During testing, HUB found out that budget B560 motherboards often bottleneck 125W Intel K series (unlocked) processors, leading to less than ideal performance. In Cinebench R23, the ASRock B560-HDV limited the Core i5-11600K to 8,267 points (average) in the multi-threaded test, down from 11,xxx on all other B560 boards tested.

Even with the spec power caps removed the board caused throttling due to increased VRM temps leading to a failed benchmark and an overall lower score than the rest of the boards. The same was observed on the Gigabyte B560M D2V, although the performance wasn’t affected as much.

With the Core i9-11900K (without power limits), the Gigabyte B560M manages an average of just 2.85GHz in Blender, much lower than the marketed near-5GHz all-core boost. Similarly, the ASRock B560M-HDV was also limited to just 3.7GHz, with both the boards seeing a fair bit of VRM throttling.

Even with the lower-end Core i5-11400F which is a locked processor, the board was able to manage 3.345GHz under the stock spec and 3.99GHz without. In comparison, the MSI and Gigabyte alternatives both managed an average boost clock of 4.2GHz in the same test without the power limits.

As you can probably guess, the ASRock B560 board offers a fair bit lower performance than what officially markets. To top it off, this isn’t exactly a low-end motherboard and is what’s usually recommended with a Core i5-11400, Core i7-11700, and even the Core i5-11600K at times. You can watch the entire video below: