ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer Motherboard Review

[section_title title=”Conclusion”]Conclusion

Here we are, once again. It is time to close the curtains and wrap up another Z97 motherboard review.  How did the ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer hold up against its competitors?  Is it a worthy contender? Does its performance match its price and is it designed well? Let’s have a look!

Starting with the performance the Fatal1ty Z97 Killer is solid for its price range. Coming in just shy of £120, more often than not we find it in the mid-high region of our benchmark scores, which tells me the ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer is a very solid contender.  Competing against a good few more expensive motherboards you are sure to get your money’s worth with the Fatal1ty Z97 Killer when it comes to performance.

Moving onto the design, we find our main disappointment. The aesthetics of the board are what we have come to expect from the ASRock Fatal1ty series and while nothing over the top special, it still looks nice. The problem is the placement of the front panel connectors,mainly the power and reset. The issue I ran into was since ASRock have decided to move the front panel connectors to the left quite a bit I was unable to plug my power button into the motherboard on my Corsair Air 540. This would have been a major no go for me and had this not been a review sample, I would have sent it back and got a new motherboard.

The ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer covers all the bases in terms of features and should have most of what consumers want when looking for a new motherboard. It has future (Broadwell) CPU compatibility thanks to the Z97 chipset, it features XXL alloy heatsinks and includes Gaming Armor which gives Hi-Density power connectors and 15μ gold contacts in the DIMM and VGA slots. It features both a M.2 and Sata Express ports that offer transfer speeds of up to 10GBs with compatible devices. Pair all that with other features such as Killer networking that offers lower latency when gaming and Purity Sound 2 that offers on-board 7.1 CH HD audio and this is sure to please most looking in this price range. Let us not forget about the software it features, such as: ASRock Cloud, Key Master, Xsplit Broadcaster and the F-Stream software that allows us to overclock, tweak and receive live updates with ease. 

All-in-all the ASRock Z97 Killer offers great performance in a mostly aesthetically pleasing package. The only real downside is the new location for the front panel connectors, something which I hope ASRock will recognize and adjust accordingly. Whether it be moving the front panel connector back to its more normal location or maybe even just including some sort of extender/adapter for those of us who need it, something must be done.

Taking everything into consideration the ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer still walks away with our silver award, not bad all things considering.

To purchase the ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer motherboard you can do so by clicking this link – CLICK HERE

I would like to thank ASRock for sending the Fatal1ty Z97 Killer to us for testing and look forward to seeing more from them in the future.