ASRock Z170 Extreme4 Motherboard Review

We noted some of the SATA ports will disable when using the M.2 configuration, a bit tricky to swap around if you have already installed your system and one of your drives disappears.

The rest of the BIOS is as expected, and overall there are a lot of the usual features, though we would have preferred a nicer theme.

Test Set Up

We have retried our trusty PNY GTX 770 and promoted the MSI GTX 970 GAMING Twin Frozr V to our baseline test bench card. The GTX 970 is still a relevant card, many use it and it’s one of our favourites. We have also moved away from RAID and base lined our test rig with the Crucial BX100 500Gb SSD. Most users will only have one SSD in their system, so this is a better reflection of what any one individual may expect to see.

• Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
• Processor: Intel i7-6700K
• Graphics: MSI GTX 970 GAMING Twin Frozr V
• Memory: 16Gb Crucial Ballistix Sport LT DDR4 @2666Mhz 
• Drives: Crucial BX100 500Gb SSD
• Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 AIO CPU Cooler 
• PSU: Corsair HX1000i

All synthetic tests are carried out three times with the best result taken. All gaming tests are carried out three times with the best results taken. All game tests, multi player or otherwise, are carried out three times with the best average taken. If the game is an online multi player, a ping constantly under 40ms is required before a test is valid.

Synthetic Tests

• PCMark 08 Professional
• 3DMark Professional
• AIDA64 Engineer
• CrystalDiskMark
• IO Meter

Real World Tests

• Battlefield 4
• Crysis 3

The Intel i7-6700K is an excellent CPU for the Z170 Chipset and we paired it with 16Gb Crucial Ballistix Sport LT DDR4 @ 2666Mhz to match our X99 test system to some degree.