Asrock Z97 Extreme 4 Motherboard Review: Bang-for-Buck Beast

A Closer Look at the Asrock Z97 Extreme 4 Motherboard

ASRock Z97 Extreme 4 comes in a standard ATX form factor measuring 305 x 204mm on a black PCB (ASRock refers to it as “Sapphire Black PCB”) and it is quite packed with on-board features, moreso than typical mainstream motherboard offerings.

VRM and chipset cooling has a blue color-scheme across a set of three aluminum heatsinks. Contact is secured with insulated screws from the rear and gray thermal putty is in between the aluminum heatsinks and component surface. The design of the heatsink is odd in that the airflow fin pattern is at the rear instead of at the front except for three diagonals which seem to be more for aesthetic than function. The rear VRM is the only one that is actually a two-piece with a black painted aluminum insert. Modders can just unscrew this insert if repainting.

CPU power delivery starts at the top corner with the 8-pin CPU power with the latch facing downward. The PWM controller is an Intersil ISL6379 which is most likely a Hybrid Digital controller considering the rest of the ISL637X controllers are. This seems to be a common controller on 6-phase and 12-phase Z97 and X99 motherboards so at least one output is capable of up to six phases. The ISL6369 was a dual-output 6+1 PWM controller and although I am not sure how many phases the second output can do, it does not matter since it is not used here in the CPU (Z97 only needs one feed for VRin).

Six dual-output Intersil ISL6208B at the back drive 12x Texas Instruments CSD87350Q5D  Buck single-package NexFETs. These are 40A capable MOSFETs with the sync FET and control FET stacked on top of each other with a very high operating Tj temperature of up to 150C (hence heatpiped VRM heatsinks not required at all). Output filter consists of 12x Trio LM-212 series inductors and 7x Nichicon FP-series capacitors (3927uF capacitor output total).

Memory VRM also uses Texas Instrument NexFETs, this time a pair of CSD87588N with two 1.0uH chokes and a pair of 821uF Nichicon FP capacitors from a single-phase RichTek RT8120 controller. Maximum memry size possible across four DIMM is of course 32GB DDR3 with DDR3L and XMP support.

Directly below the 24-pin power is a 19-pin USB 3.0 header, providing two USB 3.0 inputs natively by the Intel Z97 chipset. There are eight SATA ports in total, one of which is SATA Express optional (shared with SATA3_4 and SATA3_5), six are natively provided by the Intel Z97 chipset and two are provided by a 3rd-party ASMedia 1061 controller which takes one available PCI-E x1 lane and provides a pair of SATA3 ports. A small 4-port header is an optional connector for providing power from the board to two SATA ports to use with ASRock’s HDD saver feature.

There are a pair of socketed chips for UEFI which can be pulled out or simply toggled into via two-way onboard switch. Power, reset and clear CMOS button with a two-digit debug LED are also found on the lower right hand corner, not often found on motherboards at this price point. The front IO headers are also located here, right beside the LED display. An optional 3-pin LED header is available directly above the default front IO cluster. The speaker header is also separated which makes plugging in headers convenient even when inside a case since the printed polarities and labels are visible. Towards the center of the bottom edge are also a pair of USB 2.0 headers (four ports total), provided natively by the Intel Z97 chipset. An M.2 slot is located in between the two physical PCI-E x16 slots, supporting up to type 22110 (11cm) and shares bandwidth with SATA3_4 + SATA3_5 or the SATA Express port so only one of these three can be used at the same time. Unlike higher-end ASRock Z97 motherboards capable of faster speeds, this M.2 is only Gen2 x2 which is the standard Z97 M.2 speed.

There are six fan headers in total, marked yellow in the photo below. Two are provided for the CPU, one 4-pin PWM and one 3-pin while another 4-pin PWM is provided in front. Two fan headers are provided mid-board below the CPU socket and another 3-pin at the lower left hand corner right beside the clear CMOS jumper.

An optional 4-pin MOLEX power connector for providing additional power for the PCI-E is available right below the pair of channel fan headers at the middle of the board. The Trusted Platform module header also sits close in the middle of the board, which can pose some clearance issues with some heatsinks if used. Expansion slot distribution is as follows (top to bottom)

1. PCI-E 2.0 x1 (via Intel Z97 chipset)
2. PCI-E 3.0 x16 (via CPU, has 15µ gold contact on this slot)
3. PCI-E 2.0 x1 (via Intel Z97 chipset)
4. PCI-E 2.0 x1 (via Intel Z97 chipset)
5. PCI-E 3.0 x16 (8x electrical via CPU, runs 8x/8x when two topmost PCI-E slots populated)
6. PCI-E 3.0 x16 (4x electrical via CPU, runs 8x/4x/4x when all three PCI-E slots populated)

SLI is supported (dual-SLI) as well as CrossfireX.

ASRock refers to their audio subsystem as Purity Sound and this is Gen 2 of their design. More Nichicon capacitors used here, but this time using their Fine Gold audio series for filtering. Mounted underneath the shielding is a Realtek ALC1150 HD audio codec with a pair of Texas Instrument N5532 amplifiers, one for the rear output and one for the front output.

There are five analog audio connectors in the rear and one optical. Two USB 2.0 ports and four USB 3.0 ports found here are both natively provided by the Intel Z97 chipset while an additional pair of USB 3.0 ports right below the RJ-45 port is provided by an ASMedia 1042AE host controller which similar to the ASM1061 for the additional SATA ports, takes one available PCI-E 2.0 x1 from the chipset and provides a pair of USB 3.0 ports for connectivity.

Gigabit network connectivity is provided by an Intel i218V controller and an ASMedia 1442K handles display switching duties for the Intel integrated display outputs. An HDMI, DisplayPort, D-Sub and DVI-D ports are available. A PS/2 combo connector is also available, handled by the Nuvoton NCT6791D which also handles the fan control and hardware monitoring functions.