ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. ASRock Z87 Extreme9/AC: Packaging and Bundle3. ASRock Z87 Extreme9/AC: Board Layout and Features4. ASRock Z87 Extreme9/AC: BIOS5. ASRock Z87 Extreme9/AC: Overclocking6. Testing Methodology7. System: PCMark 88. System: 3DMark 119. System: 3DMark10. System: Unigine Heaven Benchmark11. Processor: SiSoft Sandra12. Processor: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit13. Processor: Super Pi14. Processor: MKV HD Performance15. Processor: Media Encoding - MediaEspresso16. Processor: Media Encoding - HandBrake17. Motherboard: SATA Performance18. Motherboard: USB 3.0 Performance19. Gaming: Battlefield 320. Gaming: Sleeping Dogs21. Gaming: Metro 203322. Technical: Power Consumption23. Closing Thoughts24. View All Pages

Sat at the top of ASRock's Z87 Extreme series line-up, the Extreme9/ac is designed to combine enthusiast and gaming performance into a single motherboard that can provide everyday usage. With a 12 phase power delivery design and support for 4-way graphics configurations via a PLX PEX 8747 PCI Express switch, ASRock's Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard possesses features that will appeal to enthusiasts and extreme gamers.

But ASRock hasn't forgotten about ‘everyday' users who are after a high-performance motherboard. Up to 12 USB 3.0 ports, 10 SATA lanes, two Thunderbolt connectors, a high-end audio chip, and built-in wireless connectivity prove that ASRock is gunning for an impressive all-round motherboard with its feature-heavy Z87 Extreme9/ac.

Can the ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard deliver the overclocking performance and general ease-of-use that will make it a product worth purchasing in a cut-throat market?

Features:

• A-Style : Home Cloud, Purity Sound™, 802.11ac Wi-Fi
• Supports 4-Channel, Dual-Port Thunderbolt™ Technology
• Supports 4th Gen Intel^® Core™ i7 / i5 / i3 / Xeon^® / Pentium^® / Celeron^® in LGA1150 Package
• Premium Gold Capacitor Design, Digi Power, 12 Power Phase Design, Dual-Stack MOSFET
• Supports Dual Channel DDR3 2933+(OC)
• 5 x PCIe 3.0 x16, 1 x PCIe 2.0 x1, 1 x mini-PCIe
• AMD 4-Way CrossFireX™ and NVIDIA^® 4-Way SLI™ supported by PLX PEX 8747 Bridge
• Rear VGA I/O: 1 x HDMI, 2 x Thunderbolt™, 1 x DisplayPort Input
• Intel^® Dual Gigabit LAN with Teaming
• 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC1150 Audio Codec), Supports DTS Connect
• 10 x SATA3, 1 x eSATA, 12 x USB 3.0, 9 x USB 2.0
• 1 x ASRock Wi-SD Box (Supports 4 USB 3.0 ports and an SD 3.0 card slot)
• WLAN : 1 x 802.11ac WiFi + BT v4.0 module, 1 x ASRock WiFi 2.4/5GHz Antenna
• Supports A-Tuning, XFast 555, Easy Driver Installer, FAN-Tastic Tuning, USB Key

ASRock supplies the Z87 Extreme9/ac in a large box that features plenty of information regarding the motherboard and its software.

Opening the front flap reveals a window that is used to give a peak at the motherboard itself.

Most of the accessories bundled with the Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard are supplied in a high-quality draw-string bag. We think that this is a nice touch from ASRock as it increases the ease of which cables can be stored on a shelf or in a cupboard.

Manuals provide an oversight of the motherboard's specifications and features. An additional piece of documentation is related to the ASRock Home Cloud software.

A driver CD and case sticker are also provided.

The Z87 Extreme9/ac bundle is exactly what we'd expect for a board of this calibre, with the exception of an all-in-one front panel header block. As we have said many times in the past, we would like to see ASRock supplying a front panel connection block similar to MSI's M-connector and the Asus Q-connector.

The bundle consists of:

• 10x SATA 6Gb/s cables
• 2x Molex to SATA power adapters
• Coloured IO shield
• 3x single SLI rigid bridges (can be combined for 4-way configurations)
• 1x 3-way SLI rigid bridge
• Wi-SD Box (inc. USB 3.0 power cable and 2.5″ HDD screws)

The Wi-SD Box

ASRock uses the Wi-SD Box for many tasks. It functions as a SD/MMC/MS card reader, USB 3.0 4-port bay, and has the pair of wireless antennae built into its front panel.

Thankfully, ASRock builds the Wi-SD Box in a 5.25″ front factor, rather than the outdated 3.5″ size – support for which is omitted from many modern cases, such as our NZXT Phantom 630.

On its rear side, the Wi-SD Box can be used to secure a pair of 2.5″ drives in place. ASRock supplies the necessary mounting screws.

The use of Realtek's RTS5307 USB 3.0 card reader controller indicates that fast memory cards, such as the Class 10 ADATA Premier Pro, will not be bottlenecked by the connection speed, as they would be with a USB 2 controller.

An internal USB 3.0 header is used to take a pair of USB 3.0 connections from one of the motherboard's internal headers, before passing them onto the ASMedia ASM1074 hub controller which splits them into four ports.

ASRock uses the ancient floppy power connector to provide current to the Wi-SD Box. Many modern power supplies don't feature a floppy connector, so ASRock would be wise to ship future iterations of the Wi-SD Box with a SATA-to-floppy or molex-to-floppy power adapter. Luckily, we were covered by Seasonic's excellent Platinum 1000W power supply which ships with a molex-to-dual floppy power adapter.

A pair of wires connects the WiFi adapter found on the motherboard to its antennae located in the Wi-SD Box. ASRock makes these wires long enough to be routed behind the motherboard in a large case, such as our NZXT Phantom 630.

ASRock's Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard conforms to the ATX form factor. The board uses a solid PCB which looks brown when viewed in a well-lit environment. In a case, the board should look black enough to make it fit in with the style of surrounding components.

Four DIMM slots support up to 32GB of DDR3 memory operating at speeds in excess of 2933MHz. The Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard's memory support list indicates that 3000MHz+ kits from G.Skill, ADATA, and Avexir are compatible.

The 24-pin connector is located in its usual position, along the upper-right edge of the motherboard. Two USB 3.0 headers are found in the usual location that makes them easy-to-access for front panel devices.

ASRock leaves a sufficient amount of clearance between the LGA 1150 CPU socket and the four DIMM slots to minimise CPU cooler interference issues.

ASRock's Dual-Stack MOSFETs from the twelve phase power delivery system are cooled by a relatively low-profile black and silver heatsink. The Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard's gold capacitors should also receive enough incidental airflow to keep them cool.

Both of the ‘Hi-Density' 8-pin CPU power connectors are found on the board's upper edge, in very close proximity to the socket area. The power connectors will be very difficult to reach when used inside a confined case, or with large CPU coolers, such as the Phanteks PH-TC14PE.

Four fan headers are positioned around the CPU socket area of the Z87 Extreme9/ac. Two headers are given CPU fan duties, while one features limited speed control, and the other is simply a powered connection.

The Z87 Extreme9/ac features five x16-length PCI-E slots which are capable of housing 4-way SLI and CrossFire configurations, thanks to the PLX PEX8747 switch. Slot PCIE_2 (second from the top) is to be used for a single card configuration as in this mode its 16 PCI-E lanes are fed directly from the CPU, bypassing the latency-increasing PLX switch.

To my annoyance, ASRock leaves an empty space in the fourth slot position. I see this as nothing more than wasted space on a crammed motherboard PCB. Even a PCI-E 1x slot would have been useful there as it would allow users with dual triple-slot graphics cards to install an extra add-on device such as a sound card, while leaving ample cooling room for their graphics boards.

A Broadcom mini PCI-E wireless adapter provides a dual-band, two-stream 802.11ac WiFi connection capable of up to 867Mb/s transfer rates on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands. Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity is also provided by the card. The card is connected by a pair of wires to the two antennae located in the Wi-SD box.

In our testing with a Tenda N60 Wireless-N router and Nexus 4 smartphone, both the WiFi and bluetooth worked without problems.

The front panel connections are found in the usual location along the board's bottom edge. An internally-mounted USB port located on the board is useful for future devices such as higher-powered WiFi adapters or permanent memory sticks.

Onboard power and reset buttons are found in the board's bottom-right area. This location makes them easy to access, unless they are blocked by long graphics cards installed in the lower slots.

A molex connector is mounted at a right angle on the board's lower edge. It provides the additional power that is required by multi-VGA configurations, and thanks to its mounting orientation, doesn't impede cable management efforts.

Ten right-angled SATA 6Gb/s ports are located in their usual location along the board's lower-right edge. Z87 SATA 6Gb/s connections are given to the six ports on the left. The four ports to the right operate from ASMedia ASM1061 chipsets and port SATA3_A4 shares its connection with the rear panel eSATA port.

A pair of BIOS chips is located adjacent to the SATA banks. ASRock implements the Z87 Extreme9/ac with a dual BIOS system that can help to prevent the ‘bricking' of a motherboard.

Two outwards-facing USB 3.0 internal headers are found to the right of the SATA ports. Cable management efforts would be made easier if one of the headers was right-angled on the board's edge, as we saw MSI do with its Z87 XPower.

Beneath the ASRock Purity Sound casing is a Realtek ALC1150 audio chip. The isolated circuit also combines a pair of operational amplifiers – Texas Instruments' NE5532 – which feature a 115 dB signal-to-noise ratio, making the Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard's audio configuration excellent for use with high-quality analogue equipment.

Dual gigabit Ethernet is provided by Intel I211-AT and I217V PCI-E controllers. An Intel DSL4510 controller operates the dual Thunderbolt ports. The left and right pairs of USB 3.0 ports are powered by an ASMedia ASM1074 hub, while the central ports operate from the Z87 chipset.

Motherboard rear ports:

• 1 x PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard Port
• 1 x HDMI Port
• 1 x DisplayPort Input for Thunderbolt™ port
• 2 x Thunderbolt™ Ports (Support Thunderbolt™ devices or DisplayPort monitors)
• 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port
• 1 x eSATA Connector
• 2 x USB 2.0 Ports
• 2 x USB 3.0 Ports (Intel^® Z87)
• 4 x USB 3.0 Ports (ASMedia hub)
• 2 x RJ-45 LAN Ports with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED)
• 1 x Clear CMOS Switch
• HD Audio Jacks: Rear Speaker / Central / Bass / Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone

Circled above are the locations of the Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard's fan headers. A 3-pin and 4-pin header are given CPU duties, three fan connectors can be speed-controlled via the BIOS, and one header is glued at 100% speed (which makes it good for our Corsair H100i's pump power connector).

Motherboard slots and connectors:

• 1 x IR Header
• 1 x COM Port Header
• 1 x Power LED Header
• 2 x CPU Fan Connectors (1 x 4-pin, 1 x 3-pin)
• 3 x Chassis Fan Connectors (1 x 4-pin, 2 x 3-pin)
• 1 x Power Fan Connector (3-pin)
• 1 x 24 pin ATX Power Connector
• 2 x 8 pin 12V Power Connectors (Hi-Density Power Connectors)
• 1 x SLI/XFire Power Connector
• 1 x Front Panel Audio Connector
• 3 x USB 2.0 Headers (Support 6 USB 2.0 ports)
• 1 x Vertical Type A USB 2.0
• 2 x USB 3.0 Headers (Support 6 USB 3.0 ports)
• 1 x Dr. Debug with LED
• 1 x Power Switch with LED
• 1 x Reset Switch with LED
• 1 x BIOS Selection Switch

ASRock equips its Z87 Extreme9/ac with attractive heatsinks which also serve the purpose of cooling the MOSFETs and PLX PEX8747 PCI-E switch. The heatsinks are low profile enough to reduce the possibility of interference with large CPU coolers.

All three heatsinks are connected by a flattened heatpipe. The twelve phase power delivery system is controlled by an ISL6379 digital PWM voltage regulator.

A PLX PEX8747 PCI-E switch provides the lanes required by a 4-way graphics card configuration.

As we mentioned earlier in the review, ASRock's positioning of the dual 8-pin power connectors makes them awkward to access in a confined environment. In our circumstance, it was the Corsair H100i CPU cooler that was preventing clear access to the power connectors.

Firstly, we are pleased to report that our Leetgion Hellion mouse worked perfectly in the ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard's UEFI BIOS. This is a positive point as we have experienced problems when using certain mice in the UEFI BIOS of other motherboards in the past.

The main page of the BIOS provides basic information regarding the system.

The OC Tweaker page provides plenty of settings that can be manipulated when overclocking the system.

Using the auto settings of ASRock's Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard results in a VCore of 1.280V for the ‘stock' frequency of 3.9GHz (via forced Turbo). This is much higher than the usual stock voltage of the 4770K chip and had a clear impact on temperatures. Reducing the voltage to a stock 4770K level did not affect stability.

Lots of voltage, power, frequency, and multiplier configurations can be edited.

ASRock's Z87 Extreme9/ac provides good flexibility with DRAM settings, including dividers of up to 40x.

The Advanced page is used to configure the operation of onboard devices and controllers.

Many of ASRock's convenient features, such as Internet Flash and Easy Driver Installer, are found in the Tool section of the Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard's UEFI BIOS. A system browser is used to highlight some of the components attached to the board, although it features a mistake – we didn't connect a COM device.

Only three overclocking profiles can be saved on the Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard. This simply isn't enough; at least five should be provided. Hopefully ASRock will fix this with future motherboards or BIOS updates.

The H/W Monitor page provides temperature readouts and access to fan control parameters.

Boot devices are, unsurprisingly, configured in the Boot section.

We like the layout and amount of options provided by ASRock's Z87 Extreme9/ac BIOS. The main complaint we have is its aesthetic appeal. It is very functional, but it certainly isn't as attractive as the UEFI BIOS found on the majority of competing manufacturers' motherboards.

Automatic CPU Overclocking:

Selecting the Turbo 4.4GHz mode took our CPU to a 44x divider in seconds. The overclock was perfectly stable and ASRock's voltage settings were close to what we would manually input for this particular chip. We were impressed by this fact, as many ‘automated' overclocking configurations use voltage levels that are much higher than what is required for a given frequency.

Neither the 4.8GHz nor 4.6GHz Turbo mode would boot with stability, but this isn't surprising as we know that this retail 4770K chip is very reluctant to go past 4.5GHz.

Manual CPU Overclocking:

The ASRock Extreme9/ac motherboard had no problems taking our Core i7 4770K processor to its safe limit of 4.5GHz. We used a CPU VCore of 1.350V (which is more than 4.5GHz requires, but it removes frequency limits for further overclocking attempts), a CPU Cache setting of 39x at 1.300V, and a CPU Input voltage of 1.900V. Level 1 LLC ensured that our configured voltages remained constant, irrelevant of load conditions.

Despite opting for the ‘override' voltage mode, we had to manually input the voltage offset to its minimum level to stop the ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac needlessly adding more than 300mV to our desired level. This is certainly something to watch out for, as our chip's temperatures sky-rocketed when it hit the near-damaging level of 1.430V after we configured it for less than 1.380V.

We were able to hit 4.6GHz using a VCore of 1.375V, but this configuration resulted in unsafe temperatures of 94°C under Prime95 load. We opted for 4.5GHz as our stable overclock that tests would be completed on.

Our 4.5GHz frequency validation can be viewed here.

Memory Overclocking:

While a system's maximum memory frequency may be heavily swayed by the CPU's individual memory controller, the motherboard's performance can also help to obtain higher speeds, especially when XMP settings are taken into account.

We switched to our 2933MHz set of G.Skill Trident X F3-2933C12D-8GTXDG memory to test the Extreme9/ac motherboard's memory overclocking potential. These sticks feature an XMP profile for 2933MHz, although we've yet to test a board at KitGuru that will boot with the XMP settings.

To eliminate memory frequency bottlenecks, we used our overclocked CPU configuration from above, which featured increased voltages for the CPU VCore, CPU Cache, and CPU Input, as well as ASRock's automatic System Agent Offset of +0.204V, according to CPUID HWMonitor. The CPU multiplier was dropped to 40x, representing near-stock levels.

ASRock's Z87 Extreme9/ac is the first motherboard that we have tested at KitGuru which has successfully posted and booted with the G.Skill memory utilising its XMP settings.

Our validation with the G.Skill Trident X F3-2933C12D-8GTXDG memory running at its XMP settings with overclock CPU and motherboard parameters can be viewed here.

Our validation with the G.Skill Trident X F3-2933C12D-8GTXDG memory running at its XMP settings with ‘stock' CPU and motherboard parameters can be viewed here.

The board was also able to boot the memory's XMP settings while all of the CPU parameters and voltages were left at ASRock's ‘stock' settings.

We were very impressed by the Extreme9/ac motherboard's ability to boot successfully with such high speed memory.

After loosening the timings to 13-15-15-35-2T, we tried to overclock the memory a little further using a mixture of the 3000MHz divider, an increased base clock and the 2933MHz divider, and a 125MHz base clock (from the 1.25x BCLK multiplier) and the divider necessary for 3000MHz, but none of them would boot with stability.

We did manage to post and boot at 3000MHz, but only one of the sticks was running with stability, hence we registered the overclock as a failure.

To test the ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac, we paired it with an Intel Core i7 4770K processor and 8GB of 2133MHz memory from Patriot. We will be outlining the ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard's performance with the Core i7 4770K CPU at its stock frequency of 3.5GHz and when overclocked to 4.5GHz.

We will be comparing the ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard's performance to that of MSI's Z87 XPower. Both motherboards are partnered with identical hardware and software, so the results are directly comparable.

By default, the ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard forces the 4770K to a constant 3.9GHz. This will be displayed as the ‘stock' setting.

Motherboard Test System:

• Processor: Intel Core i7 4770K 3.50GHz.
• Memory: 8GB Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 2133MHz.
• Graphics Card: nVidia GTX 760 2GB.
• System Drive: 500GB Samsung 840 Series SSD.
• CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i.
• Case: NZXT Phantom 630.
• Power Supply: Seasonic Platinum 1000W.
• Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.

Compared Z87 Motherboard(s):

• ASRock Z87 Extreme9/AC (BIOS 1.70 – newest).
  
• MSI Z87 XPower (BIOS v1.0).

Settings:

• ASRock Z87 Extreme9/AC BIOS v1.70.
• GeForce 320.49 VGA drivers.
• Intel v9.4.0.1017 chipset drivers.

Software Suite:

• 3DMark
• 3DMark 11
• PCMark 8
• Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0
• SiSoft Sandra 2013 SP4
• Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
• Super Pi
• VLC Media Player 2.0.7
• CyberLink Media Espresso 6.7
• HandBrake 0.9.9
• ATTO
• Battlefield 3
• Metro 2033
• Sleeping Dogs

PCMark 8 is the latest version in the popular series of PC benchmarking tools. Improving on previous releases, PCMark 8 includes battery life measurement tools and new tests using popular applications from Adobe and Microsoft. Whether you are looking for long battery life, or maximum power, PCMark 8 helps you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for your needs.

Performance of the stock-clocked MSI and ASRock motherboards is almost identical in PCMark 8's tests.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

3DMark 11 gives the Z87 Extreme9/ac a slight performance lead over MSI's Z87 XPower.

3DMark is Futuremark's latest benchmark. It can be used to benchmark and compare everything from mobile devices, such as smart phones, tablets and laptops, to high-end gaming systems. The benchmark is available for Windows, Windows RT Android and iOS.

With 3 separate tests, each of which is intended to be used alongside a specific classification of hardware, 3DMark is a very versatile benchmark. Ice Storm is intended to be used with mobile devices, Cloud Gate is good for use with laptops and home PCs, and Fire Strike can be used to push the performance of gaming PCs.

We used the ‘Fire Strike' benchmark which is designed to be used on gaming PCs. We opted for the Normal setting, NOT the Extreme mode.

The ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard is able to match the performance of MSI's Z87 XPower in the 3DMark benchmark.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

Heaven benchmark shows a slight preference to MSI's Z87 XPower motherboard, although the difference is negligible.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

 

Sandra numbers shows that the MSI and ASRock boards both match each other's performance.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all – it’s completely free.

Thanks to the always-on turbo frequency mode of ASRock's Z87 Extreme9/ac, it is able to match the performance of MSI's ‘stock' Z87 XPower motherboard which features the same setting.

Super Pi is used by a huge audience, particularly to check stability when overclocking processors. If a system is able to calculate PI to the 2 millionth place after the decimal without mistake, it is considered to be stable in regards to RAM and CPU.

We used Super Pi's '32M' benchmark setting.

Super Pi shows very little performance differential between the ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac and the MSI Z87 XPower.

The Matroska Media container is a very popular, open standard multimedia container which is usually found as .MKV files. It is a very popular format in enthusiast circles and can be played directly in VLC or Windows Media Player with suitable codecs installed.

We played our 1080P MKV rip of The Dark Knight using the latest version of VLC Media Player.

Media playback requires less CPU usage from the ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard than it does on MSI's Z87 XPower. This is likely related to the additional CPU usage of background processes such as the Killer E2205 NIC's software on the Z87 XPower.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 4.4GB 720p MKV file (1h:58mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power.

Hardware acceleration is disabled to provide an accurate interpretation of the CPU performance.

ASRock's Z87 Extreme9/ac shows identical media encoding performance to MSI's Z87 XPower at stock frequencies.

HandBrake is a fantastic free program that can be used to convert video files to many common formats for portable devices. HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multi-platform, multi-threaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

We used the latest V 0.9.9 version.

For our testing today we are converting a 4.4GB 720p MKV file (1h:58mins) to MP4 format, using HandBrake's ‘Normal' profile, for playback on High-Resolution devices. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power.

Using Handbrake as the media encoding program, the stock-clocked ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac and MSI Z87 XPower both show almost identical performance.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously.

Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

Our testing uses a Kingston HyperX 3K SSD.

The Z87 ports on ASRock's Extreme9/ac motherboard are clearly capable of providing ample bandwidth to a modern SATA 6Gb/s SSD.

ASMedia's ports show lower performance numbers due to their implementation from a PCI-E 1x lane. These ports are better suited for optical drives or storage HDDs, rather than fast boot SSDs.

With its emergence as the new standard for high-speed portable devices, USB 3.0 performance on a modern motherboard needs to be good to ensure that data transferral bottlenecks aren't created.

We tested USB 3.0 performance using an Kingston HyperX 3K SSD connected to an Icy Box IB-223StU3 USB 3.0 enclosure (ASMedia ASM1051 controller). ATTO was the benchmark used.

Using ASRock's XFast USB software, the Extreme9/ac motherboard's USB 3.0 ports are capable of delivering transfer rates in excess of 250MB/s. This is a big improvement over MSI's Z87 XPower which doesn't offer any form of UASP software.

According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware.

We used the game's demanding ‘Ultra' setting and a 1920 x 1080 resolution to push today's gaming hardware.

Battlefield 3 shows slight frame rate variances between the ASRock and MSI motherboards, but the numbers are close enough to write this off as a systematic or measurement error from our FRAPS testing.

Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third instalment and a reboot of the True Crime series.As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was cancelled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.

ASRock's Extreme9/ac also shows a slight performance deficit against MSI's Z87 XPower in Sleeping Dogs. The 1 FPS difference is unlikely to cause any issues, and could be related to the additional CPU overhead required by ASRock's motherboard software, if there is any.

Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter video game with survival horror elements, based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. The game is played from the perspective of Artyom, the player-character. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow, mostly inside the metro system, but occasionally missions bring the player above-ground.

We used the game's built-in benchmark set to ‘Very High' quality to offer an intense challenge for the gaming hardware while also making playable frame rates a possibility.

Metro 2033 shows MSI's stock-clocked Z87 XPower sat between the stock and overclocked Z87 Extreme9/ac performance results.

We measured the power consumption with the system resting at the Windows 7 desktop, representing idle values.

The power consumption of our entire test system is measured at the wall while loading only the CPU using Prime95's Small FFTs setting. The rest of the system's components were operating in their idle states, hence the increased power consumption values (in comparison to the idle figures) are largely related to the load on the CPU and motherboard power delivery components.

ASRock's Z87 Extreme9/ac shows good power consumption figures, giving an indication that efficient VRM components are used.

The ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac is an excellent motherboard that has very good overclocking potential, support for 4-way graphics configurations, and plenty of features that will keep storage fanatics happy for years to come.

Thanks to the motherboard's efficient power delivery system and highly-adjustable BIOS settings, we had no problems taking our 4770K directly to its day-to-day limit of 4.5GHz. Even ASRock's well-configured automatic overclocking mode was able to take us to 4.4GHz with an appropriate voltage and complete stability.

Memory performance of the Z87 Extreme9/ac was as impressive as we have seen from any Z87 motherboard that we have tested to date. The Z87 Extreme9/ac is the first board that can successfully boot with our 2933MHz G.Skill Trident X F3-2933C12D-8GTXDG memory modules' high-frequency, and very demanding, XMP mode enabled. We were also able to boot using the 2933MHz divider, proving that ASRock's motherboard has great high-speed memory compatibility.

ASRock crams the Extreme9/ac with useful features that will be of convenience to enthusiasts and day-to-day users. Ten SATA connections, up to twelve USB 3.0 ports, dual gigabit LAN, ultra-fast 802.11ac WiFi connectivity, and two Thunderbolt connectors are just some of the enthusiast-grade features that can be useful on a day-to-day basis.

Board layout by ASRock is generally good, although it certainly could be better. The 8-pin connectors' location makes them very difficult to access when large CPU coolers or confined case are used. One right-angled USB 3.0 header would also be welcomed over the two outwards-facing ports.

PCI-E slot configuration and placing is good, with the exception of the one wasted slot space. ASRock gives single graphics cards users a direct PCI-E connection from the CPU to prevent increased latency brought about by the PLX chip. Multi-VGA users also benefit from wise lane configuration and slot spacing on ASRock's part.

We liked ASRock's UEFI BIOS due to its very good layout and wealth of user-definable parameters. The only things missing from this easy-to-use and well-implemented interface are an attractive style that matches that of the competitors' options, and the ability to save more than three overclocking profiles. While we do prefer function over form, an attractive UEFI BIOS makes overclocking a much more pleasant experience than an ugly one does.

Listed on many retailer websites as the ASRock Z87 Extreme9/TB4, Scan has the motherboard on pre-order at £305.84. At this price, the ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac features tough competition from high-end, overclocking-geared motherboard such as the MSI Z87 XPower and Asus Maximus VI Extreme.

The ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac is an excellent motherboard that has more than enough overclocking potential to hold its own in a tough market. Add its impressive feature set into the equation, and ASRock's Z87 Extreme9/ac motherboard is an excellent choice for high-end gamers, enthusiasts, and overclockers alike.

Pros:

• Very good overclocking potential
• Works with high-speed memory (2933MHz G.Skill Trident X)
• Support for 4-way SLI/CrossFire
• Onboard dual-band 802.11ac WiFi
• Good UEFI BIOS settings and layout
• Two Thunderbolt ports
• Plenty of features (10 SATA, 12 USB 3.0, Bluetooth, dual LAN)

Cons:

• Ugly UEFI BIOS
• High ‘stock' voltage by default

KitGuru says: An excellent motherboard with great overclocking potential and a wealth of useful features.

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