Asrock Z68 Extreme4

For testing Intel'south latest chipset Asrock provided united states with their Z68 Extreme4 motherboard, which is currently retailing for $200, making it slightly more affordable than the P67 Extreme6 we tested in our recent P67 motherboard roundup. In fact, we considered the Extreme6 to be the best all-around value for enthusiast shoppers.

Besides the inclusion of Z68's new features, the Extreme4 appears to offering many of the aforementioned great features seen on the P67 Extreme6. The spec canvass includes 64Mb AMI UEFI Legal BIOS with GUI support, iv USB 3.0 ports, 4 SATA 6Gb/s connectors, eight-channel audio, eSATA 6Gb/s and Gigabit LAN.

Asrock has added quite a bit of functionality to the stock Z68 chipset. Whereas all Z68 motherboards have six SATA 3Gb/s ports (two tin can piece of work at 6Gb/southward speeds) Asrock has expanded the storage capabilities of their Z68 Extreme4 by including the Marvell 88SE9120 controller, which supports a pair of 6Gb/southward SATA ports each using a PCI Express ii.0 x1 (5.0Gb/s) lane.

While the Marvell fleck doesn't offering whatsoever RAID functionality, information technology does support NCQ (Native Control Queuing) and it provides the Asrock Z68 Extreme4 with a grand total of SATA ports. Networking is covered past a Broadcom BCM57781 Gigabit Ethernet controller which supports Wake-On-LAN and Energy Efficient Ethernet 802.3az.

Etron EJ168A controllers also occupy i PCI Express 2.0 x1 (5.0Gb/s) lane each to provide a combined iv USB 3.0 ports. One controller powers 2 rear USB iii.0 ports while the other feeds a pair of front mounted ports using the supplied onboard header.

Asrock has added quite a few PCI Express devices and that presents a problem as the Z68 features only viii PCIe 2.0 (v.0Gb/s) lanes. As a workaround, Asrock employs the PLX PEX 8608 switch to deliver viii more flexible ports -- though we suspect many have been used to connect the PLX switch to the Z68. This isn't an ideal solution, just it's the only way Asrock could strap on then much extra hardware.

Nosotros constitute that the 8-channel audio is delivered past a rather traditional option in the Realtek ALC892 codec which supports THX TruStudio Pro. Despite seeing this chipset on numerous Asrock boards before, nosotros were unable to dig up whatever real info on it. The Realtek website merely lists 8-channel codecs from the ALC861 to the ALC889.