ASRock X299M Extreme 4 Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The ASRock X299M Extreme4 RGB Micro-ATX motherboard is available now for around £190. That’s a lot of money for any motherboard, but it’s pretty competitive for X299, which are geared towards a more premium end of the market. Of course, I think it’s fantastic value given the quality of hardware they used to create the board, and the level of features it offers overall too.

Overview

There’s nothing I can fault about this motherboard. In true ASRock style, it seems they built the hell out of this thing. What am I meant to say, it’s a little too well made? When X299 launched, there was a whole wave of issues surrounding the VRM cooling, but ASRock did what everyone else should have, stuck a big freaking slab of heatsink on there. It does the job nicely, and it means we can overclock the heck out of the CPU 24/7 with no issues.

More Power!

VRM cooling is just one thing, but ASRock didn’t stop there. Using premium 12K capacitors, an 11 Power Phase Design, a durable PCB design and more all add up to an extremely reliable motherboard. Given that X299 is basically built for workstation workflows, you want hardware that can withstand some serious abuse, and the X299M certainly will do that.

Aesthetics

Great build quality is reflected in the great design. As practical as all those 12K caps and big heatsinks are, they all look pretty slick too. This is a nice looking motherboard overall. Add the RGB support, armoured PCIe slots, and PCB decals, and it’s sure to look great in a gaming system too.

Added Value

There’s certainly more to offer than just build quality here. The inclusion of two networking connections means you can chain them, or have redundancy to prevent downtime on critical systems. Those doing content creation will need good audio too, and the ALC1220 is one of the best chipsets around. To make it even better, the inclusion of a powerful headphone amp, gold caps and connectors, isolation traces and more give this motherboard premium grade sound no matter how you use it.

Should I Buy One

As I said before, I can’t fault this motherboard, so there’s no reason not to buy it. At just under £200, it’s one of the more competitive options for X299 with this level of features. For those building an extreme system in mATX form factor, you’ll be struggling to find anything better for less.