ASRock has released some pictures of its ASRock X79 Extreme4-M micro ATX motherboard which supports Intel’s LGA 2011 and X79 platform. It is the first mATX board to hit the market so far which is a nice marketing win for the team at ASRock. The board measures in at 240mm by 240mm. The board is surprisingly feature packed for such a small and compact design. The CPU socket is powered by a high quality 8 phase VRM using solid state chokes and driver MOSFETs. There are four DIMM slots supporting quad channel memory with there being two either side of the CPU socket. You get three PCI-E 3.0 lanes (16X/8X/16X) and a PCI lane which means the full extent of the mATX expansion capability is used.
Like most of the other boards we have seen (with exception to the ECS X79 Black Extreme) the X79 chipset is actively cooled by a small 40mm fan. All six of its SATA ports are wired as internal ports, with two SATA 6 Gb/s and four SATA 3 Gb/s. Connectivity features include 8+2 channel HD audio with optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs, four USB 3.0 ports (two on the rear panel, two via header), one gigabit Ethernet, a number of USB 2.0 ports, Firewire, and legacy PS/2. The CMOS can be reset from the rear panel. The board will feature UEFI BIOS support.
