ASRock Z97 Extreme6 (LGA 1150) Motherboard Review

Introduction, Specifications and Packaging ASRock's Extreme series of motherboards offer a nice balanced and more well rounded alternative to their Fatal1ty series, which are geared towards gamers, and their OC Formula series, which are geared towards overclockers. For the past few generations of Intel motherboards the ASRock Extreme series has been renowned for its great balance of performance, features and value for money compared to rival offerings. Today we have a new Z97 board from the Extreme series looking to carry forward this good reputation. More specifically we have ASRock's Z97 Extreme6 motherboard. This motherboard is quite exciting for the more productivity or prosumer style user. It offers up a ton of storage connectivity including two M.2 ports, a SATA Express port and 10 SATA III ports as well as eSATA. What's more you get a range of PCI connectivity including mini-PCIe and you get dual gigabit LAN supporting wake-on-WAN functionality so you can use this as a home cloud or server. As if that wasn't impressive enough there's also 10 USB 3.0 and 5 USB 2.0 one of which is an internal port wired to the motherboard. You also get a debug LED and onboard buttons as well as high quality Realtek ALC1150 based audio and 12K rated capacitors with a 12 phase VRM for the CPU area. This motherboard literally has it all and it comes in at a staggeringly low price of just $170, about £125-130. Packaging and Accessories The flagship feature is ASRock's Super Alloy power implementation as well as their Ultra M.2 port which uses x4 Gen3 PCI speeds instead of x2 Gen2 PCI speeds found on the normal M.2 port. The rear of the motherboard has the usual marketing sheet detailing all the features and specifications of the product. Included in terms of documentation is an ASRock Cloud guide, quick installation guide/user manual and software setup guide as well as the driver and utility DVD. Accessories include the rear I/O shield which is colour coded, four SATA III cables, the HDD saver SATA power cable, a 2-Way SLI bridge and three screws (2 for the two M.2 ports and one for the mini-PCIe port). A Closer Look & Layout Analysis ASRock's Z97 Extreme6 motherboard is a very "busy board". We do of course have the usual connectors in their normal locations, such as CPU fan headers near the RAM, the 8 pin at the top left and the 24 pin on the top right. Moving further down the motherboard and we have a dense cluster of storage and front panel ports in the bottom right. These are all in very good locations making it easy for you to feed all the cables through one management grommet. ASRock have clearly thought about the layout fairly well because everything you'd need to run cables to is well located along the edges of the motherboard. The only thing that appears strange is the positioning of the Ultra M.2 port and mini-PCIe slot in a way that means you cannot use both at the same time. However, from my interpretation these ports share the same PCIe bandwidth anyway so you cannot use both at the same time physically or electrically. Around the CPU socket area we have an impressive 12 phase VRM design and a range of 12K rated capacitors in the usual ASRock gold. The heatsinks seem a little on the small side for such a beefy VRM but they should still do the job. Down by the RAM lanes we find two CPU fan headers that are well placed and the USB 3.0 header next to the 24 pin. The 8 pin is tucked away behind the two motherboard heatsinks for better cable management. Down by the blue PCH heatsink we find the storage options. a whopping 10 SATA III ports and 1 SATA Express. If the SATA Express is populated you do lose access to two SATA ports and the normal speed M.2 port. However, you're still left with 8 SATA III ports and the Ultra M.2 port so there's a ton of storage options for such an affordable motherboard. From left to right along the bottom we find the front panel audio, a COM header, supplementary molex power, a 3 pin fan header, a TBI Thunderbolt Interface connector, a second USB 3.0 header, dual USB 2.0 headers, an internal USB 2.0 port, front panel headers, a reset button and a power button. Above those we find dual BIOS chips, a BIOS selection button, the HDD saver connector, a motherboard speaker header, another fan header and a debug LED. Around the PCIe lanes we find two M.2 ports and a mini-PCIe in addition to three PCIe 16X slots and three 1X slots. 2 x PCIe 3.0 X16 (16X and 8X electrical) 1 x PCIe 2.0 X16 (2X electrical) 1 x mini-PCI Express 2 x PCIe 2.0 X1 1 x Ultra M.2 Port (Gen3 x4) 1 x M.2 Port (Gen2 x2) Near the back of the motherboard we have the audio implementation with the isolated PCB design and EMI shielding over the Realtek ALC 1150 codec. The HD audio connector is quite far back so in most cases you may struggle to get the front panel cable to this point in a neat way. The rear I/O offers up the following ports: 1 x PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard Port 1 x DVI-I Port 1 x HDMI Port 1 x DisplayPort 1.2 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port 1 x eSATA Connector 2 x USB 3.0 Ports (ASMedia ASM1042AE) 4 x USB 3.0 Ports (Intel Z97) 2 x RJ-45 LAN Ports with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED) 1 x Clear CMOS Switch 6 x HD Audio Jacks The PCB is a glossy black which may not appeal to everyone but I think it makes a nice change for the matte black which is now becoming the defacto standard. The Test System and Test Software Before we delve into any testing we would like to take this opportunity to review our test system and thank those sponsors who kindly provided us with test equipment to make our work possible. We offer our thanks to: Intel for supplying us with a Core i7 4770K processor, which we reviewed here. Kingston for supplying us with a Hyper X 3K 240GB solid state drive, which we reviewed here, and the Hyper X USB 3.0 DTHX Flash Drive, which we reviewed here. Corsair for supplying us with a Hydro Series H100i liquid CPU cooler, which we reviewed here, and a Vengeance Pro 16GB 2400MHz memory kit, which we reviewed here. Be Quiet for supplying us with a Straight Power E9 680W power supply unit, which we reviewed here. Plextor for supplying us with a 256GB M.2 solid state drive, which we reviewed here. Sapphire for supplying us with an AMD R9 290 Tri-X graphics card, which we reviewed here. ASUS for supplying us with an RT-AC68U wireless AC gigabit router, which we reviewed here. Patriot for supplying us with a Wildfire 120GB solid state drive, which we reviewed here. Lian Li for supplying us with a PC-T60A test bench. Noctua for supplying us with NT-H1 thermal compound. Rosewill for supplying us with an Infrared thermometer. Test System Motherboard: varies by review CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K processor GPU: Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X graphics card RAM: Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB 2400MHz kit (CL11, 2 x 8GB) Cooling: Corsair H100i with Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Compound Case: Lian Li PC-T60A test bench Storage Drives: Kingston 240GB Hyper X 3K SSD, Patriot 120GB Wildfire SSD, Kingston Hyper X 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive and Plextor 256GB M6e M.2 SSD PSU: Be Quiet Straight Power E9 680W Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit SP1 Networking: ASUS RT-AC68U router Test Software SiSoft Sandra Engineer - available here. WPrime - available here. Cinebench - available here. 3DMark - available here. Bioshock Infinite - available here. Tomb Raider - available here. AIDA 64 Engineer - available here. DPC Latency Analyser - available here. Rightmark Audio Analyser - available here. LAN Speed Test Lite - available here. Passmark - available here. BIOS ASRock's BIOS is fairly traditional and intuitive in terms of the layout: it has that usual "tab" design where all the key components are grouped along the top of the screen. As a result the BIOS is fairly simple to get around and the BIOS is surprisingly attractive given its sizeable full HD resolution. This allows the BIOS to cram more options into the screen and as a result it becomes fairly easy to identify where things are. The tool tab is particularly interesting because it has a whole range of unique features like the ASRock Dehumidifier function, a system browsing utility, the ability to update the UEFI in multiple different ways and a way to contact tech support from within the BIOS. The traditional overclocking options for the CPU and DRAM are found in the OC Tweaker tab and are fairly straight forward to navigate. Overall the ASRock UEFI BIOS is competent, attractive and easy to use and I think I prefer it to those UEFIs offered by Gigabyte and MSI although it can't quite trump the ASUS UEFI. The ASRock BIOS from what I've seen is uniform across all their Z97 motherboards except they just change the colour of it to match the particular motherboard series of the motherboard in question. Software Overview A-Tuning The main hub of ASRock's software is the A-Tuning utility, on Fatal1ty series products this same software is called F-Stream and given a different colour scheme. This is the almost-unifying piece of software that allows you to access most the other main software programs through the tools tab. It also allows you to monitor and overclock your system as well as update your motherboard drivers, UEFI and even directly contact ASRock tech support. This piece of software is fairly nice to use although it does feel a little fragmented in that most of the links to other software and tools merely launch in separate windows, not within A-Tuning. It would be nice to see ASRock unify all their software programs within the interface of A-Tuning so that users only need to install one centralised ASRock software. XFast LAN One of the selling points of ASRock's LAN implementation is the XFast LAN software. Explained simply this is just CFOS traffic management, prioritisation and shaping software that has been OEM produced for ASRock but it does give you a staggering number of internet management options and if you're someone who likes this kind of stuff then it's great. ASRock App Shop Next up is the ASRock App Shop which actually disappointed me a little. The range of apps are fairly mediocre, it doesn't even have all the ASRock software available and what's more half of it is in a foreign language. ASRock have always struck me as one of those brands who are a bit too Asian for the Western market and it's software like this that create that impression. I think the ASRock App Shop needs a redesign, a better selection of apps and more effective language controls dependent on the user selected language. I chose English but I am still bombarded with Asian apps and languages which is slightly menacing. OrbwebME ASRock claim to have given their cloud management software a huge overhaul by moving their software to Orbweb.ME developed by Kloudian instead of using their previous ASRock Cloud software. ASRock go over and explain the features on their website here. Yes, the explanatory video is fairly cringe with its interesting mix of chinglish and bad dub-overs but you get the idea. ASRock claim the three year subscription to Orbweb.ME that they offer is worth $150 USD ($50 per year) based on current pricing. Some of the features the software includes are: Remote desktoping Wake on WAN File explorer and transfer Browser based access Media library sharing This kind of software is a great value add for this motherboard particularly because it has dual gigabit LAN ports and is more geared to the type of user who will be able to make use of such software. Overclocking The ASRock Z97 Extreme6 had no issues pushing the Core i7 4770K to 4.8GHz with 1.275 volts which is the maximum our chip is capable of without overheating. Overclocking was a breeze, simply key in your target multiplier, key in your target voltage and away you go. The 12 phase VRM is more than adequate of getting the most out of the Core i7 4770K, maybe when the Core i7 4790K "Devil's Canyon" flagship arrives this motherboard will get a chance to stretch its legs more. CPU Performance Cinebench CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer's CPU performance. Cinebench R15 is a totally free utility and is available for download here. WPrime wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions. wPrime is a free utility that is available for download here. SiSoft Sandra The SiSoft Sandra Dhrystone and Whetstone benchmarks are widely used measures of compute power and performance for a wide array of real world usage scenarios. You can find out more details on these tests here or download SiSoft Sandra here. GPU Performance 3DMark 3DMark Firestrike is Futuremark's latest creation for testing the GPU performance of high end gaming PCs using Direct X 11 graphics. You can download a free basic version of 3DMark here. Tomb Raider Tomb Raider is a popular action-adventure video game published by Square Enix based on the Tomb Raider franchise. The game was released in 2013 and as of March 2014 had sold 6 million copies. Bioshock Infinite Bioshock Infinite is a first person shooter developed by Irrational Games that is the third instalment of the Bioshock series. The game is the last to be produced by Irrational Games before they announced their closure in February 2014. The game has sold over 4 million copies since its 2013 release. Memory Performance For our memory tests we use the built in memory benchmarks in AIDA64 Engineer and SiSoft Sandra. For more details on each of the benchmarks please see here and here respectively. AIDA64 Engineer SiSoft Sandra Combined Latency Test SATA, M.2 and USB Performance To test the storage performance in our motherboard reviews we use AIDA's Disk Benchmark utility built into their AIDA64 Engineer Edition software package and run a variety of read and write tests. We run each of the benchmark tests on a SATA III, USB 3.0 and M.2 device. For SATA III testing we use a Patriot WildFire 120GB SATA III SSD, for USB 3.0 testing we use the Kingston Hyper X 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drive and for M.2 testing we use Plextor's 256GB M.2 M6e SSD. The drives are always formatted before use. Linear Read Linear Write Random Read Random Write Networking Performance For our networking tests we connect the test system up to our Intel Gigabit enabled ASUS Rampage IV Extreme X79 motherboard test system through the ASUS RT-AC68U router and run our tests. We opted for this over a direct point-to-point connection because we wanted to simulate real world performance. Please note we tested the primary Intel NIC only on this motherboard not the secondary Realtek NIC. LAN Speed Test Lite LAN Speed Test was designed from the ground up to be a simple but powerful tool for measuring file transfer, hard drive, USB Drive, and Local Area Network (LAN) speeds (wired & wireless). It does this by building a file in memory, then transfers it both ways (without effects of windows file caching) while keeping track of the time. Download the free Lan Speed Test Lite utility from here. Passmark Performance Test 8 The PassMark Advanced Network Test (which is part of PerformanceTest) is designed to test the data transfer rate between two computers both of which must be running PerformanceTest. One of the computers must act as the server and will sit waiting for a connection. The other computer acts as a client. It connects to the server machine and sends data to it for the duration of the test. You can download a trial version of PerformanceTest from here. Audio Performance RightMark Audio Analyser (RMAA) RMAA suite is designed for testing quality of analog and digital paths of any audio device. The results are obtained by playing and recording test signals passed through the tested audio path by means of frequency analysis algorithms. A more common mark is also provided for those unfamiliar with measured technical parameters. Available here. We run the RMAA test using a 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable connecting the line out to the line in to test the quality of the motherboard audio codec not any external audio devices. We run the complete playback and recording test at default settings and then get RMAA to interpret the results giving the below outputs. We sync the playback and recording audio devices to the same setting as the test for accurate results. 16 Bit, 48KHz (DVD Quality) 16 Bit, 96KHz (Studio Quality) 16 Bit, 192KHz (Studio Quality) DPC Latency Analyser Thesycon’s DPC Latency Checker is a Windows tool that analyses the capabilities of a computer system to handle real-time data streams properly. It may help to find the cause for interruptions in real-time audio and video streams, also known as drop-outs. Available here. Power Consumption and Thermals Power Consumption To measure power consumption we use a killawatt meter and measure the total system power draw at the wall. We run three different use-case scenarios for 5 minutes and take the average reading. Thermal Performance To measure the thermal properties of each motherboard we take the temperature of three different locations using a Rosewill infrared thermometer. We measure the hottest point on the PCH (chipset) heatsink, the first VRM heatsink (which is closest to the rear I/O) and the second VRM heatsink (which is closest to the RAM lanes). The graphs are sorted by the first VRM Heatsink temperature as this is normally where most of the CPU VRM phases reside. Final Thoughts Pricing The ASRock Z97 Extreme6 is currently selling for $169.99 on Newegg and $179.99 on Amazon in North America. In the UK it is fetching £137.99 at Overclockers and £139.99 at Amazon. The pricing in the UK does seem a little high and I would expect it to be more in the £129.99 region based on the $169.99 MSRP. The ASRock Z97 Extreme6 comes with a 3 year warranty. Overview ASRock's Z97 Extreme6 is absolutely ram packed with features and connectivity to the point where you wonder how ASRock can offer so much at such a low price. I think the ASRock Extreme6 is a brilliant value for money proposition for anyone who has lots of storage needs and can see themselves taking advantage of dual gigabit LAN. ASRock have always been famed for their speciality in offering abundant storage options (anyone who remembers the ASRock X79 Extreme11 will know what I'm talking about) and on the performance of this motherboard it is easy to see why. Of course this motherboard doesn't just stop at storage because there's a boat load of other features like high quality audio, a 12 phase CPU VRM, a great functional BIOS, mPCIe connectivity for an add in WiFi/BT card, onboard buttons, abundant USB connectivity and more! It's fair to say the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 has an unprecedented level of connectivity and performance for its price point that is truly unmatched by rival products. On the negative side there are a few things that bug me. The main one is that there are so many conditionalities to the motherboard that aren't made explicitly clear in the documentation. For example when you use certain M.2 slots it disables or slows down other ports. ASRock need to make the PCIe configuration a lot clearer and literally spell it out in black and white for users so they know exactly what they can and can't do with regards to PCI and storage connectivity. It is specified to some degree on the website and in the manual but it could be a lot clearer. Secondly, it feels like with so many different devices drawing on the limited PCIe lanes of the Z97 chipset (the Realtek Gbe, the SATA Express, the M.2, the mPCIe and then all the PCIe slots) there should be a PLX bridging chip on the motherboard. I'm sure people would happily pay $20 more to know the PCIe lanes are all usable. Finally, as I've mentioned on another ASRock Z97 motherboard review I did, I feel like the software package is a bit fragmented and needs more development. ASRock simply can't match the software implementations made by the likes of ASUS. ASRock do well to correct their weaknesses by including some third party software (like the CFOS developed XFast LAN and the Kloudian developed Orbweb.ME) but they need to bring their own software up to a higher standard in my opinion. Pros Amazing storage options Dual Gigabit Super-competitive pricing High quality audio Abundant USB connectivity Onboard buttons and LED Connectivity bonanza! 3 Year warranty Cons In-house software a bit lacking Complex PCIe and storage conditionalities from limited PCIe lanes A PLX bridge chip would be nice (even with the extra cost that would entail) "ASRock's Z97 Extreme6 is a motherboard that has just about everything you could want, at a price you simply wouldn't expect. If you're in the market for a motherboard that's jam packed full of storage, PCIe and networking connectivity then this board is seriously worth considering. ASRock have demonstrated yet again why they are a popular choice for users with demanding connectivity needs on a tight budget." Thank you to ASRock for providing this review sample.