not only HDMI, but also analogue VGA. But the M.2 slot was left out, apparently the logic is that no one will put an expensive NVMe drive into an entry-level motherboard.
Doesn't do much, but works reliably
In general, this is a motherboard from the “does a little, but works reliably” category. For enthusiasts, it does not look very attractive. Firstly, only 2 RAM slots (maximum 64 GB) limit the room for expansion. If you now take the standard 2 sticks of 8 GB each to work in multi-channel mode, then you won’t be able to buy new ones for them over time. Although, for the base assembly, 16 GB is, as they say, with a margin. The second point is the impossibility of overclocking the processor and RAM due to the reduced functionality of the H410 chip.
Display issues with some SSDs due to firmware flaws
During testing, we did not find any obvious flaws. The network periodically complains that UEFI does not see some SSD models in the boot menu. Moreover, owners of other ASRock motherboards based on the Intel LGA 1200 socket also complain about this: in some, the BIOS selectively displays connected solid state drives, in others, the system with an SSD starts longer than necessary, in others everything is okay. An ASRock representative appeared on one of the Western forums and reported that the problem is known and will be solved with new BIOS updates. So we keep it in mind, but do not write in the minuses.
