Good motherboard for a stable and low-power media PC

The aim was to build a possible power-saving and cost-effective all-round secondary computer for Internet, office and media playback. I have the Asrock B85M pro4 chosen because it, unlike most H81 boards internally has a 19-pin connector for a front-panel USB 3.0. It also has the B85 chipset, which is closely related to Intel's very powerful H87 chipset, six SATA ports, a pretty good sound chip (Realtek 892), an Intel network chip and two "good old" PCI slots for expansion cards ( older for z. B. WLAN cards, sound card). H81 boards are often limited to narrow PCIe slots (1x), in which the plug-in cards first, shaky and sit second part will require a separate power connection. The additional cost of approximately 20 euros compared to the H81 boards seemed to me justified in the light of these extras. In addition, the board is really top processed while I have ever experienced at ASRock cheap variants Flops.

FYI: On the cardboard lid of my Asrock B85M pro4 is top left in a blue circle "new version".

When I chose the CPU Celeron G1840 (see my separate review to Amazon). This is the most affordable dual-core processor from Intel's "Haswell refresh" series. As memory used four 2GB modules type Kingston DDR3-1333 used. The Board was factory equipped with the latest BIOS 2.1 second, which recognized the relatively new Celeron G1840 immediately. The latest BIOS version is 2.2.

Windows 8.1 could be installed without any problems. The graphic, operated with the mouse UEFI BIOS is clear and also allows the necessary configuration for UEFI boot preferences. In a separate EXT4 partition the hard drive I installed Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca. With both operating systems of the computers running sufficiently fast and very stable. Videos are smooth and judder. The sound is - as expected - also very good.

Since my 2009 bought Enermax 82pro power supply (385 watts) C7-wait states is compatible with the Haswell C6 / I have set in the BIOS all C-wait states [= Power Saving functions] to "Enabled" and the stromsparendste Version C7 selected. In the factory setting (waitstates off) used the computer idle (from PSU measured) about 28 watts. After activation of the C7-wait states of the idle-consumption dropped to 21 watts. That's excellent, considering that only the SATA hard drive pulls up to 6 watts.

---------------

Addendum 30/03/2015 - board is compatible with Windows 10 a 64 ("Technical Preview")

I have installed on the computer where this motherboard is installed, for testing purposes (on a different disk) the latest "Technical Preview" version of Windows 10 per 64-bit. The installation (incl. UEFI configuration) went smoothly. Almost all board components identified - in the Device Manager have been - with the drivers included in the preview version. There was only a yellow question mark with a "PCI Communication Device (simply)". This is the Intel Management Engine. After I installed the Windows 8.1 version of this driver (which was accepted by the system), the yellow question mark disappeared. All the other programs that I had previously used under Windows 8.1, were running properly.