ASRock Z77 Extreme6 Pro Reviews

It is always great to wrap up a review on a positive note, when all you can think of is which advantages to highlight again. This is exactly how we feel now that the review of ASRock Z77 Extreme4 and ASRock Z77 Extreme6 has been completed. However, each of these boards has its unique peculiarities, which we would like to point out once again. While ASRock Z77 Extreme6 has everything a contemporary high-end mainboard must have, it also stands out due to a number of unique features. First of all, it is a floppy drive connector and support for the mini-PCI Express cards, but we could also mention additional retention holes around the processor socket, two connectors for CPU fans and combined SATA and eSATA ports. ASRock Z77 Extreme4 mainboard is a little smaller than the Extreme6 model and has slightly simpler design, but it retains all the basic functionality of its elder sister. We can clearly see that the manufacturer made special effort to lower the cost of this product by giving up some of the optional features, but didn’t sacrifice any of the essential functionality. Both these mainboards are high-quality products with very well thought-through design and extensive functionality including convenient BIOS with everything necessary for system fine-tuning and overclocking. On top of that, speaking of ASRock mainboards in general, I am very pleased to say that they are indeed turning around the perception of the brand with remarkable success. Previously we would consider ASRock products as an inexpensive alternative to mainboards from the leading makers for those users who are on a very tight budget and therefore have to put up with certain limitations. Now the products are practically free from any limitations or shortcomings, but the low price advantage is still present. Moreover, the variety of available mainboard models has significantly increased. Today we reviewed only two Intel Z77 Express based mainboards from ASRock, however, the company currently offers almost a dozen models on this chipset. I am sure that you will be able to find the best feature combination to suit your needs, besides, you can also consider products based on other chipsets. All in all, if you are in the market for a new mainboard any time soon, you should definitely consider products from ASRock, otherwise you may miss the opportunity to land the most optimal solution out there.

ASRock in typical fashion have put together a really nice offering that performs well, looks great and comes in at a really strong price point. At $174.99 the ASRock Z77 Extreme6 looks like a great buy for anyone interested in jumping on the Z77 bandwagon. The main thing you've got to decide now is if you grab yourself a Z77 based motherboard now and pair it with a Sandy Bridge CPU like the 2700k or wait a few more weeks for the official launch of the new Ivy Bridge CPUs and buy a board and CPU then. There's really no wrong answer; if you're looking for a good performing Z77 motherboard that comes with a nice little bundle and hits at a strong price point then the new ASRock Z77 Extreme6 is a board that you should be looking at.

The ASRock Z77 Extreme6 is a motherboard targeted to users who want a product one step above mainstream solutions. While it provides the same basic functionalities of the Z77 Extreme4, it comes with one additional PCI Express x16 slot (which is 2.0 and works at x4 speed, though), allowing you to install up to three video cards in SLI or CrossFireX configuration. Another highlight of this product is the presence of a mini PCI Express slot, allowing you to install an SSD or a wireless network card using this form factor. Under the hood, however, is where lies one of the most important aspects of this motherboard: the PLX PEX8605 switch chip. Since the chipset doesn’t have enough PCI Express lanes available to connect all the devices that are present on this motherboard, this chip automatically switches PCI Express lanes in order to provide the highest performance possible to the device that is requiring performance at any given moment. On motherboards without this chip, you need to manually disable devices (namely, USB 3.0 and SATA-600 ports) that you are not using if you want to achieve the highest possible performance on the ports that are being used.