Asrock Z97 Extreme 4 - Initial impressions

[Jarrax]

[Review] Asrock Z97 Extreme 4 - Initial impressions

Following up from my previous review of it’s fellow board, the H97 Performance (Asrock H97 Performance), here’s another offering from Asrock, the Z97 Extreme 4.

Sincere appreciation to Avertek for the chance to tinker around with this board. Without further ado, let’s look at the Extreme 4 proper.

 

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Unboxing and accessories

The special emphasis on the single screw and the SATA power cables are for the M.2 and the HDDSaver cable, which I’ll describe later in this review.

 

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The motherboard itself

Blue and Sapphire black is adopted for this mid-range motherboard from Asrock’s new 9 series so as to differentiate it from the lower- spec’ced H97 series. The brushed aluminium XXL heatsinks on the MOSFETS/caps and the PCH gives the board a very classy look. Note the design of the MOSFET heatsinks. It is specifically cut in a manner which allows for higher thermal transfer via the increased surface area, while keeping astestics in mind.

 

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Back of the motherboard

Up to tri-SLI or tri-CF is possible with this board, though it will be running at 8x/4x/4x in a triple configuration or a 8x/8x in a dual configuration. Spacing for the PCIe slots allows for up to 2 Titan Blacks or a maximum of 3 GPUs and 2 PCIe 1x cards (wireless LAN/sound) to be in the system at any 1 time.

Back I/O panel

Dual BIOS ensures that your board would never go offline due to a failed BIOS update. The presence of a switch is better looking as compared to the jumper in its H97 cousin.

Purity Sound 2 utilizes Realtek’s ALC1150, Realtek’s latest offering in sound chip technology, coupled with premium Nichicon 12K platinum capacitors. This chip is also used in the H97 series. Note the shielding on the board, which helps to purify the fluctuations in the electrostatic signals. It is also worthwhile to note that the shielding is incomplete, which should not affect performance to a certain extent. The other issue to look out for is the placement of the front audio panel connector. Being next to the sound processor chip and within the shielding area, it is pretty much guaranteed to provide front panel audio at a much higher clarity and quality. However, its placement position also means that it may be slightly more difficult to route the cabling properly.

 

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12 premium alloy chokes ensures stable voltage supply to the processor. Another 2 phases are allocated to the RAM slots. It is nice to note that the same type of power phase and chokes are also used in the H97 boards, which goes to show the commitment that Asrock has to provide quality components across their whole range of products.

A total of 4 fan headers allow for a well thought out cooling setup near the processor area or even a 240mm radiator based AIO water cooler for push-pull operations.

 

[Jarrax]

With the new Z97 chipset, Intel has introduced a few new features into the series for industry adoption. Following on, we’ll take a look at some of these features that Asrock has integrated into their offerings.
With the increasing capacity limits that hard disks of the past and solid state drives (SSD) of the present hitting its capacityerformance limits, there has been a fervent call for a new standard which allows for more bandwidth for higher speed throughput, resulting in the birth of SATA 3.2 standards. At present, storage providers have utilized the PCH/Southbridge, which has evolved from IDE  SATA1  SATA2  SATA3, doubling in bandwidth with every transistion of up to 6 Gbps / 600 MB/s in the present SATA3.0 standard. With the use of PCIe lanes as the new transmission bandwidth, overall useable bandwidth throughput has been increased to up to 10 Mbps.
By utiilizing PCIe lanes as a data transmission option, the increased bandwidth allows for new storage options to be included into the 9 series chipset, namely the Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF) (also known as M.2) and the SATA Express. A quick read on what it is and how it works is as follows:
NGFF/M.2
M.2 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia or https://www.sata-io.org/sata-m2-card
SATA Express:
SATA Express - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia or https://www.sata-io.org/sata-express
A quick and simple comparsion is as described by Toms Hardware and the ROG forum respectively
M.2 And SATA Express, Discussed - A 1400 MB/s SSD: ASRock's Z97 Extreme6 And Samsung's XP941 and SSD Guide: M.2 PCI-Express, M.2 SATA, M-SATA And SATA Express - The Differences Explained!

M.2 is part of a new storage standard that SATA-IO has gazatted to replace the mSATA connectivity storage from the previous generation(s). Asrock has, in the Extreme 4, planned for the accomodation of the various different sizes of a M.2 SSD (namely the 30 mm, 42 mm, 60 mm, 80 mm and 110 mm). As of present, the M.2 SSD Socket 3 in the Extreme 4 shares the bandwidth with the SATA Express ports (which I’ll describe more later on) of up to 2x PCIe lanes.

M.2 support for this board is as below. Do note that this list is not exhaustive and newer cards may come in as time progresses.

The next new feature of the Z97 series is SATA Express, a new connectivity standard for the age old SATA devices gazatted in the SATA 3,2 standard. Utilizing 2 SATA3 ports in a RAID fashion and coupled with PCIe lanes as the bandwidth, it allows for the use of either a SATA or PCIe based device to achieve a up to 16 Gbps / 1969 MB/s (Serial ATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). However, theoritcal limits are presently at 10 MB/s. At present, only Asus has shown the prototype of a new SATA Express device in it’s Hyper Express SSD (A first look at SATA Express with Asus' Hyper Express storage device - The Tech Report - Page 1).

The 3rd feature in the Extreme 4 is the presence of a HDD Saver port, a software controlled power output which allows you to power on or off up to 2 hard disks at will. Controlled by the A-tuning software in the Asrock software suite, it allows users to power down not-in-use hard disks. The main gripe i have with this is the inability to power down individual hard disks instead. This is something that I personally hope that Asrock would improve on.

 

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Connectivity options: SATA x8, SATA Express x1, USB 2.0 x2, COM1 port and Audio panel header at the bottom of the board.

Presence of a TPMS header allows for the addition of a TPMS module for cryptographic storage (TPMS: Trusted Platform Module - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

 

[Jarrax]

Test setup
4790K cooled with EK water block and 240 mm radiator
G Skill DDR3-14900 1866 8 GB x2
Raedon 5850
Hynix 128GB SATA SSD and Samsung XP941 128 GB M.2 PCIe SSD
Cosair AX1200i

 

[Jarrax]

BIOS screenshots

The matching color scheme of the BIOS to the colour scheme of the board makes it very pleasing to the eyes.

Similarly to the H97 Performance, optimized OC settings are the same on the Z97 Extreme 4. Overclocking settings are exactly the same as in its predessor, the Z87 series.

With the introduction of M.2 and SATA Express in the Z97 series, the BIOS have also been updated accordingly to enable them. Do note for now that usage is restricted to either 1, meaning that only 1 can be used at any point in time.

Asrock’s unique HDD saver is also enabled in the BIOS before use.

And similarly to the H97 Performance, Asrock’s unique Dehumidifier function also exists in the Z97 series. Instant Flash for easy BIOS updating is right in the Tools menu.

 

[Jarrax]

There are already more prominent reviewers pushing the Devil’s Canyon on the Z97 boards, thus what I’ll do is to set an overclock setting that is usable 24/7 on my cooling solution.

I don’t believe that I’m the 1st local reviewer to do a M.2 bench, but here are some figures from equipment that I have available. Comparison is done against the Hynix 128GB SSD while the XP941 is used as a boot drive. XP941 on the left while the Hynix SSD is on the right. It is easily observed that the M.2 PCIe SSD outclass the SATA3 SSD, even though both interfaces are still using the PCH. However, it would be interesting to make a comparison of the available M.2 SSDs available (Sandisk, Transcend, Plextor) in the market (at press time).

The release of the Z97 Extreme 4 has allowed Asrock to secure a strong foothold on the mid-tier motherboard market with the fierce competitors from the other manufacturers.

With the release of the 9 series chipset from Intel, Asrock has introduced a range of different boards that caters to different groups of consumers. From the enthusiast grade Z97 Extreme 9 to the mainstream level H97 Pro4 (ASRock > Motherboard Series), there is definitely a board that would be able to handle your requirements.

 

[rahul49]

Thanks for the review.
Very useful in helping me decide on this board for 4690K.
Price vs feature wise this has come up as my best choice. Before buying my only concern is about the reliability for this board.


Newegg users have reported an alarming number of failures.
ASRock Z97 Extreme4 LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard - Newegg.com


Did you encounter any issues during your time owning this board?