ASRock Z77 Extreme4 Pro Reviews

The ASRock Z77 Extreme4 is a cheaply built full featured motherboard that will surely find its place with the budget conscious enthusiast looking for a deep feature set and a well designed piece of hardware. There are some caveats to be aware of, but nothing you cannot work around as long as you have those in mind when it comes to cooling. You can pick up the ASRock Z77 Extreme4 at Amazon for $134.99 with Free Prime Shipping.

ASRock has been making a case for its products over the past few years, pushing out of the OEM mold much the way ECS has been doing with innovative products and a rabid fan base. Just reading the comments online about ASRock show the company is definitely on the right path to winning the hearts of overclockers. By putting together a strong feature set with increased reliability at a value price point of $134, ASRock is going to gain a lot of traction on price alone. Couple that with strong performance, features and overclocking, and you have a recipe for success. As far as looks go, the Z77 Extreme 4 is a good looking board that is a bit smallish in size at 12x8.6 inches. The layout used on the board works and did not contribute to any fitting issues during installation. ASRock used a black and gold theme that is executed well. Under the lights, the PCB looks brown instead of a jet black that is currently popular, but when tucked away in a chassis it wont be noticed. The signature feature set ASRock brings to the table with this board is its XFast 555 technology that promises that each 5x technology will deliver a 5x gain over boards that do not use the technology. These include XFast RAM, XFast LAN, and XFast USB. XFast Ram creates a RAMDisk to speed up the system. XFast Lan is a network management suite that allows you to set the access priority of programs that access the web, resulting in lower latency for your games and programs. XFast USB is a software tool that can speed up the USB 3.0 performance for attached storage devices significantly, as seen in the ATTO USB 3.0 testing. When run in Turbo mode similar to ASUS USB 3.0 Boost, the read and write speeds take a significant jump in performance, delivering a tangible benefit when transferring large files to an external drive.

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.

The ASRock Z77 Extreme4 is a motherboard targeted to the average user who wants all technologies currently available and some room for future expansion (e.g., adding a second video card), but doesn’t want to spend more money on a motherboard that has even more features that he or she won’t probably use anyway. If you fit this description, the Z77 Extreme4 is a motherboard for you. Of course, if you are sure that you need more USB 3.0 ports, SATA-600 ports, and PCI Express x16 slots, you will need to pick a more expensive model. Conversely, if you are building a very basic PC and are sure you won’t need six USB 3.0 ports and four SATA-600 ports, you can save some money by buying an entry-level product. In fact, if you are not even going to use the additional technologies provided by this motherboard (e.g., Intel Smart Response Technology), you can pick a product based on the coming Z75 chipset and save some bucks.