ASRock Z87 Extreme 6 $169.99 and the ASRock Z87 Extreme 6/ac $199.99 plus shipping

Just posted this on Slickdeals but figured i'd share it here as well.

Newegg has two brand new ASRock Z87 motherboards on sale for $20 of their MSRPs.

ASRock Z87 Extreme 6 for $169.99 (MSRP of $189.99) + $6.14 shipping and the ASRock Z87 Extreme 6/ac for $199.99 (MSRP of $220) + $8.50 shipping (Free two day shipping with shoprunner).

The boards are the same except the ac has a built in adapter for the latest wireless ac standard connectivity.

I bought the ac myself but take care as these are so new there is very little info out and i'm somewhat worried about the cable between the on board wireless chip to the header as it would have to go around a video card. The diagram for this is shown on page 17 of the manual.

ASRock Z87 Extreme 6 overview

Either way this seems to be a good value for motherboard. From my research it closest compares to the Asus Z87 Deluxe for $280 but this comes with two Intel ethernet chips instead of their one Intel and one Realtek chip.

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microcenter has the gigabyte u4 z87 on sale for a bit less (120?) if you buy it with a cpu. Personally I'm a bit worried that these motherboards haven't been out long enough to see if they are solid. Also I sort of need 10 sata ports (the u4 only has 8). My current SB mb is a asrock exterme 4; not 100% overjoyed with it but it has been solid - it just has a few niggles that bother me.

I honestly wasn't as worried with motherboards as much this generation because it seems like the overclocking ability of these chips are so poor that it doesn't matter which you pick. In addition these boards are even less important than the past with the voltage regulation being moved to the chip itself now. I think this is the reason we see the manufactures trying to differentiate themselves more with features now. The heatsink/dust cover, the external overclocking device, the HDMI pass through on this board, built in wireless, upgraded integrated sound chips, ect...

I tried to base my decision on features for the money and the most useful one I could see was the built in wireless ac chip, I looked them up as a separate attachment and they were around $60 so it seemed like good savings and i'm hoping to upgrade my router to ac when I get a new phone. Also as a side note these motherboards do have 10 SATA ports.

Not sure I need wireless as I already have a wireless router but I would love 10/12 sata ports and display-port. Is hdmi on haswell still limited to 1080p? That was one thing I really disliked about SB; 1920x1200 was not supported via hdmi

you2 said:

Not sure I need wireless as I already have a wireless router but I would love 10/12 sata ports and display-port. Is hdmi on haswell still limited to 1080p? That was one thing I really disliked about SB; 1920x1200 was not supported via hdmi

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That's a limitation of the current HDMI standard. It can do 4k but at only 24FPS. I doubt you'd want to limit yourself to such a low frame rate.

Huh? 1.3 supports 2560×1600p75 so what did SB support?

bpmurrGT said:

That's a limitation of the current HDMI standard. It can do 4k but at only 24FPS. I doubt you'd want to limit yourself to such a low frame rate.

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