ASRock Z77 Extreme11 Pro Reviews

The ASRock Z77 Extreme11 mainboard has turned out to be an amazing and exceptionally feature-rich product. There are not so many mainboards with two USB 3.0 controllers that add eight more ports to the four existing ones. And there are not so many mainboards with two network controllers, both from Intel, which support teaming. The preinstalled mini-PCIe card offers Bluetooth 4.0 Class II and dual-band Wi-Fi at speeds up to 300 Mbps. The three graphics slots allow building multi-GPU configurations up to Nvidia Quad-SLI and AMD Quad CrossFireX (you can even use a fourth graphics slot for CrossFireX). The mainboard also offers three PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots, supports FireWire and has a COM port. On top of all that, it features a digital power system with high-quality components, a large number of fan connectors, Power, Reset and Clear CMOS buttons, a POST indicator, a vertical USB 2.0 header (Type A), and thick copper interconnects in the PCB.

The downside to such products is that such functionality is far more than most users will ever truly need, which poses the problem of turning the board into a niche product that many might overlook, but EK's release of a block for this board shows that there is a high interest in having all these features rolled into the Intel Z77 Express platform. EK won't offer such a product for just any board, and their block also shows that users are more than willing to pay to have it cooled extremely well. When compared to the Intel X79 Express platform that offers similar functionality and connectivity right out of the box, the ASRock Z77 Extreme11 offers something it does not: Its Ivy Bridge-based CPU as opposed to a ginormous Socket LGA 2011 chip like the Intel i7 3820 really contributes to keeping power consumption in check. Having used that platform a lot and still using an X79 system as the base of my gaming rig has proven to me that the X79's power draw is a bit excessive for daily use, but I can clearly see how many would need the functionality that, until now, could not be had anywhere else.

The ASRock Z77 Extreme11 is probably the most complete motherboard for “Ivy Bridge” processors that money can buy. However, it is not just a matter of coming with lots of features; this motherboard is targeted to users who understand how these features were implemented. One of the highlights of this motherboard is the presence of three PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots––not only two like most motherboards based on the Z77 chipset. Also, because of the PLX8747 switch chip, they support x16/x0/x8 or x8/x8/x8 configurations.