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ASRock Z97 Extreme4

Intel Z97 Express: Five Enthusiast Motherboards, £115 to £130
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ASRock gives users interested in the latest drive interface their choice between M.2 or SATA-E though traditional chipset connections, and if you don't have a storage device compatible with either technology, you can get similar performance through a couple of SATA ports via RAID.

An ASM1042AE controller adds two USB 3.0 ports to the rear panel, bringing the total to six without sacrificing the chipset-driven USB 3.0 front-panel connector. Two USB 2.0 ports are also seen here, along with VGA, DVI-D, HDMI, and DisplayPort display outputs for the CPU’s integrated graphics engine.

Fed by Intel’s i218V PHY, the single GbE port provides connectivity without consuming a PCIe lane, thanks to the chipset’s dedicated networking link.

The Z97 Extreme4 also provides two additional SATA ports via a single-lane PCIe-based controller. Unfortunately, that one lane limits those two attached drives to 5 Gb/s combined throughput. And you’ll not likely use the third PCIe x16 slot for a storage device because it steals four of the CPU’s sixteen total lanes from the second slot when it's active.

If you were building a three-way CrossFire rig or simply adding three cards to support a wall of displays, you’d probably prefer that PCIe 3.0 x4 link to the PCIe 2.0 x4 interface that would have otherwise been available from the chipset. On the other hand, SLI users will find that they need the middle slot to keep all eight of its available pathways.

One of the Z97 Extreme4’s smarter features is a switch allows you to manually select one of two firmware ROMs, rather than relying on the often-unreliable “smart” switching certain competitors use. Better still, the use of socketed ROMs provides cheap insurance against dead ICs.

ASRock is particularly proud of the Z97 Extreme4’s “Purity Sound” audio solution with enhanced headphone amplification and DTS Connect support as well.

The Z97 Extreme4 includes only four SATA cables to serve its eight internal headers, but one potentially-nice added feature is its HDD-Saver cable. Using a bundled application, users can switch power on and off to their storage drives to increase drive longevity, save energy, or reduce noise when the devices aren’t being used.

A rigid SLI bridge is also provided.

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  • 0 Hide
    Putolev , 14 May 2014 09:28
    Sorry to say but this "review" didn't bring anything worthwile to me at all. If you take a certain price range and compare the products found there, they ought to be quite similar, right? Well then there's no surprise if no great differences are to be found. Like the reviewer stated, the features make the difference between like the great deal with Gamecaster (which has no value to me at all).
    What I found lacking is the reviewing of those features like software (audio, fan control etc.), VRM quality, "other stuff".
    Now what is this "other stuff" really? Which motherboard has the best "other stuff"? I didn't get it from the review.
    Apart from the very simple introduction to the software and hardware, I can't really make what's better between Gigabyte and MSI, the one's I'm interested in. MSI has better UEFI, I understood but how is the software? How many VRM phases and their quality? Is MSI's audio suite better than GB's?
    These are what make the products apart in the same price range but finding the value leader with good explanations for why was not possible from this article despite it's title.