ASRock Fatal1ty Z87 Killer Motherboard Review

The performance of onboard storage interfaces is crucial on a modern motherboard. We use the ATTO disk benchmark to measure the speed provided by the motherboard's onboard USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s storage controllers.

For SATA 6Gb/s testing we use a Kingston HyperX 3K SSD. We tested USB 3.0 performance using the same Kingston HyperX 3K SSD connected to a SATA 6Gb/s to USB 3.0 adapter powered by an ASMedia ASM1053 controller.

The SATA 6Gb/s ports on ASRock's Killer will not cap the performance of a fast SSD. This is unsurprising given that the Z87 Killer only features ports operating natively from the chipset, not from add-on controllers.

ASRock's XFast USB (with a Fatal1ty styling for motherboards in the series) is able to make use of the extra speed obtained through the UASP protocol. Using the Z87 Killer to benchmark a fast SSD over USB 3.0 takes us to the real-world limit of the SuperSpeed interface's 5Gb/s link speed.

With these kinds of USB 3.0 speeds, those of us who make use of a fast external drive to transfer games from system to system will not have to wait a painfully long time for the huge file transfers to take place.

Become a Patron!