ASRock Z97 Extreme6 Motherboard Review

[section_title title=”Closer Look”]Closer Look

Having a closer look we can see the full board in all its glory. If you ask me this is a very pleasing design though I may be a bit biased as blue is one of my favourite colours. If I am 100% honest though I would personally like to see a couple of the PCI lanes in blue as well to help offset the RAM slots, this is just me looking to nitpick though.

Looking at the top of the board and we can see our 24 and 8 pin PSU power connectors, our mosfet heatsinks with our 12 phase power design, RAM slots, CPU socket as well as a front IO USB3 header and our CMOS battery.

On to the bottom of the board and this is where most of the fun comes in if you ask me! We have the PCIE lanes that of course support AMD Crossfire and NVIDIA SLI, the chipset heatsink which has a nice chrome ASRock logo, a look at our M.2 slots, Purity Sound 2, 12K platinum CAPS that are 100% Japan made and our normal array of connectors and headers across the bottom that we will go over a bit more in just a moment.

Taking a closer look at the heatsinks and let me just say, these pictures do not do them justice, they have a very nice sparkle to them when the light hits which is quite pleasing.

Taking a closer look at the M.2 slots we see our Ultra M.2 on the top which of course supports M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen3 x4 32 Gbps. On bottom we have a normal M.2 slot which supports M.2 SATA3 6.0 Gbps module and M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen2 x2 10 Gbps. The slot to the immediate left of the Ultra M.2 is a Mini PCI-Express slot which is normally found on laptops and Mini-ITX motherboards and is most well-known for allowing the end user to connect a wireless LAN card to said device. 

As previously mentioned we have a host of connectors and ports running along the motherboard in normal fashion. We have our HD Audio connector, COM port, PCIE power – which allows us to plug a 4-pin molex from our PSU directly to the motherboard to give more power to the PCIE lanes for Crossfire and SLI graphics cards setups, fan header, HDD Saver connector alongside the 1x USB3, 2x USB2 and 1x Vertical Type A USB 2.0 connector. 

Next to the vertical type A USB 2.0 connector we have our front panel connectors, reset and power buttons, bios select switch, fan header, post speaker connector and we can also notice the Debug LED which will come in handy should we encounter any problems booting our PC as they will give us detailed error codes to help us track down the problem. 

To the right of the chipset heatsink we have an array of SATA connectors as well as 1x eSATA Connector by ASMedia ASM1061, which supports NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug. 6 of the SATA3 connectors are powered by Intel^® Z97, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10, Intel^®Rapid Storage Technology 13 and Intel^® Smart Response Technology), NCQ, AHCI, Hot Plug and ASRock HDD Saver Technology. The other 4 SATA3 connectors are powered by ASMedia ASM1061 and offer support for NCQ, AHCI, Hot Plug and ASRock HDD Saver Technology. 

You will also notice that by combining the SATAE_1, SATA3_5 and SATA_4 makes up the SATA Express slot which offers speeds of up to 10Gbps but is however shared with the M2_2 socket, meaning you will not be able to use the SATA Express and M2_2 connectors at the same time.

Lastly our Rear Panel IO has the normal host of features we are used to seeing, it includes:

1x PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard Port
1x DVI-I Port
1x HDMI Port
1x DisplayPort 1.2
1x Optical SPDIF Out Port
1x eSATA Connector
2x USB 3.0 Ports (ASMedia ASM1042AE) (Supports ESD Protection (ASRock Full Spike Protection))
4x USB 3.0 Ports (Intel^® Z97) (Supports ESD Protection (ASRock Full Spike Protection))
2x RJ-45 LAN Ports with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED)
1x Clear CMOS Switch
HD Audio Jacks: Rear Speaker / Central / Bass / Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone