ASRock Z77 Extreme6 Motherboard w/ Intel i7-3770K Review

ASRock have followed the recent trend set by other motherboard manufacturers and have used a black colour scheme for the Z77 Extreme6. There are a few gold highlights here and there but the PCB and the majority of the fittings are black.

There are some substantial heatsinks surrounding the CPU socket which cool the power regulation circuitry. This should help the overclocking performance of the motherboard. There is still plenty of room around the CPU socket for installing CPU coolers so we had no trouble installing the substantial Phanteks PH-TC14PE that we used for testing. There is an 8-pin power connector on the top edge of the board in close proximity to the CPU socket.

We find the four black DDR3 memory slots to the right of the CPU socket on the Z77 Extreme6. The board supports up to 32 GB of non-ECC, unbuffered memory at speeds of 2800 (OC)/2400 (OC)/2133 (OC)/1600/1333/1066 MHz. It also supports Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) 1.3/1.2.

Further down the right hand side of the board there are eight SATA connectors. The four grey connectors support SATA-600 and the four black connectors support SATA-300. Two of the SATA-600 connectors are controlled by an ASMedia ASM1061 chip which supports NCQ, AHCI and ‘Hot Plug' functions. One of these connectors is shared with the eSATA3 port on the back panel. The remaining two SATA-600 connectors and four SATA-300 connectors are controlled by the Intel Z77 chipset. These connectors support Intel Rapid Storage and Smart Response Technology as well as NCQ, AHCI and ‘Hot Plug' functions. They also support RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10.

The ASRock Z77 Extreme6 motherboard features two PCI Express 3.0/2.0 slots which run at 16x with a single card installed and x8 in dual mode with two cards installed. Please note that PCI Express 3.0 is only supported when an Intel Ivy Bridge CPU is installed. There is a further PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot which runs at x4 when a third graphics card is installed. ASRock have also included a PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot, one mini-PCI Express slot and two legacy PCI slots.

For users who plan to use a multi-GPU setup in their system, the Z77 Extreme6 supports Quad CrossFireX, 3-Way CrossFireX and CrossFireX as well as nVidia Quad SLI and SLI. There is an additional 4-pin power connector above the PCI Express slots which provides extra power when using a multi-GPU configuration. ASRock include an SLI bridge with the motherboard should it be required.

Along the bottom edge of the board there are a number of connections. These include an HD audio connector, three USB2.0 connectors and the front panel connector. We also find a double digit error code LED display which is useful for diagnosing problems. There are a number of fan connectors dotted around the board which should be more than enough for most people. The USB3.0 front panel connector is located next to the 24-pin power connector on the right hand side of the board.

The rear I/O panel supports:

• 1x PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard Port
• 1x D-Sub Port
• 1x DVI-D Port
• 1x HDMI Port
• 1x DisplayPort
• 1x Optical SPDIF Out Port
• 2x USB2.0 Ports
• 1x eSATA3 Connector
• 4x USB3.0 ports
• 1x RJ-45 LAN Port
• 1x IEEE1394 Port
• 1x Clear CMOS Switch

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