ASRock Z170 Extreme4+ Motherboard Review

[HardOCP News]

There is a review of the ASRock Z170 Extreme4+ motherboard posted today at Hardware Canucks. It seems the review crew had mixed feelings about this board. Hit the link for the full seventeen page review.

As we noted in the introduction, on paper, the ASRock Z170 Extreme4+ looks quite promising, with just about critical feature that we would want. However, while testing it these last few weeks, we discovered that while is a good motherboard by most measures, there are some noteworthy shortcomings. While the software and the UEFI were polished and perfect, which is something that most companies can't claim, some of hardware decisions range from brilliant to problematic.

 

[Nenu]

They missed a secret.
To get highest CPU clock you need to use BIOS v1.5.
I got 200MHz higher overclock than with any other bios version with my 6600K so I always went back to V1.5. (4.7GHz vs 4.5GHz)
The downside is they no longer let you download this version, hopefully it can be found still.

The shortcomings they had are reflected in the price, its a very good board for the money.
Just dont use Corsair LPX ram in it !

This evening I upgraded to an Asus Maximus VIII Hero mobo and 6700K because a friend wants my 6600K.
This cost me £200 more and it got the same overclock with HT off.
There is almost no benefit except in the new Tomb Raider "benchmark" with HT on, its slightly smoother for the few seconds after the last 2 levels load.
In game at 60fps there is no difference.

The ASRock board is pretty damn good.